Tablets in kindergarten: is it necessary?

The idea that children only grow up with picture books before they start kindergarten or during their kindergarten years is a nice one. But is it realistic? Hardly, if you take the Adele study published in 2020 by the Media Psychology department of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences on the media consumption of four to seven-year-old children in the context of their families as a reference. The study came to the following conclusions:

6 Findings of the Adele study

• Children of this age use digital media primarily for entertainment. They watch TV, play games and listen to music. As they get older, communicative functions such as making phone calls or sending text messages are added.

The more alternatives children have, the less they use digital media.

• Children are often encouraged to engage in digital activities by their environment. The main motives for their use of digital media are fun, entertainment and curiosity.
• The time spent using digital media depends on how it is taught and the rules set by parents. The time of year and the weather also influence usage. The more alternatives children have, the less they use digital media. The time control of usage behaviour is easy to enforce, the control of content is a challenge for parents.

• Parents are unsure about the «right media education». As soon as children are able to operate devices and search for content on their own, they are no longer dependent on their parents' consent. Parents must therefore relinquish some control over usage at this point.
• Children up to the age of seven play both indoors and outdoors. They do sport, exercise, play board games and read with their parents or their parents read to them. They listen to music on their digital devices, but also use audiovisual media for series, films, audio books and video games.
• A large majority of children also take photos or make short videos, usually on their parents' devices. Almost half of parents cite their own peace and relaxation as the reason for their children's media use. Boredom, on the other hand, is only a reason for using media for a minority.

The idea of a media-abstinent early childhood corresponds to a romantic idealisation.

Office for Primary Schools and Sport Canton Schwyz

It's about media competence

That kindergarten children use digital devices: For education experts, media educators, teachers and magistrates, this means saying goodbye to an analogue childhood. «The idea of a media-abstinent early childhood corresponds more to romantic romanticisation than reality,» writes the team of authors from the Office for Primary Schools and Sport of the Canton of Schwyz in a position paper on Curriculum 21 and the subject «Media and IT».

Curriculum 21 provides for the subject «Media and IT» to be introduced at kindergarten level. What does that mean? Will smartphones and tablets now find their way into the Lego bricks and dolls' corner?

No, as Eveline Hipeli, media educator at the Zurich University of Teacher Education, explains: «Media consumption should by no means be introduced in kindergarten or become an everyday element of consumption. Rather, the aim is for children to get to know and use digital media as versatile tools that can help them to inform themselves, communicate, learn through play and, above all, be creative,» says Eveline Hipeli, who aims to promote young children's media skills with her «Ulla aus dem Eulenwald» book series.

Playful use of digital media

In kindergarten, play takes centre stage - and it should stay that way. «Play is the starting point for all learning,» says Lukas Teufl, psychologist and father researcher. «Children get to know themselves and their environment through play.» They observe, try things out and test them. The new subject «Media and Computer Science» also recognises this natural urge to explore.

Kindergarten is part of the so-called first cycle, which comprises four classes: first and second year of kindergarten and first and second grade. This first cycle provides for the development of skills in the areas of media, IT and application in kindergarten. An explicit number of lessons is not specified - this is a matter for the cantons to decide.

Kindergarten children should get to know and use digital media as a versatile tool.

Eveline Hipeli, media educator

They also decide whether the presence of computers and the internet should be established in kindergarten or only in the first and second grade (where they are mandatory). It is only recommended that kindergarten teachers carry out at least one active media design project per year.

«It's not just about introducing digital tools or using them as a support for teaching or learning,» says Eveline Hipeli. «The focus is on experimenting, observing and trying things out.» The children go from being mere consumers to producers and learn a lot in the process."

What does the curriculum provide for?

Children should acquire four competences during their time at school:

1. Pupils can orientate themselves in the physical environment as well as in media and virtual living spaces and behave in accordance with the laws, rules and value systems.
2. They can decode, reflect on and utilise media and media contributions.
3. They can translate their experiences, thoughts, opinions and knowledge into media contributions and also publish them, taking into account the laws, rules and value systems.
4. They can use media interactively and communicate and cooperate with others.

At kindergarten level, only the first two competence levels are worked on. First level: Pupils can sort things according to characteristics of their own choosing so that they can find an object with a certain characteristic more quickly (such as size, colour, shape and weight). Second level: Kindergarten children can recognise and follow formal instructions (such as cooking and baking recipes, instructions for games and crafts, dance choreographies and theatre).

