Keywords

1 Introduction

In politics, society and science prevails that preschool education has a high priority [1, 2]. There is broad agreement that it is necessary to improve the quality of educational processes in kindergartens, but how this can be implemented is less the subject. Normative proposals are made, but there are generally less practical offers for systematic preschool education programs. In Germany, some institutions place more emphasis on the emergent literacy or other school-related skills and other institutions focuses more on the general education. In the kindergarten laws of the federal states of Germany, a central goal of preschool education is to support children in linguistic abilities and create equal opportunities for all children. Some federal states such as Bavaria use scientific tests and training programs to promote preschool competences (e.g. [3, 4]). But this approach is rather an exception and is less practiced in other federal states in Germany. Across borders of Germany, the states are implementing different forms of preschool education. Countries such as Great Britain or Finland attach great importance to preschool education, which is organised in day-care centres and schools and offers children and their families a systematic education and instruction [5, 6]. Other European countries like Germany or Poland focus more in their preschool education on the promotion of social skills or self-employment and less on school-related skills such as emergent literacy or mathematical competencies.

Tablet computers and their possibility of app-based learning provide kindergarten and day-care centres with the opportunity to create a systematic preschool education for all children. Tablet computers seem to have the capability to influence cognitive or social skills positively. Potential positive effects of computer use by children include enhanced cognitive development and school achievement, reduced barriers to social interaction, enhanced fine motor skills and visual processing. Potentially negative effects are more likely to be found in later childhood and adolescence, with the risk of child safety, inadequate content, violence, and bullying. Other negative influences are also to be observed in the early childhood, such as, sleeplessness, displacement of physical activity, as well as muscular problems [7]. But taking into account the knowledge about the negative influences, a tablet-based training program with the aim to support school relevant skills in preschool age offers the possibility for all children to participate in a standardized development program, which is inspirational, playful and matched to the individual level of development. In addition, a tablet-based training program provides the opportunity for all preschool children to acquire rudimentary skills in dealing with new media. The children would get to know the tablet as a learning medium as early as in kindergarten.

2 Emergent Literacy and Quantity-Number Competencies in Preschool Education

Children have a lot of experience language and numbers before they are going into school. Already the time before school entrance appears to be an important developmental stage for children, which can be co-determining for the success in school [8]. It is generally accepted that these early experiences are important for the subsequent school success in reading, writing and spelling. Several studies emphasize the importance of phonological awareness and quantity-number competencies for predicting later school achievement in literacy and mathematics [8,9,10,11].

Emergent Literacy

The term emergent literacy describes the developmental process of reading and writing in childhood. It means that children do not start with the reading and writing process at the beginning of school, rather the roots will already be laid in the preschool age [12, 13]. The precursor abilities of reading and writing are summarized under the concept of phonological awareness. The phonological awareness refers to the ability of a child to gain insight into the phonetic structure of the language [4, 11]. Phonological awareness describes an understanding of syllables, onsets, phonemes and rhymes. Children between 3 and 4 years are able to determine the number of syllables of a word and are interested in rhymes [14]. After this, they are able to identify different units of syllables. At the age of 4 and 5 years children indicate rhymes and onsets in words [15]. The development of phonological awareness is an ongoing process that begins early in childhood. Children benefit from an active promotion of awareness for language already before school start and so the phonological awareness could be found as a predictor of later reading success in various research [11, 16, 17]. In addition, the combination of training of phonological awareness and letter knowledge turned out to be particularly effective [16]. Literacy skills are also positively influenced through home literacy environment like story book reading or writing with parents [18]. The exploration of digital tools has also a positive influence on emergent literacy skills [18, 19]. For example, E-books can foster word recognition and writing [20] and phonological awareness [21].

Phonological awareness is the foundation of learning to read and also it has long-term effects on children’s success in school. And as such, a tablet-based learning concept with a playful environment while learning has the potential to promote these competences even more effectively.

Quantity-Number Competencies

Many people believe that math is about numbers. But there is more to understand for children behind the numbers: the quantities [10]. The competence to understand numerical quantities develops early in life [10, 22]. Infants after birth are able to distinguish a set of two objects from a set of three objects [23]. They have a small set of quantity-number competence, which is expanded, when infants become toddlers. By the age of 4 years, children have two schemas: one for quantity comparison and another for counting and at the age of 5 or 6, they connect both schemas together. These conceptual structures provide the basis for all higher-level mathematics learning [10]. The formation of early mathematical competences seems to depend not only on the general cognitive development but also on the educational environment of the children. Children who living in low-income communities showed less advanced mathematical abilities as children of higher-income communities [24]. These differences in children’s early quantity-number competencies have long term implications for their school success [10, 25].

Children benefit above all in their mathematical skills in preschool age from the support of three basic abilities: combining number and quantity, counting and knowledge about the symbolic representation of numbers. The Number Sense intervention from Griffin, Case and Siegler [24] could show that a well-designed program is able to support mathematical competencies.

