Actions we advocate

· Provide ICT devices to lower income families and communities to meet their needs, rights and improve their quality of lives (Stainton Rogers, 2009). To meet their needs, they are supported to have new experiences. To meet their rights, they have rights to provision of assistance for their well-being, protection from being offended and participation to think about their care. Also, children have rights to find information freely in the form of media that they use (Children’s Commissioner, 2005).This relates to Article Thirteen of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. To improve their quality of lives, they are supported to use ICT.




· Children from both cultures of Māori and Pākehā are supported to use ICT in their lives. This is because the Treaty of Waitangi enabled an agreement between Māori and Pākehā for biculturalism in New Zealand (Duhn, 2008).






· Advocate libraries, zoos, art galleries and museums to provide tablets for young children and set up environments for children’s size.

references:

Duhn, I. (2008). Globalising childhood: Assembling the bicultural child in the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki. International Critical Childhood Policy Studies, 1(1), 82-105.

Stainton Rogers, W. (2009). Promoting better childhoods: Constructions of child concern. In M. Kehily (Ed.). An introduction to childhood studies (2nd ed). (p. 141-160). Maidenhead, United Kingdom: Open University Press-McGraw Hill.

Children’s Commissioner. (2005). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Hui whakatau i te mana o te tamaiti a te whakakotahitanga o nga whenua o te ao. Wellington, New Zealand: Office of the Children’s Commissioner.

changing images

• Becoming a Child Friendly City by UNICEF, New Zealand is a positive initiative for helping and giving our children the full opportunity to thrive and reach great potential (UNICEF New Zealand, 2008).

• The Child Friendly City is at a higher level in which government puts in place strategies to establish a framework to provide the city with activities and practices to benefit our children. This includes funding Libraries and schools to enable them to have ICT devices available for our children to have access to. These initiatives taken by the local government contribute to the children’s rights to be included (UNICEF New Zealand, 2008).

• To encourage the child’s human rights such as having the rights to participate and be an equal citizen of our city. To have access to services and adequate facilities regardless of their individual ethnicity, religion, gender and young or old and so on (UNICEF, 2006).

• ICT are the new face of the future and children should be exposed to them to enhance their learning and encourages the child’s learning to a higher level. Also to allow equal opportunity of participation regardless of the child’s changing image in our society/community and environment (UNICEF New Zealand, 2008).

•  From our survey, the Pacific Island children miss out on the ICT opportunities to learn as they cannot afford to buy devices. However, Friendly City initiatives enable them to participate and be equal citizens of our city.

• The modern communication technology has negative impacts on children's communication skills and literacy development. 

• Children's activities and development are impacted by their use of computers or other ICT devices. The positive and negative influences are as follows:  
• positive effects: develop cognitive skills, narrowing gender gap, 
• negative effects: effects physical well-being, higher risk of obesity, effect on social skills, violent behaviour, increase loneliness and depression, less involve in natural. 

• another way of thinking:   owing to that parents spent a lot of time on ICT devices, their relationships with children get worse. this is another way of considering how ICT devices effect children's quality of life. 

• According to Steiner philosophy, the use of computers and televisions by young children is strongly discouraged. It may take children away from nature and it decrease children's creativity. 

references:

UNICEF, (2006).  A Guide to General Comment 7:  Implementing Child Rights in Early Childhood.  
            Retrieved from

http://bernardvanleer.org/a_guide_to_general_comment_7_implementing_child_rights_in_early_childhood

UNICEF New Zealand, (2008).  About Child Friendly Cities, Aotearoa New Zealand.  Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org.nz/Child-Friendly-Cities/About

Watt, H.J. (2010). How does the use of modern communication technology influence language and literacy development? A review. Contemporary issues in communication science and disorders, 37, 141-148. Retrieved from http://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/asha/publications/cicsd/2010F-Use-of-Modern-Communication-Technology.pdf

Subrahmanyam, K., Kraut, R.E., Greenfield, P.M. & Gross, E.F. (2000). The impact of home computer use on children's activities and development. The future of children: children and computer technology, 10(2), 123-144. Retrieved from https://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/10_02_05.pdf

Education review office. (2007). Early childhood monographs: The quality of education and care in Steiner early childhood services. Retrieved from
            http://www.ero.govt.nz/National-Reports/Early-Childhood-Monographs-The-Quality-of-Education-and-Care-in-Steiner-Early-Childhood-Services-July-2007/The-quality-of-education-in-Steiner-early-childhood-services/Philosophy

Assessment and evaluation of current and city/community practices

Assessment and evaluation

• Under Communication for Development in UNICEF, it clarified that it is importance to both give access to ICT and consider how to control it. If we use it appropriately with proper planning, monitoring and evaluation, there are some benefits. For example, enhance engagement, increase impact, improve information management, lower costs and expand reach (UNICEF, 2013).

•  UNICEF also set up services for using mobile technologies to protect children (Mattila, 2011).

•  The child friendly cities project includes ICT for Social Welfare for children. It reports a strong focus on the importance of professionals and policy-makers engaging with children in social welfare through ICT. ICT can be powerful and a ‘virtual’ child-friendly mechanism to complement ‘actual’ spatial planning and to promote child-friendly cities and communities (Lever, McGimpsey & Geoghegan, 2004).

• The New Zealand council for Education Research suggests that there should be a coordination between city services and early childhood services to support children using ICT (Bolstad, 2004).

