Lisa Guernsey
It’s a Saturday morning in March, and the room at the government center in Fairfax, Virginia, is packed but quiet. Rachel C. Martin, a child care specialist, is standing at the front. Behind her is a large screen that projects images of children’s books and games.Emerging Literacy: Digital Storytime.
In front of her are dozens of child care providers and early educators, many of whom manage very small programs in their homes. They serve low-income families across northern Virginia, an area that, like much of the United States, has a teeming population of immigrants from all over the globe and struggles with vast disparities in income levels. Many of their families qualify for subsidized housing and nutrition assistance. At least half the women here this morning are immigrants themselves, hailing from Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East.
These faces reflect an untapped opportunity to embrace, teach, and lift up America’s next generation. In a country with more than 20 percent of U.S. children in poverty, with the same percentage of children being raised by parents who speak non-English languages, and with technological advances reshaping the lives of families and kids every day, the work of these child care providers matters immensely. Exactly how these adults interact with the children in their care, the way they advise the children’s parents and family members, and their ability to mold new mindsets around learning and literacy will have cascading effects that set the course for the America of the twenty-first century.
But at this moment—at 10:37 a.m., as a few people are still straggling in to grab plastic chairs in the back of the room—the long-term significance of their work takes a backseat to day-to-day struggles in running a child care program, not to mention scarcity of tools and training in general. To many, digital technology feels like a pipe dream or, worse, a distraction. Before the session started, a few participants leaned into whispered conversations about the challenges of using touchscreens with kids. As Martin speaks, some still have eyebrows raised in skepticism.
“Don’t worry,” Martin says as she welcomes her audience, “I was nervous about using technology at first too.” But she invites everyone to explore: How might electronic books spark a range of early literacy activities with young children? Could they prompt new ways of reaching the preschoolers in your care?
Martin opens up a website called Unite for Literacy. Let’s look at this, she says. Here are books in multiple languages.
The child care providers suddenly perk up. Multiple languages? Really? Which ones?
Soon, several members of the audience are raising their hands, asking questions about the e-book app and what it can do. Martin flips through a book on owls, which is narrated in Farsi. Here’s one about insects, in Vietnamese. And it’s free, Martin tells them. The founders of Unite for Literacy are funding this through donations. But Martin is not here to pitch apps; instead, she wants her audience to review and think critically about different types of media. For example, with Unite for Literacy, she says, the print on the pages is not in the same language as the narrated language. When you are showing kids these books, she counsels, you’ll want to be thoughtful about the ages of the children and how they are learning print.
Scenes like this one are starting to play out in a few spots around the country. The Association for Library Services to Children has encouraged librarians who work in youth services to rise to the challenge and provide workshops on new media and technology for parents and early educators. As this book in your hands makes clear, an impassioned cadre of thought leaders—from the National Association for the Education of Young Children to the TEC Center at Erikson Institute and more—are calling for people across the early childhood landscape to recognize the need for media mentors for parents and families as well as for members of the early childhood profession themselves, whether they be teacher-education faculty or social workers in home-visiting programs.
One of her recent endeavors is to show public school teachers and leaders how to use Skype to conduct virtual field trips to places such as Yellowstone National Park, enabling children to talk with park rangers and ask questions about sites they may not otherwise have a chance to visit. For children in preschool environments, she has encouraged the use of remote video technology to engage children in nursery rhymes or songs performed by “special guests,” such as parents who call in from their workplace or relatives who live far away.
In short, her role is not to work directly with families or children but instead to bring tools and strategies to early childhood professionals who may use new literacy and language-development tools in their classrooms and who want to relay the information to families through parenting workshops or other events.
“The idea,” Martin says, “is that we can facilitate events through their center, helping them to plan.” Ultimately, she said, this can “help parents to understand how teachers use technology with their children and also how to use it at home.”
Most American children and their families are now consuming and playing with digital media and video stories (think TV) for several hours every day. Hundreds of thousands of children’s apps are in the marketplace. New online software and electronic books come online every month. Figuring out how to manage, curate, and smartly use all of these materials is a huge challenge for today’s educators and parents. Adults who work with children will increasingly need moments to talk with experts, examine and reflect upon new tools, and figure out how to customize their use of different kinds of media (print included) to help those children develop.
As Michael H. Levine and I write in Tap, Click, Read:
We cannot afford to ignore the affordances of technology, especially for disadvantaged children and families of many different backgrounds who may not otherwise have access to information and learning opportunities. And yet to leave the fate of these children to technology alone would be a big mistake.
Studies conducted in libraries, in schools, and in homes show just how much of a difference an adult can make for a child when that adult engages with kids around technology and media in ways that scaffold learning. Today’s young children who are using technology to learn and createwhile working with adults who can set good examples and guide them to new heights are receiving tremendous advantages. If only the privileged few have the opportunity for that kind of tech-assisted but human-powered learning, divides will only grow wider.
As Martin’s session ends on that morning in Fairfax, many early educators are lingering over e-book devices that Martin has passed around for demonstrations. Others chat about downloading apps to their smartphones without having to purchase expens...