TABI is a different, integral and quality ICT Project

Eurocase Education, along with Education Sciences Licentiate Susan De Angelis was elected to participate in Edulearn15, 7^th International Conference in Education and New Technology, with an article about the TABI Case as a model for technology incorporation in Early Education.

“The profound design of apps and educative proposals for children between 2 and 6 based on digital tablets: the TABI Case” is the title of the article De Angelis will put forward before educators from all around the world this July 6^th in the city of Barcelona.

“This Congress –she explains- nucleates the most important educative innovations and tries to tie the world of the production of educative technology with the world of the school. It is an excellent opportunity for schools to come in contact with the novelties and how they are being applied in different places and levels around the world. And the TABI Case is a great example”.

Next, De Angelis exclusively shares the principles of her research.

What were the motives that made you participate in Edulearn15?

-In the world of educative technology, each time with more vigor, a great deal of apps with an “educative” appearance are being developed but they can hardly be integrated to the pedagogical proposals of the teachers, given they are made by professional teams with no teachers. The work we have been developing since last year with my colleague, the licentiate Cristina Rodrígues, and other educators of young children in the TABI Project is, precisely, the opposite and that is what I tried to share in Edulearn.

What new outlook does this Project give to the debate of digital education?

-It seeks to share two points that the research of tablet usage in Early Education schools already reveal as crucial: the importance of both the quality of the digital material (apps) and the type of teacher intervention that organizes the children’s work. Some pedagogues, from an applying point of view we do not share and dismissing the formative character of the game’s characteristics, understand that the problem with the educative use of apps is solved by selecting the app that adjusts to a didactical proposal without discussing the intrinsical formative value each app has in particular.

Not every content presented as educative is so in reality?

-No. The quality of the materials is a fundamental aspect that intervenes in the learning quality of the kids. The market is saturated with products categorized as educative and destined to children below 6 years old, but the educative label does not indicate its genuine potential to cause learning.

What are the differential characteristics of TABI to educate kids between 2 and 6 years old?

-The most interesting thing and what makes TABI stand out from other tablets that develop educative apps is that it has an integral character, and so it also seeks to contain, help and inspire Early Education teachers in their creative process of designing didactical proposals enriched with technology.

How would you describe the TABI Project?

-It is a Project that parts for the development of a digital device that is highly intuitive, portable, unbreakable and harmless, specifically developed to be used in early ages. It has an kid-friendly interface from which children can quickly open selected apps and/or specifically created for them without the need to necessarily access the internet and a parental control for the adult from which it is possible to regulate the time of use, access to the web and incorporate it to the child’s world as they consider convenient. TABI is as ideal for the family context as it is for the school. In the kindergartens, its use is favoured by a group of apps of our own elaboration that seek to offer new roads to teach traditional subjects (as it can be Environment), or novelty topics not yet explored in the level or that tend to be “forgotten” in teacher plans (like sciences). We are also developing more instrumental and tool-like apps, with easy commands to be used by young children. Finally, we are exploring the possibilities of serious games for teaching values and augmented reality to potentiate the tridimensional exploration.

How was the interdisciplinary work that enriched Project TABI?

-In TABI we work in an interdisciplinary team with engineers, graphic designers, animators, pedagogues, educative technologists, educators, artists, musicians and disciplinary specialists. It is an interesting job and with lots to learn, since each one of us bring their own perspective and experience to this design process: The educators, we put how children learn in early stages, which are their needs and interests, what and how to teach in kindergartens, how we would like them to be taught; the content developers carefully watch the validity, quality and upgrading of those contents in the apps; the engineers and technologists collaborate with the input of dynamics and formats, as well as quality implementation; the graphic designers help us communicate all that in a graphic format, etc… Sometimes it is very fun to discover we use the same names for very different things. In that diversity we are bonded by the love for what we do and the confidence of working in a project that is worth it.

What is the benefit of teaching and learning with technology in Early Education levels?

-From the teaching point of view, all innovation is an opportunity to rethink the practice, to look at it with renovated eyes and so to commit to a creative enhancement.
 

Specifically with innovations linked to technologies, they open the door to contents situated far away in place and time, to the possibility of adopting a new point of view of the daily situations, to visualize complex or dangerous processes, to create a new type of proposals unimagined till then.

Applied properly, the technology enables building a bridge between the children of today, digital natives, and the adults that aspire to teach them the first steps in this world of constant change.

*Susan De Angelis is a Early Education teacher, Licentiate in Education, Researcher and Professor in the University of Buenos Aires.