Finally One God Men have started to worship various delve powers since the early history of mankind.
However, throughout that history, men have never agreed on worshipping only one of those powers. Finally, a single god arises, the computer with the internet. If worshipping means showing respect, appreciation, independence, and submission to the dominance of a certain power on people's lives, that will be exactly what the computer represents to people nowadays. Unlike other inventions, the computer could successfully penetrate all aspects of people's lives.Actually, people Interact with computers daily, much more than they do with their own families and friends. If one just imagines what may happen to banks, government offices, retail stories, schools, universities, businesses, laboratories, and factories if computers stop working for any reason, he/she can easily realize how far adults depend on that invention.
Similarly, the young are so attracted to the interaction with computers. With all the advantages of using computers, they cannot resist that kind of exciting and productive Interaction.Yet, some adults think that children should not be exposed to it at their early age because of its negative effects on them. Despite such claims, those limited negative effects are outweighed by the social, emotional and learning development caused by the interaction with the computer by the young, in general, and children with special needs in specific, under the guidance of the adult.
In fact, computers are becoming more essential for children's learning development. Using computers enable them to have control over their own learning process, set heir own goals, and decide on the level of challenge that suits their own ability.As computers assist children to learn through creating, making things happen, and drawing, it provides better opportunities for children to widen their scope of thinking. Computers also participate in shaping their basic skills by helping them distinguish between various letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and sounds.
Choosing the age-appropriate applications can also help children develop their critical thinking skills. Educator Hoagland points out that computers enable children to enhance their self-esteem. Achieving a certain level of success either by playing, creating or designing, enhance children's self images and self confidence.The development of the children's emotional skills caused by the interaction with the computer is very valuable for shaping their personalities.
Just take that pride the children have, when they show their parents how to do something on a certain application, to consider the great effect of obtaining computer skills on asserting children's worthiness. What's more, throughout the early years of children's lives, they receive a lot of Instructions room most adults around them; however, computers give them the chance to give instructions and be obeyed.Every time, children touch the keyboard, they give the computer some instructions to be carried out, which enable them to practice some control. In turn, this deepens their self- esteem, in specific, and develops their emotional skills, in general. Not only children's emotional skills but also their social skills are developed through the use of computers. Educator Clement argues that claims that using computers dissocializes the young, children tend to share their success and enjoyment with others as they are naturally social.
Therefore, some of them prefer playing computer games with others to playing them on their own because sharing increases their excitement and challenge. Using the computer by children, in general, has significant effects on the development of their learning, emotional, and social skills. Accordingly, one can imagine how far the effectiveness of using it is on children with special needs. Indeed, nothing has been as effective and useful to children with special needs, as the computer. It has really provided kids tit certain speech, audio, and motor, and learning disabilities with extreme benefits.Hassling and Glasses argue that using input and output devices enable children with special needs to be capable of doing things that they normally could not achieve on their own.
Before the age of computers, those kids used to be socially isolated from the outside world. However, thanks to the computer and the internet, such limitations are of no existence; those children can enjoy communicating with others and engaging their world effectively. They benefit from having access to facial applications that allow them to work at their own pace.The most important thing for them is what they achieve through using a computer, enhancing their self- esteem. It also fills their time with a variety of activities that match their abilities, which help them spend their time fruitfully.
Still, opponents have their own reasons to think that computers have negative effects on the young social lives and language skills. These are based on the effects of children's replacement of learning to read and write using books, paper and pencils by computer games.Even some parents replace their story reading time to their kids by computer games or stories. In fact, some parents find it convenient to leave the task of teaching their kids the basic skills of counting, reading, or writing to the computer and spend less time with their kids. According to those critics, if children spend a great amount of time sitting in front of computer screens, they will not learn the simple principles and manners needed to interact with others, such as sharing, taking turns and helping others.They also believe that reliance on some eaters of applications, such as word processing with its auto spelling and grammar correction can affect the young learners negatively.
Such convenient tools may impact the young language skills, so instead of mastering the use of accurate grammar and spelling, they Just leave this task to the computer. Actually, the excitement and the creativity resulting from interacting with the computer leads to the development of children's social behavior, as Clement explains.Regarding the feature of auto spelling and grammar correction provided by different applications an also be seen positively. In traditional ways of teaching writing, teachers used to check children's writing, correct their spelling and grammar mistakes, and ask them to learn from such mistakes. The same can be said for auto checkers.
Under the wise guidance of parents and teachers, children can use auto checkers to learn from their mistakes by absorbing the correct spelling and grammar structure, which enhances their language skills.As long as the computer with the internet is here to stay, whatever one's opinion about it, it is unavoidable. Therefore, depriving children from interacting with it will not only prevent them from enhancing their educational, they will interact with throughout their lives. Moreover, it will deprive them of gaining the basic skills needed for that highly demanded field, IT with its huge Job opportunities. Thus, instead of stopping their interaction with technology, adults can monitor the amount of time spent by the kids in front of the computer.
