Digital technologies have the potential to offer new opportunities for children's expressive arts practices. Although adult expectations surround and shape children's visual art making on paper in the early years classroom, such expectations are not so established in relation to digital art making. So how do children make sense of digital art…

This research aimed at investigating the method of using kinetic typography and interactive approach to conduct a design experiment for children to learn vocabularies. Typography is the unique art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. By adding animated movement to characters, kinetic typography expresses language…

Aim/Purpose: Over the past few years, new approaches to introducing young children to computational thinking have grown in popularity. This paper examines the role that user interfaces have on children's mastery of computational thinking concepts and positive interpersonal behaviors. Background: There is a growing pressure to begin teaching…

Developing shared understanding is essential to productive collaboration where a product is jointly constructed. This is especially true when the different collaborators' contributions need to build coherently on one another, as, for example, when making a story together. This study investigated whether encouraging children to engage in discussion…

Observation of young children is commonplace in educational settings. For trainee practitioners however, gaining access at convenient times can be difficult. Even then, small snapshots of observable activity can only ever be captured. We describe the design and development of a cross-platform software application which can be used to support…

The experiment reported here explored the importance of engaging 4-year-old children's interest in the print itself during storybook reading. We explored the effect of computer animation of the print in order to draw the child's attention to each word as it was read. We also investigated the influence of illustrating that not all visual displays…

This research aims to explore the role of physical representations in young children's numerical learning then identify the benefits of using a graphical interface in order to understand the potential for developing interactive technologies in this domain. Three studies are reported that examined the effect of using physical representations…

Student-led parent-teacher conferences help young children make sense of what hey know and what they need to learn at school. Just ask them! For the past two years, the kindergarten children at Seymour Elementary School in Ralston, Nebraska, have used PowerPoint to tell their parents how they are doing in school, and the conferences have been a…

Computer drawing programs have several characteristics that make them appropriate for use in early childhood education. Drawing at the computer is an activity that captures and holds children's attention. Children at all developmental levels of graphic ability can draw at the computer, and their products can be stored in a disc or printed for…

Preschool children can benefit by working with microcomputers. Thinking skills are enhanced by software games that focus on logic, memory, problem solving, and pattern recognition. Counting, sequencing, and matching games develop mathematics skills, and word games focusing on basic letter symbol and word recognition develop language skills.…

This article focuses on research findings concerning the relationship between young children's computer use in the classroom and constructivist education. Three ways of using computers emerged: computers as books or workbooks; computers for word processing; and computer programming of graphics. It was concluded that word processing was most…

Argues that young children learn LOGO programing language more effectively through guided discovery using games and techniques that encourage exploration of the software. Specific examples of games, drawings and accomplishments of Australian children are included. (EA)

This study focused on the cognitive conflicts experienced by young children in using software programs that provided them with tools to create and/or combine individual graphic elements into larger structures. Six 5-year-old children, none with prior computer experience, were observed using three programs--Kids at Work, Picture Perfect, and…

A study was made of the extent and ways different types of educational software allow young children to manipulate their own actions and, more specifically, to engage in reversible activity. Part 1 of the study consisted of an analysis of the types of reversible actions two kindergarten children engaged in and the actions they wanted to engage in…

This paper describes the origins of a corporation producing computer software for children, lists criteria for software design, and describes work done with computer graphics for children. The corporation, called The Learning Company, had its origins in a project set up to create playful learning programs for children ages 3 to 13. The project was…