CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

This study reports on the negative effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) within Early Childhood Education (ECE). Traditionally the bulk of the literature pertaining to ICT was predominantly focused on the compulsory sector, with any reference to early childhood education reporting on debates surrounding the pros and cons of young children’s use of computers.Negative Influence

The purpose of this paper is to question the impact of computer technology on children and to offer solutions to deal with the situation. This is a systematic study to understand how computer use affects children’s development, and discover the help to parents, teachers, and policymakers refine and adopt guidelines that maximize the positive effects and minimize the negative effects of computers in the lives of the children. The introduction of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in schools has no doubt been marked as a remarkable step that will contribute to knowledge production, communication and information sharing among students and teachers in the school system. In the right purpose, the introduction of ICT into the educational system has the following objectives:

To make all the students computer literate at all levels of educational system, To create a critical manpower well of highly skilled ICT professionals, engineers, scientists, technicians and software developers to support a vibrant ICT world, To provide career opportunities for most talented children and others to participate in ICT knowledge era, To improve the administration and management of academic institutions through the effective use of ICT tools in their day-to-day activities.Negative Influence

As the children develop great interest in computers we need to assess its impact both positively and negatively on their development at a point in time. Over the years now, a good number of homes have added electronic games, home computers and internet to other technologies like television and stereo systems that takes most of the time of children.Negative Influence

For many years ICT have been judged for their potentially negative influence on the child. Often, worries about the usage of ICT are concerned with the question ‘how early exposing of the child to the ICT influences its general development’. Experts like Kirkorian, Wartella and Anderson (2009) points that the children learn more from real-life experiences than from the ones given by ICT, especially if the content is not so suitable for the children. The debate about the technology’s influence on the child’s development has long ago exceeded the borders of academic circle and became public. Plowman, McPake and Stephen (2008) have found out that even the general public thinks that the usage of ICT is dangerous for the child, and that its creative potential is being more and more overlooked. But where hide the reasons for such thinking? The major argument of all studies, which stress the negative sides of ICT is that the children in early stages of development are the most susceptible and because of that also very vulnerable. In one of their studies Plowman, McPake and Stephen (2010) divided the dangers and disadvantages of ICT usage into three major categories. The first category includes dangers and disadvantaged of ICT usage for the child’s socio-cultural development. The writers found out that ICT supposedly endangers the child’s social development, because children spend less time playing with their peers and are mostly isolated; ICT is supposedly to offer virtual experiences from “the second hand” and not realistic experiences from “the first hand”; besides that the marketing of ICT is in our society very intense and prays on vulnerable children, which represent the biggest part of its target group. The second category includes the dangers and disadvantages of ICT usage for the child’s cognitive development. ICT is supposedly to endanger the child’s intellectual development, the development of imagination (it stimulates passivity and not activity), and the development of language (lack of communication with peers). The last category includes dangers and disadvantages of ICT usage for the child’s wellbeing.Negative Influence