Multimedia Technology and Children's Development

Multimedia Technology and Children's Development:
A Report on Child Research Net Symposium
in Tokyo, Japan, January 1998
by Dee Dickinson

During the last week of January, 1998 in Tokyo, Dr. Noboru Kobayashi convened the first international symposium of Child Research Net, a network and web site focused on children's issues throughout the world. Dr. Kobayashi is an internationally recognized pediatrician, former director of Children's Hospital, Tokyo, and former head of the Japanese Council on School Reform.
The theme of the symposium was "Evolution of Child Development in the Multimedia Environment." Dr. Koyayashi opened the conference by noting that
Today's children and those of the future will grow up immersed in the multimedia environment. I anxiously await to see how these children will integrate the various media into their environments, creating and expanding their cognitive, social, physical, and creative capacities. The "wall" of information and technology that divided adults and children in the past is now not so thick, as children are now able to access all types of information easily using these technologies. They are also able to engage themselves in many types of virtual experiences which will allow them to broaden their skills and imagination. However, the question of how these children should best utilize, to their fullest potential, multimedia technologies and how adults who guide these children should scaffold them still remains unclear.
The site of this symposium lent itself dramatically to the topic, as participants often found themselves working hard to distinguish the virtual from the real in Tokyo. Large, beautiful aquariums filled with tropical fish were discovered at very close range to be high definition video. Baby sitters are hired by youngsters to care for their virtual pets--and real funerals are held for their demise. Virtual reality experiences cause real physical and emotional reactions.
Presenters at the symposium included eleven representatives of foreign countries and fifteen Japanese, including pediatricians, multimedia specialists, professors of education, and educators. Reports on the use of multimedia technology throughout the world were given by Dr. Per Miljeteig and Ms. Marie Louise Bistrup, from Childwatch International, Norway; Dr. Anura Goonasekera, director of Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, Singapore; Dr. Brett Brown, director of Child Trends, Inc., and Dee Dickinson, CEO of New Horizons for Learning U.S.A; Dr. Denise Li Meng Goh, National University Hospital, Singapore; Dr. Hong-Fa Ho, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan; Dr. A. Murat Tuncer, director of the Institute of Child Health and Children's Hospital, Turkey, and Mr. Yukio Shimauchi, Benesse Corp., Japan.
The networks represented have formed the beginning of a consortium of websites focused on children's needs worldwide. Hot links have now been formed between Child Research Net , Childwatch International , Asian Media Information and Communication Centre , Child Trends, Inc., and New Horizons for Learning.
The invitational symposium, which was attended by around one hundred Japanese, was translated into both English and Japanese. In addition to the country reports, topics included learning to learn through new technologies, edutainment, designing and utilizing new kinds of learning spaces, using the Internet, virtual reality, new science education in the Internet Age, growing up in a multimedia environment, and the future of "cyber-child" research. Participants also heard descriptions of how multimedia technology is being used in the schools of Japan at all levels. These reports are all posted on Child Research Net's Web site.
Dr. Michitka Hirose, of the University of Tokyo, offered dramatic examples of the use of virtual reality in Tokyo Children's Hospital with paralyzed and developmentally delayed children. A physically disabled child was shown playing soccer, hitting a real soccer ball into virtual reality where it was received by a VR goalie, providing the child with a nearly real physical experience. There was interesting discussion of how VR could help to scaffold children's development that was not occurring naturally.
A new kind of children's web site of constructivist activities was demonstrated by Dr. Idit Harel. She showed how MaMaMedia, with its brightly colored, multisensory array of activities has been created to appeal to the children she calls "the clickerati" generation. (See the site at MaMaMedia.com)
Dr. Seymour Papert, professor at the MIT Media Laboratory in the U.S., announced that he and Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab, are proposing a project to equip every child in the world with a computer that can access the Internet. (There was no discussion of how children who are dealing with problems of health, hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, or common language will be able to make use of the computers.) From Tokyo, Dr. Papert flew to Europe to begin setting up a thousand "electronic outposts," to begin this project.
This symposium has raised important issues related to children's use of powerful new multimedia technologies. One primary concern that was raised a number of times relates to how parents and educators can help children to balance their activities between natural world experiences and the electronic world. At the end of the first day, a young Japanese lady in the audience asked to speak. She said, "Last week we had a big snow in Tokyo. It was very beautiful, and I remembered as a child being so excited about playing in the snow, feeling snowflakes on my face, making snow people, and tossing snowballs. I looked out of my window, and there were no footprints in the snow."
Among the numerous questions that emerged from this symposium:
Is it important to set up further research projects on the effects of multimedia technology on children's physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development?
Is it important for children to learn to focus attention and do reflective thinking before they are challenged by multi-tasking activities?
Is it important to further assess the effects of violent technologies, multimedia technologies that bombard developing sensory and neurological systems, and technologies that substitute for real world experiences--for better or for worse?
Is it important to further assess the effects of multimedia games that offer challenging intellectual tasks and scaffold higher order thinking processes?
Should more educators and parents be demanding software products that have been proved to enhance learning and cognitive development as well as being entertaining?
Should distributors of television programs throughout the world take responsibility for the values and messages they promote?