My daughter (nearly 4 years old) has grown up with a father who is glued to technology for ridiculous amounts of time each day – be this a desktop, laptop, iPod, mobile phone, digital camera, web camera, or myriad of different software packages and operating systems.  Not surprisingly she has developed an acute interest in exploring these technologies herself.  Over time we’ve begun to look at a variety of different things together; some of which she’s found interesting, some of which not.

NOTE: Her recreational activities and learning experiences certainly don’t all involve technology mind you – nor should they – but for the purposes of this post, they’re considered out of scope.

Fairly early on though I realised that I was trying to lead the way – through instruction – and she was clearly not interested in that.  She wanted to explore and experiment.  So we began to afford more and more control and opportunities to her to do so.  Our role now – at least in this area – is to act as a reference guide and model use; act as collaborator, photographic subject, suggester of ideas, or co-learner, and only rarely to provide instruction.  Given the online nature of much of her exploration, the role of safety filter is there as well, but so far it hasn’t been necessary.

Digital Cameras and Mobile Technology

We’ve given her one of our old digital cameras and she’s been experimenting with photography.   This typically leads to experiments with downloading and processing the images on the computer, and printing them. Many of these photographs also end up being used in self-motivated craft projects, where they’re incorporated into a wider artistic creations.

Her use of mobile technology so far has revolved around the iPod, and has ranged from viewing videos, to listening to music, and with the arrival of an iPod touch, the use of software and games.  These include basic strategic games like Tic-Tac-To and Connect Four; drawing and colouring programs; and to a lesser degree geographic-spatial programs like the Sydney Traffic web-cameras and Google Earth (though her interest in the latter is fairly minor at this stage).  She is also aware of the fact we can download and install additional programs through the iPod.

Personal Computer

The main area of her technological experimentation so far – and the area she’s excelling in – is on the personal computer.  While there were basic concepts we worked through together initially, such as using the left mouse button instead of the right, and how you sometimes need to click, hold and drag the mouse to move things around – she’s learned largely learned through self-motivated exploration, and observation.

The number of programs and websites currently in use are many and growing, but there are several worth noting.  These span a range of communicative, creative, visual and cognitive activities:

Communication

• Skype, MSN – Synchronous video communication with Grandparents and me at work
• Seesmic – Asynchronous video communication with me at work and her peers
• Gmail – she can’t write yet but understands the concept of email and its purpose as a communicative medium

Creative

• Tux Paint – open source drawing and painting program for children
• Photo Booth – Apple image/video capture program with filters for image distortion/manipulation

Visual

• QuickTime, VLC – Local/offline video viewing
• YouTube, TeacherTube – online streaming video viewing

Cognitive

• History Explorers – educational game where players navigate through history to gather artifacts
• SesameStreet.org – educational games and videos
• PBS.org – educational games and videos

Developing a PLE
In the interests of affording her even more opportunities for empowerment and exploration I’ve begun to experiment with the design and development of a customised environment.  This is also borne out of the fact much of the initial access of programs and websites does not appear to be clear to her at this stage.

While this project is still in the early stages, the notion is to rely heavily on desktop icons and recognised gateways to provide easy access to her desired activities.  If her computer profile does not require a login, she would ideally be able to click on the icon associated with her name, login to the system, and then use the icons to immediately engage in the exploratory process.

Through use of recent innovations like Prism and/or Google Chrome in particular, I will also be able to quickly create web site specific links that can be added to the desktop.  Clicking on these icons then loads the browser and takes the user directly to that specific page.

Once logged into familiar sites she is already able to proficiently navigate around.  For example, she’s discovered that the related clips option on sites like YouTube and SesameStreet.org enable her to view similar subject matter.  She’s therefore able to explore an entire series of video clips without having to ask me to perform a text-based search for her.  This has led to her ability to articulate with greater detail the nature of what she would like to watch, since she has grown accustomed to using thumbnails as an indicator of content.

Use of menu navigation icons on many children’s websites is a fairly standard activity as well, so she’s able to navigate across sections – from video clips to games to stories for example – and not just within individual sections.

The Platform
I am currently investigating a Linux Distribution known as gOS as the potential base platform for Maddie’s PLE.  The OS is designed with web-based usage in mind and features a launchpad very similar to the Dock found on the Mac platform.  This enables commonly used programs to be set aside from those included on the main desktop, thus theoretically providing easier access.  The OS also supports embeddable Google Widgets, which could provide access to additional dynamic and/or interactive functionality.

The additional benefit of an open source platform lay in the access to many free educational programs through the central repositories.  We will be able to browse through a list of available software and very quickly download and install it.

The primary drawback of a Linux-based distro at this stage is the fact my web camera won’t work on them as the drivers aren’t recognised by the system.  Given the regular usage of video-based communication tools like Skype, Seesmic and MSN, this may pose a problem in the long term.  The machine is currently dual-booted with Windows XP however, so we’ll try similar set-ups on both platforms and see which she prefers.