So far, no computer has passed the Turing test, and there are no advanced thinking machines like HAL. Until then, can non-thinking technology develop thinking skills in children? I believe so.
'Thinking skills' is a nebulous term, but consider higher-order thinking: creativity, enquiry, prediction, speculation. Browse these ideas to get you started.
* Art and ICT: Scan in some art the children have created, open it in a paint program, and let them paint on top of it. Try painting over photographs (such as clown faces), or let children continue to develop their print-outs, for example with stamping. For more ideas, visit www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk/ict_art/ideas/foundation.htm. The best paint program is Revelation Natural Art from Logotron, offering natural paint tools, and three different levels.
* Music and ICT: Use electronic music instruments (keyboards, microphones, guitars) in role-play areas. Use 2Simple's Music toolkit or the fantastic Mixman DM2 from Tag Learning to create music for stories. See ICT, Nursery World, 23March 2006, and www.hitchams.suffolk.
sch.uk/foundation/creative/earlymusic.htm for more ideas.
* Writing: Provide opportunities in role-play settings for children to use ICT to support writing. Use tables in Word for diaries and charts, word banks in Clicker 5, Story Maker to create 'small world' stories, and dictaphones to record the stories children make. Look at www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk/foundation/literacy for more information.
* Enquiry skills: Find stories and various types, levels and examples of questioning skills at www.sebastianswan.org.uk. Try putting a picture of a relevant topic in PowerPoint, cropping it down so it shows one interesting part, and getting children to discuss and ask questions about the picture.
Write the questions up. The next slide could show a bit more, or a different part, and the last slide the whole image.
* Prediction and reasoning skills:Try activities with floor robots and remote controlled cars, mirrored with 2Simple's 2Go from the Infant Video toolkit. Try the Leaps and Bounds series from Granada Learning, or Lego Loco, a train simulation that helps develop reasoning skills.
* Themed creativity days:Choose a theme and organise a creativity day. Use ICT where you can, even if just taking a digital photograph. See The Little Book of ICT by Featherstone Publications.
By Andrew Trythall, ICT co-ordinator and Year One teacher at Sir Robert Hitcham's CEVAP School, Suffolk (www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk)
