Understanding the World should mean exactly that. But without technology skills being assessed in the revised EYFS, it is a concern that children will not gain the skills or knowledge to use technology effectively, appropriately or safely.
To recover learning in a post Covid-19 world, we need to help our young learners know how their world works and what the people in it can do. The way technology has enabled our environment during lockdowns and isolation shows that devices and the internet can be used creatively to keep us connected and collaborative. These are not pandemic skills. They are life skills.
SKILLS ASSESSMENT
In 2008, technology was assessed at ‘Scale Point 6’ of the EYFS profile, and since then the role technology has played in learning has changed as much as the technology itself. For example, the AppStore opened in 2008 and the first-generation iPad came to market in 2010; both of these creating huge change for education and technology.
With an EYFS review in 2012, a new Early Learning Goal promised children would learn how to use technology ‘for a particular purpose’, which should have been a call to action for us to plan for technology skills in cross-curricular ways. But practitioners’ feedback suggested that five-year-olds could already demonstrate these skills way before they reached this assessment stage at the end of the EYFS. Was this a true assessment of technology skills or a misunderstanding of what purposeful use these skills are?
So what does it mean when assessment of technology skills is removed altogether? In 2012, when the Technology Early Learning Goal removed ‘programmable toys’ from the assessment description, we saw a decline in coding provision. However, that was when the EYFS was encouraged to have a plan-do-review cycle. Now that the revised EYFS gives practitioners more freedom in the way they create and deliver a curriculum, this could be empowering for early years technology provision.
Practitioners who know the value of digital play, and understand how learners can move creatively between physical and digital resources, can decide on computing skills to teach and how digital play enhances their enabling environment. On the other hand, it is now easy for settings to decide not to include digital play in their environments or simply plan only for what is being assessed. Either of these decisions not to plan for technology will result in the narrowing of early years provision.
PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL
In his book, Working with the revised Early Years Foundation Stage, Dr Julian Grenier describes how ICT is fascinating for children. He gives examples of photo, video and recording experiences where young children can switch between physical and digital play to enhance investigation, design and creative learning. This is a type of play we can all facilitate in our settings so that digital skills remain and understanding of the world is enhanced by the technology we already have in our storerooms.
To plan for this type of play, we should turn to the Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL). When thinking about device use – which could be anything such as a camera, a microphone, a computer or a tablet – it is imperative that we think what children are creating and thinking critically about when they are engaging in digital play. What we don’t want to see lots of is children fixed to games or videos which consume too much of their time. This is true for most resources that we provide in our settings. We encourage children to broaden their interests when they are fixated on water play, for example.
The enabling environment is full of exciting resources which stimulate learning and help us to provide rich opportunities. Technology should be one of these tools too and be seen as equal to other open-ended materials. These don’t need describing in framework documents, so technology should have an equal place in our toolkit (see box, left).
BEGINNING TO CODE
What hasn’t been fully considered for technology in any framework or assessment since 2008 is the beginnings of coding and children’s play with programmable toys. Even though coding and computer science is a statutory requirement of the National Curriculum from Year 1, the removal of this assessment in 2012 when the Early Learning Goals were introduced made the gap wider for transition from Reception to Year 1. It could be argued that this removal was a predictor that digital skills would also disappear from early years provision in 2021. However, now we have more decision over our learning intentions, programmable toys should be included in our provision as they offer scientific discovery and also help children problem solve.
It is highly likely that you already plan activities which teach fundamental coding concepts without you even knowing:
- When you teach children to put stories or events such as getting changed for PE into order, they learn how to sequence. Sequencing is a coding skill, and showing children how to make a programmable toy move forwards towards a goal applies sequencing skills to coding play.
- Cause and effect is commonplace in early years settings: ‘What happens if I do this… or that…?’ This scientific exploration is supported by play with floor robots too. Young children observe what happens when they press arrow buttons to give direction commands.
- We help learners to make repeating patterns and, although Shape and Space is no longer assessed in the revised EYFS, no doubt you will continue to facilitate pattern play. This makes links to coding as children can predict what might come next. In coding, pattern spotting becomes ‘looping’. Which part of the sequence keeps on doing the same? You can loop the commands ‘move forward, turn left’ four times so a robot with a pen draws a square on paper.
- If you are sorting objects by size, colour or number, you are teaching children conditional statements: IF it is a blue button THEN pick it up. This is how older children learn to program computer games by writing code which makes decisions.
