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What do you mean by ‘Early Learning’?
 The term ‘early’ can mean different things to different people. To mainstream school class teachers it will probably mean education carried out with children who are in pre-school or primary school infant classes. Key concerns for this group will include for example: development of pre-reading and phonological awareness skills; improved understanding of shape, colour and size matching; practice in pencil or other fine motor skills; as well as widening opportunities for participating in cooperative and symbolic play, raising self-confidence and self-esteem and a host of other skills.
CALL Centre’s interest in early learning certainly includes these areas but would extend the meaning of the term ‘early learning’ to cover other aspects. Of particular interest are children and young people whose learning is still at an early stage compared to their chronological age. For example, because of severe physical impairment a child may have had few opportunities to access the ordinary pre-reading experiences open to most children. Or the foundations of pre-reading - communicating with other people using speech, sign or symbols - may not have been possible because of physical, learning or other impairments.
In other words, ‘early learning’ might be less to do with the child’s chronological age than with the curricular opportunities to be accessed. And these curricular opportunities might be formal school based activities or they might be everyday activities that can be adapted to promote early learning. Technology can play an important role in developing early learning skills.
 Early Learning Activities
If they are to be successful, early learning activities - whether or not they use technology - will feature key elements. They should:
- be motivating, capturing the child’s interest
- be simple to use
- encourage exploration
- use materials that are clear, well contrasted and uncluttered
- offer alternative ways of accessing the computer or other device because users may have physical difficulties in using technology such as operating a keyboard or mouse
- make sure material is age appropriate
The term ‘early learning’ might then be extended and embrace:
- at its most basic level, how the child is introduced to learning cause and effect
- achievement of independent control
- use of sensory stimulation
- early interaction with other people
- introduction to basic concepts, vocabulary and language
- emergent literacy
We cover each of these in turn. However, it should be noted that there is a certain arbitrariness in separating out each of these features of early learning. In reality there will be a close relationship among for example how the child learns cause and effect, achieves independent control, uses his or her senses and interacts with other people.
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