The early promotion of phonological and letter awareness as well as of numbers and quantities can bring a decisive advantage in learning in school and thus tablet-based learning should be an effective tool inside a comprehensive preschool education.

3 Media Literacy in Preschool Education

Media are involved in processes of permanent dynamic change in different areas of society. In a mediatised society, it is therefore indispensable to deal with media competently and to promote media literacy.

Development of Media Literacy in Childhood

However, since children are not competent media users from the beginning, over the course of their development, they acquire an ever more differentiated competence for the understanding and active use of media. The development towards a competent media user is continuous and is determined by a large number of dimensions. Some dimensions are determined by natural maturation processes and develop more universally in mediated societies than others. Some basic dimensions in the handling of media develop parallel to cognitive maturity and other dimensions are more strongly characterized by individual experiences and learning processes. For example, children have to learn the functions and objectives of different media offerings through external instructions (e.g. the intentions of advertising) but they are able to understand the representational function of pictures [26] without any instruction.

Media Literacy represents a coherent network of skills and knowledge, which firstly changes as a result of cognitive maturity in the course of development and secondly which can be actively influenced by experience and instruction.

Media Literacy – Development of Skills and Knowledge Structures

Media literacy expands the literacy concept by the media aspect and describes how to deal with media and understand media on different dimensions [27]. According to Potter, different skills have to be developed when dealing with media. These skills are increasingly evolved during the developmental process on the basis of cognitive maturation, experience in handling media and explanations. The aim of media literacy lies on “adapting to our new world by being skilled at assessing the meaning in any kind of messages, organizing that meaning so that it is useful, and then constructing messages to convey that meaning to others” [27, p. 15]. In order to deal adequately with news and information in all media forms, people have to develop different skills. Potter describes these skills in building blocks, which enables people to develop “a set of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the mass media to interpret the meaning of the messages we encounter” [27, p. 22]. Children have to build out three building blocks of media literacy: personal locus, knowledge structures and skills. The skills represent the prerequisites for building knowledge structures. Subskills of media literacy are the capability to analyse, evaluate, to inductive and deductive thinking as well as to synthesis and abstractive thinking and are prerequisites for knowledge structures and personal locus. The knowledge structures are formed in the fields of media effects, media content, the media industry, the real world and their own self in the media environment. And the personal locus includes the individual motivation of the media user to deal with the content, functions, intentions [27].

Media Literacy Programs in Preschool

The concept of media literacy is much discussed and implemented very differently in various countries such as the preschool education in the linguistic and mathematical field in general. Media education has a high priority in schools and preschools in countries like Canada, Great Britain or Australia by integrating media education into the school curriculum. In most countries as well as in Germany, media literacy is regarded as particularly important for children and adolescence, but there is a lack of concrete implementation in school and preschool. In Germany, media-educational projects such as the creation of films, school newspapers or school radio are sometimes available as full-day care services after school. For the children in preschool age there are less programs for the promotion of media literacy. Besides the programs for media education in Canada, Great Britain or Australia there are currently in these countries also less systematic training programs for media literacy.

In most mediatised societies, preschool education and media literacy represent a central societal tasks. How this central tasks can be implemented is much discussed, but there are currently less practical implementations. An application-based tool, which focuses on the support of phonological and the letter awareness as well as on the number and quantity understanding, is automatically actively promoting media literacy. A tablet-based preschool program has the potential to provide first building blocks for closing the gap between societal challenge and implementation in development of media literacy.

4 Concept of Tablet-Based Training Program in Preschool

New media technologies are increasingly offering the possibility of active participation to people without reading and writing skills. Today, children can already intuitively deal with tablet computers, since a touchscreen replaces the input via a mouse and keyboard. Thus tablet computers are also interesting as learning tools for preschool children. For children and educators, these new tools present new opportunities as well as challenges [25]. But which features of a tablet computer are suitable for use as a learning tool?

Touch Screen

Tablet computers combine the keyboard of a laptop with a touch screen [28]. Young children without any reading and writing skills are able to use touch screen devices due to the simple and intuitive handling of manual gestures on the screen. Even the youngest can quickly learn touching, swiping and pinching with only one or two fingers (Fig. 1). Touch screens make the handling cognitively simpler than computers and thus manageable for younger children. Touch screens on tablet computers respond to multitouch inputs, which provides a natural means of input.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Intuitive touch screen for children

Full size image

Children between 3 and 6 years quickly learn the handling with touch screen devices and are engaged and interested in these digital tools [29]. Already 3-year-old children can learn with touch screen devices and also 24-month-old children learn with it, but the younger group has to be interactively involved in the learning situation [30]. Younger children benefit most from traditional books and the interaction with parents compared to tablet-based stories. From the age of 4 years, children benefit from both forms of media [31]. Therefore, the touch-screen-based tool for children in preschool age offers a comparable potential as traditional media forms such as books, pens and paper.

