The purpose of this research was to study the effects of content delivery through means of fairy tales on children's attention span and their overall level of interest towards computers.
To this end, the research question was structured as follows:
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The purpose of this research was to study the effects of content delivery through means of fairy tales on children's attention span and their overall level of interest towards computers.
To this end, the research question was structured as follows:
Question 1: Depending on the method of PowerPoint presentation, are there differences in children's attention span towards the delivered content?
Question 2: Does the presentation of fairy tales through means of a PowerPoint presentation influence and affect children's interests in computers?
The subjects of this research were 40 students from the "H" Kindergarten in Hong Jeh Dong, Seoul. The group was divided into a test group of 20 students who were presented with fairy tale stories told using PowerPoint, and a comparison group of 20 students who were presented with fairy tale stories delivered using pictures. The research was conducted in four sessions over a span of four weeks, with 15 minutes spent per session.
For sake of objectivity, an emphasis was placed on using fairy tales likely unfamiliar to students in both groups. The four stories used in this research were "The Lion and the Grandfather" (1997) John Burningham's "Hey, Get Off Our Train" (1995)
Annette Tjong's "Baba Baba" (1998) and Kie Nobue's "The Grass Seedling is the Grass' Baby" (1997). For the research, color copies of the stories and a PowerPoint version using spanned pictures were created. The test group was shown the PowerPoint version of the stories, and the comparison group was presented with the picture version using color copies.
The researchers in the delivery of the two presentations were teachers with 8 years' experience, 4 of which were ion early education.
VTR recordings were made as the children listened to these stories, and their attention spans were timed through replay of the recording on a 29" TV screen and measurement using a stopwatch. As well, the aforementioned PowerPoint program was designed taking advantage of the full capacity of computers' multimedia tools in order that children's understanding/nervousness/interest, as reflective of children's overall interest towards computers, could be assessed by observing changes in interest level, In order to gauge changes in level of interest, tests were conducted using "interest measurement sheets" both before and after telling the stories via PowerPoint.
The finding of this research are as follows:
Regarding Question 1 :
In regards to the effects of the method of delivery of fairy tale stories on the attention level of children, it was found that telling these stories using PowerPoint lead to longer attention span as compared to story telling using pictures only.
Regarding Question 2:
Stories using PowerPoint were effective in raising children's interests toward computers.
Based on these findings, it was ascertained that in comparing the effects of story-telling using pictures versus PowerPoint on a subject group of 5-year-olds, the PowerPoint method of delivery had a greater affect in prolonging attention span and that this method had effect on the children's overall level of interests toward computers.