Designing technology for emergent literacy: The PictoPal initiative

  • Authors:

  • Susan McKenney;Joke Voogt

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Curriculum, Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands;Department of Curriculum, Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Computers & Education
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

PictoPal is the name of a technology-supported intervention designed to foster the development of emergent reading and writing skills in four and five year old children. Following the theoretical underpinnings and a brief description of PictoPal, this article describes how children worked with the technology; how the intervention elicited their engagement with literacy concepts both on the computer and off; and effects on early literacy learning. Observation results indicate that children are able to work independently with the program after a few instruction sessions. Observation data yield insight in the nature of adult guidance and the way the results of computer activities were implemented in off-computer classroom activities, as well as areas where this could be improved. Comparison of the four pre-post test experiments used to assess learning effects, suggest that the on-computer activities in PictoPal can yield a statistically significant learning effect, but only when integration with off-computer activities is present.