Young children’s interactivity – Impacts of The Carnival of the Animals (COA) –iPad App: Cross-cultural observations: Finland and USA

Abstract

The education profession is presently facing the challenges of touch-based electronic devices, as a part of their teaching performances and in the behavioral reflections of the device-use. These devices may distract children, harm attention, and even cause addictions (Adams, 2014; Richtel, 2010). However, other researchers reported that using the iPad helps stimulate 2-year-old children’s creative-intellectual potential (Geist, 2012), children’s focus, learning styles, and various learning levels (Wilkinson, 2010). According to Hodgson (2013), 5-6-year-old children were found to use higher order thinking skills in creating content independently in music because of the possibilities of touch interface technology. This was also shown in the behavior of Finnish 6-year-olds (Marjanen, 2014). Nevertheless, the essential nature of children’s interactivity with the iPad in all its potential richness has not yet received enough attention (Tu, Cslovjecsek, Pérez, Blakey & Shappard, 2014). Many possibilities for increasing our understanding of how young children develop their visual and audio preferences through the use of the touch screen tablets is to be observed, with the connections of the cultural and developmental inclinations. The present study points out to the interests of young children in favor of sounds, produced by manipulation of objects, supported by views opened via quantitative approach across culturally, with views from qualitative perspectives to point out the meanings of these two research orientations for this kind of a study. In this research, the authors investigate the Finnish-American, cross-cultural observations and comparisons and provided us interesting results.