2. “Mummy on the phone...”

These toddlers are taking turns to talk to Y's mummy by using the centre’s cordless phone. Last week an 18month year old girl was in the process of transitioning from home to our centre. Every day she cries when her parents drop her and her four years old brother to the centre. This morning, Y was crying when her mother drops her off to school. Teachers have been giving her toys, different activities, and strategies to calm Y but it seems like it is not working at all. Our centre manager comes along and suggests how about if we can call up her mother for Y to talk to her to see if it might help. S, I gave Y the phone and automatically she stops crying when she hears her mummy’s voice on the phone. It has recognized that “communication and collaboration, metacognition and creativity as three areas of young children’s learning that can be supported through engagement with ICT” (cited in Stephen and Plowman (2008. p. 638). After Y talking to her mother on the phone she plays and interacted well with everyone and more happy throughout the day. Te Whāriki emphasized in strand one of well being that “children will develop trust that their emotional needs will be responded” (Ministry of Education [MoE], 1996, p. 50). 

Continuing on Y’s exploration of learning and development in technology she goes on to develop working alongside her other peers and reciprocal skills such as offering and taking turns (MoE, 1996. p. 74) of using the telephone. The next child named M came along to Y and asked to have a turn. I told M to asked Y when she finish she can have a turn. When M asking Y to have a turn, Y told her mother on the phone that M wanted to talked. Y continues talking to her mother joyfully knowing that her needs are met and she’s confident to be surrounded with new people. Suddenly S came along wanting to have a turn as well. Straight away without asking from S to Y to have a turn but Y gave the phone to her.

Observing these toddlers learning and development through using the telephone to communicate with their parents has encouraged us teachers to be involved more with technology such as phones, texting, emailing, photocopies, and so on in to children’s daily routine. The National Association for the Education of Children (1996) cited in Lee, Hatherly, and Ramsey (2002) suggested that “technology should support daily learning activities” (p. 15). It has been a new change in our centre ever since last week to allow children to contact their parents just for a few minutes only when they are in the process of transition and when children are upset or missing their parents. They are allowed to speak to their parents not more than five minutes. In order to enhance children’s encounters with ICT in our centre, teachers and staffs have to “plan for the whole group and for individuals, select and provide appropriate resources, arrange the physical environment of the playroom and organize staff resources in an appropriate way (Stephen and Plowman (2008. p. 648).

Technology has impacted our centre’s daily routine and also our children’s learning and development at school. It helps minimise the gap of children’s transition into early childhood and having their parents absent from their presence. Tsantis, Cynthia and Thouvenelle (2003) believe that “It is the teacher’s knowledge and skill about how to use the technology that makes the difference, not the technology itself” (p. 4). For examples if the teacher had a lack of knowledge and understanding about how to use a telephone and he or she transferred the way how a phone was meant to work in another way like as a cooking utensil for example then the child/children would have no real learning understanding and development about what a phone is and how it is used and what it’s for. So the learning of the children will come from the teacher’s knowledge and understanding of technology.