Posts Tagged short attention spans
The Big Gap – Online Educational Games For Kids
In our quest to find online educational games and learning activities for kids in kindergarten, preschool and first grades, we did a detailed study to see how well they fulfill parental expectations and needs. Our findings show significant gaps, indicating challenges and new opportunities for online educational websites for kids.
What do parents actually want?
Earlier surveys have shown that parents generally want their children to get used to computers at a young age, but not get addicted to the same. Parents expect children’s websites to be informational, easy to use, and suitable for kids of varying ages. They look for games and activities that teach the kids the essential concepts of early childhood education, such as, numbers, alphabets, phonics, analytical skills etc. They also look for online stories, rhymes and other entertaining content. Studies have shown it to be highly effective, if the kids are taught in a subtle and entertaining manner, without giving them a burdened feeling that they need to learn. Such a fun learning approach goes a long way in addressing their short attention spans, and it is quite effective in motivating kids to learn.
Of course, in today’s scenario, most parents are busy and find little time to sit along with their kids in front of the computer on a regular basis. Educational websites for kids need to be well designed for easy kid-friendly usage, and have the ability to engage young kids without the parents necessarily having to babysit them all the time.
What do most educational web sites offer?
To our surprise, our research showed that most kids education web sites fail to meet the above, rather basic expectations. We found a large number of websites offering online educational games, activities and content in a highly unorganized manner without any standardization. Each site had its own content and navigational structure, requiring kids to read and understand instructions on the screen, making it mandatory for an adult to help and supervise. Typically, most games are not age specific and unintuitive in their design. Large number of games relied on kid’s hand-eye coordination, and did nothing in terms of helping them learn a new concept.
Even the more education-oriented websites, actually do not ‘teach’ or explain concepts to the kids. They pose questions in a game format that mainly ‘test’ what the kids already know. Teaching requires audio-visual content that explain the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of each topic in an age-specific manner. This is one of the biggest shortcomings of most of the web sites for early childhood education.
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Learning Programs For Early Childhood
When you have children in your house who are not yet old enough to join regular school but definitely have the capability of acquiring some knowledge, one of the best things that you can do to help your child and yourself is to enroll him into an early childhood learning program.
These programs are obviously helpful for your child and also ensure that you get a break from the screaming, jumping, running and endless banter. Don’t feel guilty about doing this because the early childhood learning programs are much needed by your child himself.
We tend to underestimate the capabilities of our children and do not realize that they have they have a much higher learning and grasping potential than what we can imagine. What we need to ensure is that we choose the right program that uses appropriate and apt skills to educate your child and ease him into the subsequent regime of curriculum and structured learning.
By opting for an early childhood program, you shall actually be doing your child a favor. With growing competition, anything that provides a head start to your child is an asset. These programs have the ability to act as initiation programs for your child to adjust easily when he starts going to regular school.
This is quite beneficial since a large number of kids take a long time to adjust and get accustomed to the large number of other kids that they encounter when they start school. Short attention spans do not allow them to immediately adapt to a teacher explaining concepts and ideas to them.
An early learning program is more fun then a specified curriculum and therefore acclimatizes the child, preparing him for what the future holds for him. It also helps the child in being able to pick things faster in a formal system when he joins one.
If you are anxious about letting your child go to an early childhood program, then you could consider the numerous choices available on the Internet. Cyberspace has a plethora of options for early childhood learning programs that use games and fun stuff while teaching the child about many things. The methods are so well defined and skillful that the child does not actually realize that while playing a game, he is learning along the way.
Even if you are looking at enrolling your child in a program where he can interact with other kids, try getting onto the net to start with and check out the various options that are available in your area or locality.
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