Multimodality, Interactivity and Proactivity

Tablet-based learning combines two different modes to represent knowledge: verbal and pictorial information [32]. By addressing two senses, the processing capacities of two different pathways are utilized. Both modes have to be optimally coordinated in multimodal learning environments in order to optimize the learning success. Above all, multimodality offers an ideal learning environment for children to use both visual as well as auditive learning types.

Children learn mainly about interactivity. They imitate their caregivers, learn by talking to them, and need constant exchanges. Parents and educators, on the basis of the continuous exchange, are able to promote children optimally at the respective developmental stage. By answering questions and giving food for thought, they enable the children to reach the next level of development (Zone of proximal development, [33]). An interactive multimodal learning environment can also give children answers and ideas, to assist them in climbing the next level of development. An interactive approach with addressing of the learner motivates children to learn and give them information in an individual pace and adapted to the individual action of the learner. The tablet-based material should offer children the opportunity to interact with the content and to direct their own exploration. The children can determine what they look at and how long they look at something. Focusing attention based on the children’s own interests motivates them to learn [34].

Proactive Elements of a Training Program

As it has been previously described [35] human-machine-interfaces are currently limited to traditional forms of input devices. We already mentioned the beneficial aspects of a touch interface presenting an intuitive form of input, especially for young children at a pre-school-age and without the literacy skills of reading and writing. But besides the possibility of touching and pinching, modern day tablet computers also possess the hardware capabilities for detecting non-verbal cues. Since this paper is focused on the utilization of tablet computers in teaching young children, proactive elements like gaze detection via webcam and the observation of auditory noise levels appear to be important aspects.

If a child would avert their gaze from the tablet computer, the system could detect this and react to it by stopping a current presentation and by re-establishing a connection, for example by addressing the child verbally. Once the attention has been restored, the training program would be able to recommence, while assuring that critical elements of the information conveyance will not be lost due to distractions.

Mobility, Motivation and Active Engagement

The smaller sizes of new technologies allow for increased mobility. Tablet computers can be used anytime and anywhere and support independent learning. The mobile handling of tablets makes the use for learning so simple and ideally suited for the nursery school day. Mobile technologies are motivating and more attractive for children engaging than traditional learning tools [36]. With the multi-touch devices, children are motivated to discover content in a new form and in new environments. Preschool time is a particularly important time because the motivation to learn is especially high. Engagement in learning processes is connected with motivation. Children were intrinsically motivated, when they were allowed to use computers for learning [29]. Discussed in dealing with new media is always the novelty effect, which Couse and Chen [29] could slightly invalidate. Even after a two-month daily use of the tablet, the interest of the children remained very high in this new technology.

Tablet-Based Training Program

A tablet-based learning tool for the development of relevant reading and literacy skills as well as the understanding of numbers and quantities is to be designed, developed with all termed learning features of mobility, multi-touch-screen, multimodality, interactivity and in addition proactivity. Based on scientific test methods for phonological awareness [4, 37], as well as for number and quantity comprehension [3] an app-based, interactive and proactive learning tool is created.

Three cognitive abilities are to be addressed through the app: Literacy, Mathematics and Media Literacy (Table 1).

Table 1. Learning modules and subtask of the tablet-based training program
Full size table

As an example, the task type designed for the number and quantities module will be presented (Fig. 2). The training program is intended to systematically build up a number-to-quantity understanding through playful allocation, search and reordering tasks. It promotes awareness that ascending numbers correspond to increasing numbers, volumes, and lengths, as well as that numbers can be split into other numbers.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Example for a number and quantity task

Full size image

5 Conclusion

A tablet-based training supports the development of children on three central dimensions:

  1. (1)

    Emergent literacy is supported by an active intervention of the phonological awareness. The children learn in the intervention rhymes, onsets and elaborate words according to their syllables. All levels of phonological awareness are supported by playful, multimodal, interactive and proactive tasks. The multimodal, interactive and proactive design of the learning environment via a multi-touch operation ensures fun and information in one application. This ensures a high level of commitment and high motivation for the children and thus a high learning success. An evaluation design with a pretest post-test and follow-up measurement will test this assumption.

  2. (2)

    The understanding of numbers and quantities is to be promoted centrally on a second dimension. The children explore through the app-based tablet usage the number space up to ten. They become familiar with the symbols of numbers and their quantities as well as learn which numbers are larger or smaller in the number space up to ten.

  3. (3)

    A tablet-based training of preschool skills promotes media literacy on a third dimension. Children learn something about the technical side of a tablet and use it as an information tool with some entertaining elements.

The promotion of three relevant development dimensions, which can be viewed as a predictor of success in society, can be achieved via a tablet-based learning tool. A research group in Chemnitz has set itself to the task of designing, developing and evaluating such a tablet-based tool for use in kindergartens. With such a tablet-based learning tool, a systematic preschool education in the area of emergent literacy and numerical-quantity understanding can be ensured. Based on interactivity and proactivity, the learning content can be optimally adapted to the characteristics of the learner in order to optimize the learning sequence.