Confronting the Paradox of Multimedia in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

The use of multimedia in experiential early childhood curriculum creates several important paradoxes that focus on the importance of hands-on manipulations of the learning environment and the need to contextualize software explorations within frames of meaningful experience for young children. This paper describes a multimedia multidisciplinary workshop that was designed and implemented for beginning teachers in early childhood education, and which helped bring these paradoxes to the surface. Students participated in a two-part workshop that provided an opportunity to explore seven multimedia programs that represented several types of software, including tools, information resources, teacher-led scripted programs, and exploratory games. The software also covered math, science, language arts, and social studies. An attempt was made to provide concrete materials in conjunction with the programs so as to model ways to contextualize the software explorations. Students were asked to reflect on the practical use of these types of software in early childhood settings. Emerging from the workshop evaluation are criteria for evaluating multimedia software and implications for future teacher-education workshops.In an article previously published in this journal (Wetzel & McLean, 1994-95), we described our team planning of two courses (early childhood language arts and computers in education) and stated our intent to design curricula in which technology was integrated across methods courses in reading, creative arts, social studies, mathematics and science. We also wanted our curriculum decisions to reflect the technology guidelines of the National Association of Early Childhood (NAEYC, 1996). Given the large growth in early childhood software (SPA Consumer Market Report, 1996), beginning teachers need to be able to make informed decisions using sound pedagogical principles. This article describes the most recent phase of our collaboration in which we planned, implemented, and evaluated a multimedia workshop that spanned three courses in the College of Education’s Early Childhood Program at Arizona State University West.