UWW310 Technology & Early Childhood

A list of apps from Common Sense Media- a group of parents and individuals with experience in child advocacy, media, and education. This list is for all grades of elementary school and each app is rated by the experts on a scale of both age-appropriateness and learning quality.

This is a bit biased as it is written by a company that produces and distributes e-books, but the information in it seems valid and is a different perspective than the usual negative ways technology influences education.

This article explains why neuroscientists are worried that technology and lack of active thought are rewiring children's brains and the way they process the world around them.

This article describes how some school districts in low income areas in Florida are utilizing digital libraries to help supplement their reading and exposure to technical devices for their students. It helps students by reading out loud to them and helping them understand the language and phonics in addition to giving them the skills to learn how to use the devices.

A very interesting but brief article about how three people involved in social media / high tech decided to get together and try building a start up to bring more tech into classrooms. It discusses their initial failure, which I appreciate, and how they worked around this failure to find a model that worked for them.

This link talks about Disney's new educationally based games for children, where they focus on math, but will also have ones for science, language arts and social skills. The article has some detractors, saying that Disney isn't reinventing the wheel with this, and that it isn't geared towards schools, but towards parents. I feel that it's a cleverly disguised marketing tool for Disney and isn't really pushing solid skill building.

Not directly related to children, but this article explains the reasons behind sleep disruption due to electronics that can directly relate to sleep disruption in children.

When a study was done to compare traditionally schooled children, homeschooled children (with structured lesson plans), and homeschooled children (WITHOUT structured lesson plans), the kids that faired the best were homeschooled kids WITH structured lesson plans. The article then begins to break down why that is...

Homeschooling can benefit children greatly, and while most people believe that homeschooling allows for a lack of socialization and awareness of the environments around the student, it's actually the opposite. Homeschooled children ease into college without too much trouble and easily out perform regular students. They are more independent and they are easily able to prioritize tasks to be completed.

There are many benefits to homeschooling children, but it takes a large commitment to do so. There must be some prioritizing and working around many issues to make it work. Usually one parent volunteers to stay home to become the full time "teacher" or "learning coach". Being a homeschooling parent has many benefits, one of which is to bond with the children, have more outings, and hands on experience with the kids.

This page explains how there are many benefits to homeschooling children, but there are three ways that are usually overlooked: 1) When children are homeschooled, many of the children do better than they would have traditionally done because they are able to work at their own pace. 2) Bullying is at an all time high, so more and more kids are escaping the traditional classrooms to stay home and not be bullied. 3) Standardized testing has become a nationwide headache and many families are choosing to homeschool their kids to keep them out of this type of testing.

This article tells the reader about the top 10 advantages of homeschooling your children using online learning sources/schools. There are numerous benefits to homeschooling, and being that this "new" technology is allowed through online networking, it is now possible to communicate with other children, parents, teachers, and administrators through the online forums on each homeschooling website. Which allows for ease of usage, easy communication, question and answer phases, research online, etc.

Analyzing the effect of early media exposure on children. The article explains how early exposure to age-appropriate programs designed around an educational curriculum is associated with cognitive and academic enhancement, whereas exposure to pure entertainment, and violent content in particular, is associated with poorer cognitive development and lower academic achievement.

Article focuses on new technology concerns for young children, as new innovations promise educational benefits.

A recent Radio Boston story about how classrooms in Massachusetts are implementing tablets and the potential short term and long term impacts of technology and extended screentime will have on children.

I love this video series on Youtube. It's PBS, which is cool in its own right, but this host gives great commentary and some good data to back up why Minecraft is an awesome educational tool.

Each new kind of technology has brought about enthusiasm and concerns for our children over the years.

Is excessive screen time making our kids fat? What other problems can computers be causing and how can we fix it?

Effective steps in limiting your child's screen time. Learn how to use technology as a consequence or a reward for your child. The important thing is to focus on one behavior at a time,and stay consistent.