Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years

Tools for Teaching and Learning

Chip Donohue, Chip Donohue

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317931096
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

A Co-Publication of Routledge and NAEYC

Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years offers early childhood teacher educators, professional development providers, and early childhood educators in pre-service, in-service, and continuing education settings a thought-provoking guide to effective, appropriate, and intentional use of technology with young children. This book provides strategies, theoretical frameworks, links to research evidence, descriptions of best practice, and resources to develop essential digital literacy knowledge, skills and experiences for early childhood educators in the digital age.

Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years puts educators right at the intersections of child development, early learning, developmentally appropriate practice, early childhood teaching practices, children's media research, teacher education, and professional development practices. The book is based on current research, promising programs and practices, and a set of best practices for teaching with technology in early childhood education that are based on the NAEYC/FRC Position Statement on Technology and Interactive Media and the Fred Rogers Center Framework for Quality in Children's Digital Media. Pedagogical principles, classroom practices, and teaching strategies are presented in a practical, straightforward way informed by child development theory, developmentally appropriate practice, and research on effective, appropriate, and intentional use of technology in early childhood settings. A companion website (http://teccenter.erikson.edu/tech-in-the-early-years/) provides additional resources and links to further illustrate principles and best practices for teaching and learning in the digital age.

Part I
Technology and Young Children

Editor’s Introduction

The book and the chapters in Part I begin with an essay and chapter that connect Fred Rogers’ approach to the digital age and to the ideas, resources, and best practices shared throughout the book. Our use of technology and interactive media needs to be as appropriate and intentional as Fred Rogers showed us, if we are to make the most of new technology tools and experiences that support healthy growth, development, and learning, strengthen adult/child interactions, foster relationships, and promote healthy social-emotional development and pro-social behaviors.

David Kleeman and Alice Wilder open Part I and begin the book with an essay in response to a question I posed to them about Fred Rogers and the digital age tools and interactive media of today. I asked them to reflect on and respond to the question, “What would Fred Rogers say?” As leaders in the children’s media field and Senior Fellows at the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College, they have closely watched technology and children’s media trends and created a few of their own. In this thoughtful reflection, they consider Fred’s words and his approach to children’s healthy growth, development, and learning as guidance for how he might have made use of these new digital tools, mobile devices, touch-screens and interactive media in his work on behalf of young children, parents, and families. Kleeman and Wilder provide the perfect starting point for the approach we have taken in this book, which is to consider what’s best for the child’s healthy development first and then look to technology and digital media for tools to achieve these goals.

In Chapter 2, Hedda Sharapan, who worked closely with Fred Rogers for many years, explains how his approach to social-emotional development can guide our selection of technology tools and experiences that support interactions, relationships, and pro-social behaviors. She reminds us to remain cautious and continue to ask hard questions about the role of technology in the early years, even as she shares specific strategies and examples from teachers using technology as a tool for social-emotional development.

I step beyond my editor role in Chapter 3 and provide an overview and framework for thinking about technology in the early years, and for the effective, appropriate and intentional use of technology with young children. I discuss both the concerns and the opportunities that have been debated in the field, introduce the principles, guidelines, key messages and key words from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) & Fred Rogers Center joint position statement, and share resources on technology in the early years. Words and ideas from the position statement are integrated throughout the book, so in this chapter, the goal is to introduce the essential ideas and provide necessary resources to build a foundation for understanding and learning from all that follows.

I join Roberta Schomburg for Chapter 4 as we talk about three interrelated ways of thinking about technology as a tool: for teaching teachers, for teacher classroom management, and as a tool for teaching and learning with young children in the classroom. We identify new demands on teacher education and teacher educators to prepare early childhood teachers who have the technology confidence, competence, and digital media literacy necessary to select, use, integrate, and evaluate technology for the classroom and for individual children. We examine what teacher preparation standards and organizations are saying and doing about digital media literacy, for teacher educators, preservice, and inservice teachers.

Warren Buckleitner provides a playful and thought-provoking overview of “Child Development Theory 101” and describes how theory can and should inform our selection and use of technology tools with young children. He poses the question, “What would Maria Montessori say about the iPad?” and then looks for answers in the words, philosophy, and approach of Montessori and other famous theorists. He creates an imagined conversation and even invites us to listen in, between Montessori, Piaget, Bruner, and Vygotsky as they play with an iPad and try out some apps. He explores the intersection of multi-touch screens and apps with developmental frameworks. His search for examples of behaviorism, constructivism, and social construction in app design and use helps us see how theory shapes design and practice, and how design and practice demonstrate what we know and understand about child development theory.

Part I closes with a thoughtful and thorough review of children’s media research by Michael B. Robb and Alexis R. Lauricella. Robb and Lauricella identify what we know and what it means from the body of research on children’s media, and the emerging research on interactive media and digital devices. They look at what we know about child development in the context of technology by exploring physical development, cognitive development, and language. They look at how what we know from many years of research on television viewing and children’s development contributes to our understanding of new digital tools and how the features of effective children’s media might be reflected in app design for interactive screens. Throughout the chapter, they distill complex research findings into teacher takeaways and pose questions that connect the research to practice, build a bridge between television-based children’s media research and the affordances of new digital tools, and identify questions that remain.

Chapter 1
What Would Fred Rogers Say?

