The purpose of this study was to examine the online activities of preschoolers, to compare the awareness of parents and teachers about their use of the Internet and ultimately to suggest what should be noted in the use of the Internet by preschoolers....
The purpose of this study was to examine the online activities of preschoolers, to compare the awareness of parents and teachers about their use of the Internet and ultimately to suggest what should be noted in the use of the Internet by preschoolers.
The subjects in this study were early childhood teachers in public and private kindergartens and private daycare centers and parents with preschoolers of Western age 3 to 5 in the city of Changwon, on whom a survey was conducted.
The major findings of the study were as follows:
First, as for the state of Internet use by preschoolers at home, the rate of the preschool children who used the computer stood at 81.0 percent, which was a high percentage. 47.7 percent took a stand against computer use by preschoolers, which outnumbered the others who didn't(35.9%). Concerning the right age for computer use, the largest group(29.1%) considered it advisable for preschoolers to start using the computer at the age of 7, and another biggest group(29.1%) believed that they should do that at the age of 8.
In relation to weekly frequency of computer use, the largest group answered that their children used computer for two or three days a week. Concerning the length of time for computer use, the biggest number of the children spent 30 minutes to an hour at a time, and the children mainly logged onto Naver or Yahoo Ggureoki to play games or engage in play.
Second, in regard to the awareness of the early childhood teachers and parents about computer use by the preschoolers, the early childhood teachers took a more favorable view of it. As for in which part they wanted the Internet and computer to be helpful to preschoolers, both of the teachers and parents wanted the Internet and computer to be of use for their English learning. But the teachers expected them to more benefit from contents such as fairy tales or children's songs, whereas the parents wanted that the Internet and computer would be of greater use for their children's Hangul or arithmetic learning.
As to the usefulness of the computer for early childhood education, both of the teachers and parents found it to be of help.
Concerning how much parents tried to let their children make the right use of the Internet and computer, the early childhood teachers thought parents made less efforts than the parents thought they did.
Regarding the benefits of computer use, many of the early childhood teachers and parents replied that the preschoolers improved in computer literacy and had a good time by themselves. In relation to the disadvantage of computer use, the early childhood teachers felt there were more problems with their computer use than the parents did. For instance, the preschoolers just wanted to be on the computer all the time, spent less time getting along with their friends and went to bed late, and the former pointed out those problems more than the latter.