Nursery World - Changing world

While our ideas about computer use by young children continue to change, says John Siraj-Blatchford, they can be introduced to new technology in age-appropriate ways I recently came across a schools advertisement for a Sinclair ZX81 computer and it reminded me how much the focus and the purposes of information and communications technology education have changed over the years along with the technology itself. While the aim of ICT education that we took for granted in the 1960s was for children in schools to ultimately learn to write programmes for computers, by the end of the 1980s the focus had changed to teaching children how to operate them.

I recently came across a schools advertisement for a Sinclair ZX81 computer and it reminded me how much the focus and the purposes of information and communications technology education have changed over the years along with the technology itself. While the aim of ICT education that we took for granted in the 1960s was for children in schools to ultimately learn to write programmes for computers, by the end of the 1980s the focus had changed to teaching children how to operate them.

Today many ICT educators recognise that the technology changes so quickly that even these skills are extremely unlikely to be relevant in an all-too- imminent technological future. It won't be long before even the most modern of today's desktop machines will only be found in museums. Many of us are now much more concerned that children develop the kind of technological literacy that will support them in making informed choices regarding the suitability of different applications in the future.

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