Designing technology for emergent literacy: the PictoPal initiative

McKenney, Susan and Voogt, Joke (2009) Designing technology for emergent literacy: the PictoPal initiative. Computers & Education, 52 (4). pp. 719-729. ISSN 0360-1315

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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.
Item Type:	Article
Copyright:	© 2009 Elsevier Science
Faculty:	Behavioural Sciences (BS)
Research Group:	Curriculum Design and Educational Innovation (C&O)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/67983
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2008.11.013
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