http://pbskids.org/games/literacy.html
http://pbskids.org/
http://pbskids.org/sesame/#/videos
http://www.pbs.org/parents/child-development/baby-and-toddler/
Preschool and up (Television is generally recommended 3 and up... )
Website
Similar to the Sesame Street principle of "if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them" (Gladwell, 100), PBS has created an entertaining website for educating and entertaining children. This website is part of the Raising Readers program which is part of the Ready to Learn Initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Education, in partnership with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS and the Ready to Learn Partnership.
This website offers: reading games, letter games, number games, science games, math games, literacy games, spelling games, and vocabulary games. The website also offers videos, printables, e-cards and a fairy treasure hunt. In the Sesame Street part of the website, children can navigate the site by choosing their favorite characters or they may choose a category. The videos range in content and age range. Generally, the site can encourage children in the areas of vocabulary, print awareness, narrative skills, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge. The area of encouraging print motivation is questionable. On a side note, Sesame Street has been a mainstream program used teach and entertain children of various ages and has maintained popularity since 1970.
PBS is great. PBS usually has great programming and information. For this website, however, the more I looked and thought about early literacy the more I began to question this website and the manner of trying to encourage reading readiness. There are issues despite the fact that it did succeed in making a fun website for children to play with these concepts. Fun is important and hopefully it will encourage children to want to read and think instead of merely just watching and playing.
Another personal concern that I have is linked to the many games offered and the lack of organization. The games are broken down into large groups, but the still might be too random for the mind of a toddler who's brain is just beginning to develop a sense of logic. For example, the literacy games category scrambles rhymes, letters, bingo, words, and stories all together. One rhyme game appears in between "Super Why to the Rescue" and "Oscar's Bumper Cars" while other rhyme games are close but not next to each other. With the rising number of cognitive differences, such as ADD, this is a huge concern. Programs need to be created so that infants/toddlers can learn or mimic early logic. The games seem to be aimed at an older audience than 0-3.
While it is better to expose children to something rather than nothing it seems that there are better programs out there and different ways for parents to encourage literacy. This can be another mind-filler for the bored child and another time-getter for the tired and busy parent. In addition, I'm not sure if this is age appropriate for the 0-3 audience. It seems that parents want to expose their children to and take advantage of the internet, but this is done at a risk as is with television and DVDs. There seems to be a strong correlation between reading difficulties and attention disorders and the rise of the television. Perhaps, Sesame Street can wait a couple of years. At least, until the baby/infant/toddler has time to experience more real life.
The resources and information about development and milestones that PBS offers adults is much more helpful. These webpages clearly divide the literacy development into age groups offering helpful information for parents about when to expose children to certain materials. There are links that even suggest ways to approach learning creative arts, language, literacy mathematics, physical health, science, and social and emotional growth for each year (1 to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to 4, etc.) It's too bad that this knowledge was not applied more to the interactive webpages and games for children or used to create pages for parents to show their toddlers age appropriate material. (See http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/one/literacy.html)
Gladwell, Malcolm (2000). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. New York: Little, Brown, and Company. ISBN 0-316-31696-2
No comments:
Post a Comment