There is still a lack of common understanding about what should be learnt. This is unsettling.

The fears of parents

Because each canton and each school provides information individually, there may be uncertainty among parents. Eveline Hipeli has identified this confusion in various non-representative surveys. «We are in a transitional phase until the new curriculum is implemented,» says Eveline Hipeli.

Such phases are often characterised by uncertainty, especially as there is no common understanding of what is to be learned. Many parents had a kind of half-knowledge due to a lack of information. The PHZ study revealed that «many parents fear that their child will be swiping around on an iPad in kindergarten, surfing the internet or even simply gaming during free play,» says Hipeli.

Their own experiences also play a part in their fears. «We all remember the IT lessons of our youth,» says Eveline Hipeli. «For many, that meant computer lab, Excel and Word tables, and the focus was on purely superficial user skills.» That's completely different today.

«In kindergarten, it's not just about user skills, but about showing how even young children can learn to think in terms of information technology by learning to organise things or follow instructions precisely to their destination,» says Hipeli.

How IT skills are promoted

This happens primarily through play. For example, the «robot game»: Here, one child takes on the role of the robot, the other child the role of the programmer. The robot only follows very precise instructions: «Go straight ahead!», «Walk three steps!». The children will very quickly realise that it is important to formulate the instructions as precisely as possible so that the robot really does what you want it to do.

Another example is threading beads according to a pattern (optionally also Lego bricks or iron-on beads). Children love to give each other tricky tasks. Such exercises are not only useful for developing fine motor skills, but also offer children the opportunity to recognise and form simple recurring sequences - things that are part of the basic concept of programming.

A photo project is also possible as a media project. For example, you can take photos of the kindergarten and turn them into a photo puzzle in which the children have to find the details shown in the cut-outs. The same principle also works with sounds (which child, which animal, which noise can you hear?) and when a child makes an audio recording of their classmates clapping for a radio play.

Computer skills also include being able to sort things. This can be a tidying-up story or sorting the class according to size, hair colour, T-shirts and so on and discussing how to proceed when sorting.

Training of basic skills

The examples show that much of what is prescribed in the curriculum ordinance is already being practised today - at home too, of course. Putting beads together to form a picture, sorting Lego blocks by colour, looking for a colouring picture with the teacher, baking a snack according to a recipe or showing their painted picture in a circle as a preliminary stage to a presentation - all these activities train the basic skills that are also needed for programming: recognising regularities and patterns, sorting, following a sequence and so on.

If the school budget allows, educational robots such as Beebots are also conceivable in kindergarten. These are designed to familiarise children with the concept of programming in a playful way. As a rule, these are programmable floor robots, as we may know them from our private lives as lawnmowers or vacuum-cleaning robots. The direction of movement and the number of steps can be programmed directly using buttons.

Parents should definitely discuss their own media experiences.

Eveline Hipeli, media educator

«When working with the floor robots, children learn to think ahead, assess events, derive appropriate decisions and develop their own problem-solving strategies,» explains Eveline Hipeli. It is equally important for children to realise that these robots cannot think for themselves, but carry out commands that humans give them.

«We parents want to give our children the best possible tools for a digital future that we don't know exactly what it will look like,» says Eveline Hipeli, herself a mother of three children. Hipeli and other media experts never tire of emphasising how important it is for fathers and mothers to address their own media experiences, both for themselves and their children, and to talk about them in the family as well as at nursery school. «What do I watch on TV?», «What music or radio plays do I listen to?», «How and on which device do I listen to them?» could be questions that are discussed together.

Support from the school

According to Hipeli, conversations about media are key. She emphasises that bans or protective shields are no longer effective from a certain age: «Today, media conversations between children and parents usually take place in such a way that the focus is on media usage time.»

However, according to Hipeli, this only promotes children's media skills to a limited extent. Most parents also want support from the school in media matters, says Hipeli. This may be because parents want to protect their children from the World Wide Web, or because they know from their own experience about the pull of the devices.

When it becomes clear through informative discussions that «media and IT» lessons at school also serve as preparation for a successful career, parents often develop an understanding. The aim must therefore be to inform parents in such a way that media education for children is not only associated with fears, but also with opportunities.