A mini evaluation.
I made very few predictions or assumptions,
my artifact was carried out more so to boost my confidence, tell me I was doing
something relevant than with predictions, expectations and results in mind. I
assumed parents attitudes to technology to be informed by their own
experiences, through their work life or whatever, and this would subsequently
affect the exposure of technology to children. I assumed that as curriculums
and school itineraries are progressing and developing to incorporate the use of
technology that parents would too share the vision that technology will play an
important role in their child’s future, professional and personal lives, and is
something they should learn from, through and about.
The results I got from my interview
questions, and natural interactions between parents were surprising in some
ways.
Parents concerns included the unfiltered
nature of the Internet; one parent referred to her younger sister accessing
inappropriate videos through a smartphone, and mentioned the lack of parental
controls as a negative thing.
Conversation progressed to technology designed specifically for
children, mobi-go’s, leap pads and such, and both parents criticized the
devices as unnecessary and expensive. From this I sorta realized the approach
from both parents seemed to be that technology was a convenience incorporated
into their lives, effortlessly, they didn’t see it as a separate entity or
something they had to maintain, but more an integral feature. Kids
technological devices have parental control, specifically educational content
and combat nearly every concern parents voiced, but they were uninterested in
ever purchasing such an unnecessary inefficient, costly product, external from
the convenience of their lives. Both parents expressed the importance and
relevance their smartphones had on their daily lives, their attitudes to kids
technology illustrated the way their personal devices were almost seen as
furniture.
Parents expressed the importance of a
balanced lifestyle for their children; it was something that got mentioned a
lot when asking about their child’s daily routine. They referred to the balance
between educational content or activities and free, unstructured play, they
mentioned regulating the amount of hours spent watching television in
comparison to the amount of hours spent running around or outdoors. The most
expected result, which sort of re-affirmed the motives of my project, was the
mention of how much time children spent playing with technology in comparison
to socializing or advancing social skills. My project seeks to explore
co-operative play as a means of engaging children, parents seemed eager to get
involved at the mention of my project and are interested in the ways
interactive media can be used and manipulated to offer parents a more active
role.
Parents mentioned social skills as more
important for their children at this age than exposure to educational content,
using educational material as a controlled base of content, something taken
from the curriculum, I could look at ways of enhancing social relationships as
a byproduct of engagement, my desired end result.
Piaget mentions symbolic play; a
representation of a childs internalized conceptualization of reality. Pretty
much they copy stuff they see their parents doing to understand it, and
organize it within their heads. Imitation is a kids way of getting to grips
with action or scene, knowing it and understanding it. Children are eager to
replicate things their parents do as a means of impressing and pleasing them,
to get attention, and because they think it’s something they should be doing,
lead by example. Both parents mentioned free play consisting of ‘kitchen’, one
mentioned how her child liked to use her smartphone to play ‘call Daddy’.
Imitation is a way of development and learning, my results back up my primary
research, this will be included in my later artefacts.
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