A Study into The Interaction of Preschool Children with Information and Communication Technologies in terms of Some Variables

The current study was carried out to investigate the interaction of preschool children with information and communication technologies in terms of some variables. The population was made up of 36-72 month old children attending to an independent kindergarten acting under the Ministry of Education in the city of Ankara in the central town of Keçiören in the educational year of 2015-2016. The sampling of the study included a total sum of 180 parents volunteered to the research having a child at a private kindergarten in Ankara chosen randomly. As a data collection instrument, “Parent Assessment Tool for Information and Communication Technologies” (PATICT) developed by Konca ve Köksalan (2015) was used. In the analysis of the data gathered, as the distribution was not normal, Mann-Whitney U-Test was used to look for differences between groups while Kruskal Wallis H-Test was used for comparison between more than two groups. In terms of ICT, the relation between the parent attitudes and skills, social structure, usage level dimensions were analysed through Spearman correlation. As a result of the study, it was found that children mostly had television (100%) and mobile phone (93.9%) and play console PlayStation/Xbox the least at home as information and communication technology tools; depending on the replies given by the parents regarding the fields of the activities children do, it was found that children spent their time in the living room (40%) mostly and in the kitchen (1.1%) the least and they spent their time on their own (32.3%) the most and with another child (12.5%) the least. It was also found that there was a significant difference in terms of such variables as gender, age and parent education status between the skill usage level and social structure sub-dimensions of PATICT; no significant difference was found in terms of economic status and a positive correlation was found between the parent attitude score and skill and social structure.