The first piece, Shapes, Colors, Letters, and Numbers, is designed for pre-school children, ages one to five.  My goal was to create a simple program that would allow young children to explore the use of the computer while learning age-appropriate concepts in a hands-on and inquiry-based fashion ­– a deviation from the rote memorization techniques that are often employed in teaching these concepts.  This program displays shapes, colors, letters, and numbers on the computer screen, and it does not require that the child be able to read or know how to type on a keyboard.  Any child can use the software with immediate success and virtually no instruction.

The software was designed with an inherent logic that builds media literacy skills while simultaneously reinforcing content-specific knowledge.  At the most basic level, the child learns that pressing any key on the keyboard causes something to happen – a colored shape appears, accompanied by an interesting sound, or a number appears (if a number key is pressed), accompanied by a child speaking its corresponding name.  At this level, even the very young child is able to “play” the computer as if it were a musical instrument.  At some point, the child discovers that shapes appear when certain keys are pressed and numbers appear when keys in the top row are pressed.  The next level is attained when the child realizes that sometimes (when the cap lock is accidentally engaged) letters, accompanied by a child speaking their corresponding names, appear instead of shapes.  Eventually, the child finds that the cap lock key enables a single key to have two functions.  Finally, as the child acquires letter and number recognition skills, he or she learns the location of the letters and numbers on the keyboard.

I used recordings of young children saying the letters and numbers, involving them in the creation of the work and giving them an awareness of the process of recording and editing sound.  This reinforced the media literacy aspect of my work.