Facebook and Picasa
Roles which these tools play in Early Childhood Education
Facebook.
I recently created a Facebook group page for an assignment to create a fictional communication device for a preschool as their principal. I would have included the link here had I not already changed the group name and gave it a real purpose once the assignment ended. In this group page, I set the setting to "secret", so that only the people involved: i.e. parents, teachers and other relevant staff members would be able to see and respond to the posts.
This was done deliberately so that I would not have other irrelevant people posting or reading necessarily. Using this group, teachers could create and invite parents to events, and parents could indicate their attendance. We could also have discussions by posting starter questions, so members could discuss on common childhood issues and their solutions, such as "toddler biting, insomnia" and other such topics.
Announcements could also be posted on the walls, and parents were encouraged to share photos of their child's activities under the photo section. This way, all members could be conveniently connected in a non-threatening, yet safely confidential manner.
Picasa:
For young children, it's all about concrete learning. Teachers are always encouraged to present materials as concretely as possible. For example, if you were teaching about fish, instead of presenting an entire lecture about fish, one should bring a pet fish into class, or invite children to bring their own. Stories about fish and pictures drawn on them could be brought in later, but it all stems from the concrete, tangible object to begin with.
Unfortunately, this isn't always necessarily possible due to the constraints of budget and safety. For example, say I wanted to teach young children about crocodiles or snow, I couldn't possibly take all of them to the crocodile farm due to their tender age, or bring them all to a snowing country due to budget constraints. So in such cases, I turn to ingenious programs such as Picasa to show them pictures of what it is like. That, on top of bringing other physical relevant objects such as crocodile skin or skull, or ice. But Picasa presents me with an easy and feasible way to present children with information in as tangible a manner as it can safely get.
