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the larger picture painted by today's statistics is hard to miss: Media is embedded in children's lives and dominating hours of their days, while reading is trailing behind. The next trick is to tease out what I call the Three C's: the content, context and the individual child. What kinds of media -- what TV shows, which online games? Who's with them as they read and play, and how is that experience integrated into what they are learning or interested in? And what ages and dispositions of children are drawn to what kinds of media for what reasons? Until we can answer these questions, we will continue to be in the dark about the impact of media and its complicated connection to literacy among the next generation.

Pasnik says she sees a lot of learning potential in these newer technologies. Tablet computers for example, offer repetition, portability and the possibility of learning with gestural movements, all of which hold promise for preschool students. She cautions that many of the apps being developed today place too much emphasis on academic skills and not enough emphasis on making things, discovering, sharing and turn taking. “We do a disservice to young children in attending to a very rigid and narrow sense of math and literacy and not really paying attention to the developmental needs of this age group,” said Pasnik. “The uptake of adoption here is far in advance of the research. But that’s not to say that we can’t be really thoughtful about what we do know about children’s development.”