Tinker play with unplugged tech
About this resource
This article invites educators, parents, and carers to support children’s understandings of digital technologies through tinkering. Tinkering sees children taking apart unplugged technologies (e.g., old computer keyboards) then combining the loose parts with traditional play materials (e.g., playdough) to create their own imaginary technologies.
Age range for this resource
For educators, parents, and carers of children aged 3 to 5 years.
Goal of this resource
To provide opportunities for young children to explore and investigate non-working technologies.
To engage young children in creating and re-creating pretend technologies inspired by their personal experiences.
To support young children’s understandings of the purpose, function, and workings of digital technologies.
How might educators use this resource?
Use this article as a conversation starter with colleagues to explore how tinkering might be a learning opportunity for children in your service. Maybe your service has some keyboards, computers, or other devices that are no longer in use.
How might families use this resource?
Read this article and think about how your child uses different technologies at home and in the community. What do you think your child might know about how technologies work? Children often enjoy making their own pretend technologies, such as phones or tablets from left-over boxes and cartons.
How might organisations use this resource?
Provide a link to this article in a newsletter or in communication with families. Highlight how learning with digital technologies is a requirement of Belonging, Being, and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia V2.0 (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022). Explain to families that children can learn about technologies using non-working technologies and that children enjoy creating their own pretend technologies.
What learning might we see?
Educators, parents, and carers using tinkering to develop young children’s understandings of digital technologies.
Young children exploring and experimenting with unplugged technologies.
Young children asking questions, problem solving, and collaborating with each other and their adults.
Young children creating their own imaginary technologies.
Practices
Acknowledging
Adults notice and recognise children’s interests in and experiences of using digital technologies and interacting with digital media and popular culture.
Interpreting
Children interpret their experiences with digital technologies and media through play and in discussion and collaboration with others.
Area
Play and Pedagogy
Young children have opportunities for play and pedagogy in digital contexts. Play and pedagogy involve children using a range of digital devices for exploration, meaning-making, collaboration, and problem solving. Educators engage in active decision making about the use and non-use of digital technologies for learning.
Connection to relevant standards
Belonging, Being, and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia V2.0 (Australian Government Department of Education, 2022)
Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity
Children develop their emerging autonomy, inter-dependence, resilience, and agency (e.g., Children approach new safe situations with interest and confidence).
Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world
Children develop a sense of connectedness to groups and communities and an understanding of their reciprocal rights and responsibilities as active and informed citizens (e.g., Educators build connections between the early childhood setting and the local community).
Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing
Children become strong in their physical learning and mental wellbeing (e.g., Educators provide a wide range of tools and materials to resource children’s fine and gross motor skills).
Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners
Children develop a growth mindset and learning dispositions such as curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, imagination, and reflexivity (e.g., Educators model inquiry processes, including wonder, curiosity, and imagination, try new ideas, and take on challenges; Educators build on the funds of knowledge, languages, and understandings that children bring to their early childhood setting).
Children develop a range of learning and thinking skills and processes such as problem solving, inquiry, experimentation, hypothesising, researching, and investigating (e.g., Children explore their environment through asking questions, experimenting, investigating, and using digital technologies).
Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies, and natural and processed materials (e.g., Children experiment with different technologies; Educators provide sensory and exploratory experiences with a wide variety of open-ended natural and processed materials; Educators select and introduce appropriate tools, technologies, and media and provide the skills, knowledge, and techniques to enhance children’s learning; Educators provide opportunities for children to both construct and take apart materials as a strategy for learning).
Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators
Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media (e.g., Children experiment with ways of expressing ideas and meaning using a range of media; Children use simple tools and techniques to shape, assemble, and join materials they are using).
Children use digital technologies and media to access information, investigate ideas, and represent their thinking (e.g., Children identify technologies and their use in everyday life; Children incorporate real or imaginary technologies as features of their play; Children use digital technologies and media for creative expression, e.g., designing, drawing, composing; Educators integrate technologies across the curriculum and into children’s multimodal play experiences and projects; Educators acknowledge technologies are a feature of children’s lives and, as such, will be a feature of their imaginative and investigative play).
National Quality Standard (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority, 2019)
Quality Area 1: Educational program and practice (e.g., Each child’s current knowledge, strengths, ideas, culture, abilities, and interests are the foundation of the program; Educators are deliberate, purposeful, and thoughtful in their decisions and actions; Educators respond to children’s ideas and play and extend children’s learning through open-ended questions, interactions, and feedback; Each child’s agency is promoted, enabling them to make choices and decisions that influence events and their world).
Quality Area 2: Children’s health and safety (e.g., At all times, reasonable precautions and adequate supervision ensure children are protected from harm and hazard).
Quality Area 3: Physical Environment (e.g., Resources, materials, and equipment allow for multiple uses, are sufficient in number, and enable every child to engage in play-based learning).
Quality Area 5: Relationships with children (e.g., Responsive and meaningful interactions build trusting relationships which engage and support each child to feel secure, confident, and included; The dignity and rights of every child are maintained; Children are supported to collaborate, learn from, and help each other).
National Principles for Child Safe Organisations (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2018)
Principle 8: Physical and online environments promote safety and wellbeing while minimising the opportunity for children and young people to be harmed.
Explore More
If these ideas are new to you, explore these related resources:
Tinkering with unplugged technology
This video presentation explores how educators, parents, and carers can support children’s understandings of digital technologies through tinkering. Tinkering sees children taking apart unplugged technologies (e.g., old computer keyboards and mice) then combining the loose parts with traditional play materials (e.g., playdough) to create their own non-working technologies.
Published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, this article discusses how the maker movement shows that creativity, playfulness, and ingenuity can fuel science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning.
For more ideas, explore these related resources:
Staying active in the digital playground
This article invites parents, carers, and educators to promote children’s participation in physical activities using the PLAYback strategy. PLAYback sees trusted adults video recording children participating in physical activity then co-viewing the footage with children to reinforce, support, and build skill development.
When the dinosaurs came to kindy
This video presentation explores how early childhood educators can connect with children’s interests using digital technologies.
If you would like to read some research, explore these related resources:
Blum-Ross, A., Kumpulainen, K., & Marsh, J. (2020). Enhancing digital literacy and creativity: Makerspaces in the early years. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429243264
Edwards, S., Mantilla, A., Grieshaber, S., Nuttall, J., & Wood, E. (2020). Converged play characteristics for early childhood education: Multimodal, global-local, and traditional-digital. Oxford Review of Education, 46(5), 637–660. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2020.1750358