Why the Early Education Sector in Australia is slow to adopt technology? Breaking down the myths
In the last 5 years, there have been a number of technology companies that have designed and developed softwares specifically for the childcare sector.
However, the adoption rate of technology within the early education sector has been quite low. As they say, change is not easy and so has been the case when it comes to the early education sector adopting technology to manage daycare operations.
Here are some of the top reasons Industry workers have provided in a recent survey for not being pro-technology:
Technology can be overwhelming
Paper still is more convenient and efficient
Technology can crash
Using technology on the floor with kids around can be impersonal
Technology is expensive
Being a childcare management software provider we decided to address each of these concerns.
Technology can be overwhelming
No, technology does not have to be overwhelming. Especially if proper support and training are provided to the users. In fact, our daycare software has been designed with the help of early education workers.
From the very start, we understood that ease of use is a critical factor since childcare workers run a very busy schedule and if they were asked to make a change over to using technology rather than paper then it should be a smooth transition.
Each of the functions on our software has been carefully designed and developed so that educators can easily use the software without any prior training.
Paper still is more convenient and efficient
As mentioned above childcare softwares have been designed and developed after a certain amount of research into usability. The aim is to provide the best user experience to customers and saying that paper is more convenient and efficient would be totally wrong.
To prove our point we would like to highlight a specific process that daycare centres undertake on a daily basis i.e. to report meals, nappies, toiled runs and feeds. To many within the industry, this process is called Daily sheets.
We have seen centres recording the same information twice, once for compliance record-keeping and the second time to share with parents. On the other hand, entering the same information on software would mean it is only done once and then saved on the cloud for anyone to view.
Technology can crash
We can confidently (99.9%) say that technology cannot crash. The way server networks are designed and built in today's world it makes it impossible for technology to completely crash. It can be the case where a server goes down for a few hours however in this case, server providers switch over to mirror or backup servers so that the users can continue to access their data.
Using technology on the floor with kids around can be impersonal
But the same processes are being undertaken on paper on the floor. What would be the difference between using a tablet/laptop v/s using a paper binder to record exactly the same information? Using software will surely allow you to complete the compliance-based tasks in a more efficient manner, therefore allowing educators to spend more time with children.
Technology is expensive
No, not at all. We recently asked some daycare operators about the cost of using paper and the results were quite shocking. Paper costs 4 times more than using software per child.
Cost of paper per child per month including the cost of leading as printer = $9
Cost of Software (Cubsta) per child per month = $2.20
So now you decide what is more efficient?
