Just got a report from a preschool teacher. The programs are not suited to the age of the child. “Find something little and blue.” “Find something big and blue.” Kids are running around the house, getting distracted, eating bananas . . .
We need game inventors on this task. Use the medium for its strengths. Remember how children first got entranced by the computer: Pac Man and stuff like that. Devise games that are really learning experiences in disguise. Even three-year-olds can get involved if something like that if it’s on their level. You can’t take the old methods, like face-to-face and storytelling, and just stick them on the new media. Get some competition going like with a video game.
Who was the child psychologist who said you can teach any child anything if you go to their age level? Can’t think of his name. Wasn’t Piaget. Jerome Bruner maybe? Someone whose name begins with M.
That’s a brilliant idea, honestly. Could you contact somebody in in the DOE?
I wrote to encourage our mayor to have summer programe in my town because all these kids (who, needless to say, don’t do video lessons) are going to be roaming the streets - and already are,.
I saw a band of 11-14 yr old boys checking out car door handles at the Lowe’s parking lot. These kids need to have something going on. They’re lower income and their mothers don’t have the luxury of staying home or even working from home.
I asked our mayor to start an intensive summer program and talked to a recently retired teacher about the possibility’. The response? The union wouldn’t permit it.
It’s Bruner.
Bruner’s work also suggests that a learner (even of a very young age) is capable of learning any material so long as the instruction is organized appropriately, in sharp contrast to the beliefs of Piaget and other stage theorists. —from Wikipedia.
The M I was trying to think of is Maslow, whose theories I also like.