David Kleeman and Alice Wilder

“Fred’s instinct in the 1950s was to be excited and challenged by new media, never to be afraid or put off by it. It was the potential of new media to play a constructive role in the development and education of young children that inspired him, and he sustained this open-minded and entrepreneurial attitude to media and technology all his life.”

—Maxwell King and Rita Catalano, Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media (as cited in Buckleitner, 2010)

What Fred Rogers would have thought about today’s digital technologies, and their potential for children’s healthy development and learning, could be the topic of countless dissertations and endless debates. For the purposes of this chapter, we chose to seek insight in Fred’s own words; of course, even that is subject to argument. There are entire books of quotes and an archive full of his wisdom in speech and writing; for any hypothesis we make here, there are surely statements that could contradict our view. In addition to his words, however, we can infer his philosophy and approach by the media he made, the way he lived his life, and the personal experiences of the people whose lives he touched.

Considering these, we believe he would have emphasized that digital playthings and learning aids are simply tools and that their potential lies in the hands of the people who program them, the loving caregivers who choose how and when to use them, and the needs and abilities of specific children. As Fred wrote, “no matter what the machine may be, it was people who thought it up and made it, and it’s people who make it work” (Rogers, 1994, p. 64).

Fred admitted, “I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there was some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen” (CNN, 2001). His mission—in fact, his ministry—was to provide constructive media that puts children first.

“We serve children best,” Fred taught, “when we try to find out what their own inner needs are and what their own unique accomplishments are, and help them capitalize on that” (Rogers, 1994, p. 5). With these words, he described perhaps the greatest strength of today’s media and technology: flexibility and personalization. Fred was gifted at making a mass medium feel personal, talking through the screen as though to an individual child. He surely would have appreciated the capacity for today’s interactive media to be “leveled” and marveled at the analytic functions built into games, so that they can adapt on the fly to a player’s level of engagement, strengths or weaknesses.

Among the most iconic scenes from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood were his interactions with Jeff Erlanger, a wheelchair-bound young man. What made them special was their focus on what made Jeff able, not disabled. Fred wrote, “I really think that everybody, every day, should be able to feel some success” (Rogers, 1994, p. 3). The affordances of mobile media—direct touchscreens, speech recognition, adaptive teaching and learning—appear to hold amazing potential for enabling children with physical, mental, or emotional challenges, and this is a crucial area for continued exploration.

We believe Fred would have been happy about generative, open-ended digital tools for creativity. “Children are not merely vessels into which facts are poured one week, and then when it comes time for exams they turn themselves upside down and let the facts run out,” he wrote. “Children bring all of themselves, their feelings and their experiences to the learning” (Rogers, 1994, p. 87).

Digital media can offer a platform and outlet for that creativity—a go-anywhere, use-anytime, bottomless block set or art box, a portable piano, a storytelling tool kit. Make no mistake—digital tools aren’t the same as the real thing—kids absolutely need the tactile experience of fresh clay, finger paints, dress-up play, and musical instruments. They’re different, a new category of play and self-expression, and we’re still learning the contexts in which they’re best used.

When discussing the value of any technology, context matters; content is only as good as the user’s experience. Tools to record voices, add photos, or otherwise personalize an app help parents and children connect over digital experiences. Other media play patterns allow kids and parents to cooperate toward a game or goal. All these depend, however, on the parent, teacher, or caregiver taking the initiative to create a truly interactive experience, whether within the mediated experience, parallel to it, or afterward.

Currently, the least well-developed area in mobile media is how to use these devices to support children’s social and emotional development, so much at the core of Fred Rogers’ work. He may have predicted that it would be challenging when he said that “a computer can help you learn to spell ‘HUG,’ but it can never know the risk or the joy or actually giving or receiving one” (Rogers, 1994, p. 89).

Fred would certainly have cautioned us to know our limits—that we not try to fill children’s every moment, or mediate every experience through a screen. He worried that “millions of children of all ages are getting an overdose of mechanical entertainment and suffering a deficiency in healthier forms of play” and said “you rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices” (Rogers, 1994, p. 62).

Mindful of the trust children lend to the stories and characters they see on screen, Fred called the space between the set and the viewer “very holy ground.” He spoke of the implicit message children take from their playthings: “here’s the kind of world I expect you to build.” This applies equally to digital, interactive media: Content creators need to understand, respect, and return children’s investment in our offerings to them.

Returning to the quote with which we opened, Fred was not scared or dismissive of new technologies. After all, he said, “each generation, in its turn, is a link between all that has gone before and all that comes after” (Fred Rogers Company, n.d.).

Fred Rogers wrote, “Where would any of us be without teachers—without people who have a passion for their art or their science or their craft and love it right in front of us?” (Rogers, 2005, p. 94). Fred suggested that media had the potential to present children with enthusiastic teachers all the time. It is our responsibility to be the passionate teachers, or at least to bring teaching materials to life via media.

In laying a foundation for the future, it’s always important to learn from the past. Fred Rogers used to end public presentations by asking the audience to think silently about someone who h...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword by Ed Greene
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• List of Figures and Tables
• Setting the Context: From Fred Rogers to the Digital Age
• Part I Technology and Young Children
• Part II Technology and Young Children
• Part III Technology and Young Children
• Subject Index
• Name Index