• One action under Auckland city council ---in Auckland libraries, there are some kids’ space. In this area, they provide ICT for young children to assess. They also set up laptop and ipad classes for beginners to participate. They have staff members who help children to use ICT devices(Auckland Council, 2013).

references:

 Auckland Council. (2013). Kids’ space. Retrieved from http://www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/EN/kids/Pages/default.aspx

Bolstad, R. (2004). The role and potential of ICT in early childhood education:A review of New Zealand and international literature. Retrieved from http://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/ictinecefinal.pdf

Lever, J. McGimpsey, I & Geoghegan,L. (2004). ICT for Social Welfare: A toolkit for managers. Retrieved from http://childfriendlycities.org/to-learn-more/cfc-tools-and-materials/ict-for-social-welfare-a-toolkit-for-managers/

Mattila, M. (2011). Mobile technologies for child protection. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/cbsc/files/mobile_technologies_for_child_protection.pdf

UNICEF ( 2013). C4D and ICTs. Retrieved from October 7, 2013,                    http://www.unicef.org/cbsc/index_66449.html

Evaluation of our survey

The positive impact of children using ICT:

Help children learn new things

Support children interact with the wider world

Help children keep up with technology

Enhance children’s imagination ability

Help children to concentrate

Help children learn faster

Support children’s thinking skills

The negative impact of children using ICT:

Not good for their eye and health

Children get too involved and become lazy

Children may lost their interests on other things

Decrease children’s creativity

Internet violence

Children from different cultural and family background who have access to ICT:

Children from low income families have limited opportunities to use ICT.

Children have different ways of using ICT, and it is much depends on parents’ expectations.

For instance, some parents want their children to use ICT only because they can have time to do their
own things. 

Most people consider that providing more chances for children to use ICT can improve children's 

quality of life and there should be more public places for children to assess ICT devices. 

This can  benefit children who are from low income family to use ICT devices.

People in public services: 

It is a high responsibility to monitor children to assess ICT devices and it costs to settle and repair these devices. 

It is necessary to have some ICT devices for children from low income families. 

Our survey

Group Project

Group members:  Jenny Jae, Katie Huang, Tupou Ta’ufo’ou, Lihan Liu

Community Questionnaire Survey

(for collecting views, feedback and comments from the Community)

Name:

Date: 

Address/Location: 

           

Ethnicity/Cultural Background: 

Questions:

1.         Do you agree in children using ICT devices?

2.         What are some positive affects for children using ICT?  What is that?   Why?

3.         What are some negative affects for children using ICT?  What is that?  Why ?

4.         Do you think there are differences in the ways children use ICT devices if they are from different cultural background?

5.         What kind of ICT devices would be useful for children?

6.         Do you think there should be more ICT devices in  public places? 

7.         Do you think children's quality of life can be improved by providing more ICT devices?     

Our action plan

Action plan

Group member : Jenny Jae,  Katie Huang,  Tupou Ta’ufo’ou,  Lihan Liu

Topic: children using ICT

Goal: to find out if children should use ICT

Rationale: children are exposed to ICT such as computers, laptops, mobile phones and internet in their daily lives. However, some people consider ICT is not suit-able for children to assess.

How to achieve: three parts

Part one: data collection

Part two: research

Part three: conclusion and evaluation

Part one: Data collection

Method: question sheet 5-8 questions

Place:

Apple store

Reason: Apple store sells technological products such as iMac, MacBook, iPad, iPhone and we want to hear from some sellers’ points of view

Families, friends who have children at home and some child care centres

Reason: these people participate in children’s lives and they may know how high technology effect children’s lives.

Public services

Reason: there are some public places where they provide ICT devices for children, such as libraries, museums.

Example:

1, do you agree in children using high technology?

2, what are some positive effects for children using technology? What is that? why?

3, what are some negative effects for children using technology? What is that? Why ?

4. would you recommend children to use high technology?

5, do you think there are differences in the ways children use high technology if they have different cultural background or family background?

6, how important is it for children to use high technology?

7, what kinds of high technology would be useful for children?

8, if you agree them to use it, how often you recommend?

Part two: research

After we collect answers and analysis data, we begin to research on what we find and also what we think about children using high technology.

Research method : websites and books

Part three : conclusion and evaluation

We are going to write a conclusion about:

What did we find? what do we think about what we researched? did we achieve the goal? Should children use high technology or not? How often for children to use if reasonable? How about in other cultural background? Do people in other countries have different points of views? How can we do better next time?

Then complete the evaluation sheet.

NOTE: the action plan may be changed depending on the real situation. 

ICT linking to Te Whāriki

Linking ICT to Te Whāriki curriculum

Relationships

The learning environment helps children to understand the world if interesting play resources are given to them.

Exploration

For essential skills, children give and receive information with purpose and confidence. They develop abilities to ask questions and process information as they use media as resources.

For essential learning areas, children use a variety of technologies to explore the world.

In relation to goal three, children develop their abilities to identify and use information from many sources. As they use creative and expressive media and technologies, they are more likely to find discoveries.

Communication

For essential skills, children are more likely to share ideas by listening, speaking and using visual languages. Also, they are able to identify and understand different kinds of information.

For essential learning areas, children have experiences in using communication technologies such as computers.

In relation to goal two, children develop their verbal communication skills to identify information and solve problems.

In relation to goal three, children learn about stories and symbols of different cultures. They also have experiences with technology for literacy and mathematics.

Contribution

For essential skills, children show ideas, feelings and information in different social contexts. They develop understanding of other people’s points of view.

For essential learning areas, more experience in solving problems together enables children to understand how technologies can help them and others.

Belonging

For essential skills, children develop their confidence in understanding their family and community. They begin to process information about their own group and recognise different points of view.

For essential learning areas, using many materials for different reasons allows children to realise that different technologies may be used in various places and settings.

Well-being

For essential skills, children gain confidence in expressing thoughts and feelings. They know more information about safe routines and behaviours.

For essential learning areas, using technology to solve practical problems leads towards self-confidence and well-being.

Reference:

Ministry of Education. (1996). Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa. Early Childhood Curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media.