Browsing by Author "Numminen, Eeva"

Data communication devices are being used more in everyday school life, but the same phenomenon does not appear in pre-school. Data communication still seems to have a bad reputation in kindergarten even though new research shows that, when correctly used, it can help a child’s development. The aim of this research was to find out kindergarten teachers’ thoughts about using tablets in linguistic development. The study based on interviews of teachers who have been involved in project Molla of Saimaa Media Center. The purpose of the study was to examine the teacher’s skills, the resources of the kindergarten and the children’s skill differences. The study also aimed to find out what kind of content is available in tablets. Altogether eight people took part in the research. Seven of them had kindergarten teacher degrees. Two of them had trained as special education kindergarten teachers and one of them had a bachelor’s degree in Social Services. One participant was educated as a primary school teacher. The material was collected through questionnaires which were delivered personally to the teachers. The questionnaire consisted of open-ended questions which were divided into themes according to the research problems. The themes of the questionnaire were utilized in the analysis. It was possible to support different areas of linguistic development in a multifaceted way with tablets. The teachers’ ICT skills varied greatly and most of them were not able to provide high quality education. The children’s skills were better than the teachers’. Quality content was available but the teachers felt that it was difficult to find and took a lot of time. The tablets were mainly used for playing but some of the teachers also took advantage of the other features of the tablets. The future of tablets was seen positively but the teachers’ motivation and resources will affect the position of tablets in kindergartens.