Teachers' evaluation of preschool educational software: the case of probabilistic thinking

Nowadays, children interact in formal and informal settings with technology from their very early age. As a result, a wide range of software has emerged with diverse purposes, usages, and applications. One such category is the software that is designed to assess children's prior knowledge and skills concerning a particular subject area. In this study, software testing children's abilities to make estimations and judgments based on probabilities was evaluated by preschool teachers. This pilot study took place in Greece, during 2009-2010, in a self selected group of in-service teachers (N = 45). After personal interaction with the software, educators filled in a questionnaire with their opinions. Further analysis was made in order to discriminate the criteria of great importance that comprise software as developmentally appropriate. The results revealed that not only the design but also the content, the process and the purpose of preschool software should be taken into consideration when implementing pedagogical software in Preschool Education. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.