Recently, I was invited to participate in a small preschool education salon and exchanged ideas with more than 10 education colleagues on the topic of "digitalization of preschool education".
At the salon, I shared the far-reaching significance and value of the digitalization of preschool education, and analyzed the three major values of preschool education digitalization: (1) building a national brand of preschool education. (2) Unleash the child's nature. (3) Improve the overall quality of kindergarten teachers.
The following is the detailed content I shared, which I hope can play a role in throwing bricks and stones.
Build a national brand of preschool education
After 12 years of working in basic education, I have found that many kindergartens and pre-school institutions adopt educational theories and curriculum systems such as Froebel and Montessori. It is true that the research and practice of preschool education in European and American countries are much earlier than ours, and their scientific educational theories and curriculum systems play a good reference and reference role in the development of preschool education in China.
However, we must also be soberly aware that there are obvious differences between the cultural traditions and values of China and the West, and it is inevitable that there will be various "adaptations". In particular, we have more than 40 million preschoolers, and we cannot simply "take it" for the sake of convenience. We should concentrate on studying our own preschool education theory and curriculum system.
Some people may say that European and American countries have been studying preschool education for more than 100 years, and its theories and curricula are the result of wisdom accumulated over the years. However, we have not studied preschool education for a long time, and it is very difficult to create our own preschool education theory and curriculum system.
Yes, if we continue to follow the traditional research path, it will be difficult for us to make breakthroughs. But now that we have entered the digital age, there have been significant changes in teaching methods, educational technology, and educational environments (including schools, online schools, educational platforms, and families). What's more, children in preschool education have also undergone a lot of changes compared to before, they are born in the digital age, and what adults think of as high-tech (including AI, AR, MR) is something they take for granted and take for granted.
In such a context, preschool education must make changes and innovations. In the digital education track, we are standing on the same starting line with European and American countries, and we have held the "World Digital Education Conference" for 4 consecutive years.
For example, in the past 100 years, European and American automobile companies have controlled the core technology, industry standards and absolute market discourse power of fuel vehicles. With the advent of the era of electric vehicles, China's new energy vehicles have risen collectively, with many independent research and development of battery technology, motor technology and electronic control system, which is gradually changing the pattern of the world. In the top 10 of the global new energy vehicle sales list in 2023, China's auto brands occupy 5 positions.
Unleash the nature of children
In recent years, due to the needs of my work, I have had face-to-face communication with many kindergarten teachers and parents of young children**. I find it a worrying phenomenon: the results we expect from preschool education are often "at odds with the way we adopt preschool education".
This is not alarmist, to cite a few examples: 1. We want to nurture children's curiosity, but we often ask children to sit quietly in the classroom and listen to the lectures, rather than leading them out into nature**. 2. We want to nurture children's creativity, but we often use a "cramming" approach to provide children with "standard answers", rather than encouraging children to imagine boldly and express bravely. 3. We want children to be physically and mentally healthy and physically fit, but we often "cannibalize" children's time to play freely and run happily with advanced learning tasks.
Personally, I believe that the core of preschool education is: respecting children's nature and releasing children's nature. It seems like a simple thing, why can't many of our kindergartens do it? The subjective reason is that some educators and parents are too utilitarian and "pull out the seedlings to help them grow". The objective reason is that it is limited by space, venue, facilities and equipment. Especially in the kindergarten in the city, surrounded by high-rise buildings, busy traffic, it is indeed difficult to organize children to the green mountains and green waters, birds and flowers in the nature, even the outdoor sports venue is also stretched.
To address these challenges, many kindergartens and pre-school institutions are innovating and using digital and immersive technologies to create digital, borderless learning spaces. With the help of digital technology and immersive technology, children can interact with animals and plants in the natural scene of blue sea and blue sky. It can be immersed in the virtual science education scene; You can learn the knowledge of escape and self-rescue in the three-dimensional realistic safety education scene; You can run and exercise freely in interactive and interesting physical fitness training scenes.
There are many similar digital innovations in preschool education in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places, and these digital and borderless learning spaces not only allow us to see the unique advantages of digital technology in unleashing children's nature, but also let us clearly see the trend and prospect of preschool education digitalization.
Improve the overall quality of kindergarten teachers
I've heard the saying that you have to have a bucket of water to give someone a glass of water.
I think this passage is a fitting motto for teachers. Especially in the field of preschool education, the comprehensive quality of kindergarten teachers determines the overall level of preschool education to a certain extent.
The improvement of the comprehensive quality of kindergarten teachers is not an overnight thing, and it requires persistent training, further study and assessment. It is also necessary to provide kindergarten teachers with high-quality teaching toys, corners, function rooms and advanced intelligent educational equipment to help kindergarten teachers carry out colorful gamified teaching.
According to the education digitalization strategy issued by the education authorities, the focus of the next few years should be to help teachers master and use digital resource platforms, digital teaching equipment and digital learning spaces to carry out education and teaching activities.
We have every reason to believe that with the help of digital technology, the digital awareness, digital technology knowledge and skills of our kindergarten teachers will be further improved, and the overall level of our preschool education will also be improved.
To sum up, the digitalization of preschool education has far-reaching significance and value. Of course, the digitalization of preschool education is a challenging system engineering, which requires not only education professionals, but also professionals in many subdivisions such as digital technology, software development, and content creation to collaborate and innovate in order to gradually realize the values mentioned above.