Digital Resources and Children’s Learning: Parental Perception During the Pandemic

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has disrupted family life around the world. Families had to adapt to teleworking and online learning to maintain young children’s learning at home. During quarantine and nationwide school closures, parents of young children and children with disabilities had to act as teachers, therapists and caregivers. The role of parents gained relevance and it was needed to be able to guide their children to use technology during online learning. Digital resources provided an opportunity for children to keep learning, take part in games and keep in touch with their friends and teachers. But it increased access online brings heightened risks for children’s safety, protection and privacy, so it is necessary that parents observe their children and support them. In this context, this paper presents the perception from parents about on the use of digital resources and techno-logical tools that teachers applied before and during pandemic. This study surveyed 773 Peruvian parents to know which of the resources used by teachers helped their children to understand the content of the course and which of tools allowed a better interaction with their classmates and teachers. According to the results of the survey, the most used resource before pandemic has been WhatsApp (32.1%), followed by office tools (Word or Excel 20.3%) and email (8.7%). However, for carrying out online activities during the pandemic the most digital used resource by the teachers has been WhatsApp (29.9%), then YouTube (17.6%), Google Drive (16.7%) and Google Docs. (7.9%). Regarding to a good interaction to increase a better interaction between their classmates and teacher were Zoom (61.7%), Google Meet (25.1%) and WhatsApp (11.6%). These results suggested that the use of digital resources and technological tools during the pandemic has been problematic and challenging for families.