This type of coding or robotics play further supports the CoEL as children make decisions in their play or change how well their approach is going.
WHAT TO CHOOSE?
There shouldn’t be a pressure to teach the latest app or gadget, because they change so frequently. To decide what technology you want in your setting, first decide the skills you want children to learn. It is easy to assume you need to buy the most recent tablet, but a tablet only combines a screen with the internet, a camera for photos and videos and a microphone to record sound. What you actually can use are some of these components of a tablet that you probably already have.
If you want young children to be creators then they need to learn photography, video and sound skills. This is great news for anyone who has digital cameras and microphones in the storeroom. An overhead projector or a lightbox can become a physical stage that contains play, such as putting on a puppet show or making art with light. Capturing this play with video or photography has a similar outcome to painting on art software. When you teach children about these media types, the device itself doesn’t matter because the skills are transferable to any future devices they pick up that do the same thing: shoot and record (see box, below).
SCREEN TIME
What you have seen in this article is creativity. The device has become invisible in the play and the outcome is focused on development points such as language, the natural world and artistic design. The use of sound, photography and video in these examples supports children to explore in open-ended play, showing what they are thinking and working with their own ideas. The technology skills they demonstrate in photography, filming and recording give us even greater insights into how they understand their world and are creators within it. They are showing they can make something.
This is where we need to section out our thinking about screen time. The use of a device is different at home and in settings. Adults consume media when we watch TV, join in with a streaming workout or follow a recipe online. At work, we use technology to enhance the tasks we are set, such as planning together or sharing information with the team or parents. It is the same for children. When they go home, they also consume more than they create with technology. Without your setting teaching them creative skills with technology, where are they going to learn them?
Teaching digital creativity is a way we can tip the scale so that children know that devices are not only for their consumption. If digital play inspires a young person to go home and photograph the sunset instead of play a game, you have made a difference to their digital wellbeing.
MAKING CHOICES
Consider these points to know whether you are making the right choice for technology:
1. What area of learning is being supported by the digital play?
Are the children learning maths skills such as photographing numbers in the environment or filming a description of how shapes fit together? Is the activity for communication? Will children be using voice recordings to retell a familiar story? Do you want them to capture nature in the outdoor area and show you what signs of winter or spring look like?
2. What technology skill do you need to teach the children for this play?
If this is a photography activity, can the children focus the camera? Are you telling them to press the ‘shutter button’ to capture the image? Do they know how to delete images that they don’t need any more? If it is sound recording or video play, do children know what the ‘record’, ‘stop’ and ‘play’ symbols or colours look like? Model this language to them.
3. How is the technology use supporting the CoEL?
Make use of the descriptors to decide how and when to use technology. If the technology is going to ‘get in the way’ and prevent the children from exploring, being active or creative, then don’t use it.
IN PRACTICE
Take a look at these photos to see how children are actively using technology to support their investigations:
Here you see how Reception children practise photography skills in nature. They learn to take their best photo which tells the story of the forest. How is it used for people, wildlife and timber?
These young children are using an app to take photographs of book characters. In three steps they can record their voice and make their image talk, bringing the book to life in a whole new way.
In this example, children are visiting the woodland, which is a story setting for their runaway food tale. In the moment this child has taken a photograph of the field and is using their finger to draw a character onto the scene. Their runaway pizza slice is a starting point for the story they are going to write when they are next inside.
Planning a narrative in role play is what makes early years special. Children can learn technology skills such as record, stop, play and delete when they film their role play. They love watching themselves back on screen. Take this one step further with a Green Screen and suddenly your children can act in any story setting they can imagine!
In this play, children are making paper masks and using the record, stop and play buttons on handheld microphones. It is the same skill as using the ChatterPix Kids app on an iPad, where they take a photograph of themselves wearing a mask then press record to capture their voice. This is also an opportunity to evaluate which type of mask they think is best!
Children who are telling stories in shadow puppet play might use an overhead projector as the stage, with a digital camera capturing the show. It is a similar outcome when children use Puppet Pals on an iPad to move characters around the stage, recording their voices on the microphone.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Check out Marc Faulder’s four-part series for Nursery World on Computational Thinking for the Early Years which demonstrates how activities can be tweaked to facilitate coding play in your setting: https://bit.ly/3B9o0XH
About the author
Marc Faulder is an early years teacher at Burton Joyce Primary School, Nottingham and is recognised as an Apple distinguished educator.