Familes and Technology

Exchange Every Day Newsletter reports: A recent report from the Sesame Workshop, "Families Matter: Designing Media for a Digital Age, documents how digital technology is changing the rhythm of family life. The report finds that families are in a transition period, one in which parents recognize the importance of technology in their children’s learning and future success, but don’t always grant them access to the newer forms of media transforming their own adult lives. 

The report offers recommendations to bolster the development of media content that can support learning and encourage adult-child interactions:

• Tailor media platforms for children — Many media platforms are designed for adult use.  Media producers should examine how the features of new platforms (e.g., 3-D, touch screens) relate to children’s developing cognitive, social, and physical capabilities.
• Investigate co-viewing for new media — Research shows that children learn more from television programs when they watch with a parent.  Co-participation should be explored for video games, e-books, tablet devices, and other media that will encourage adults to engage with children in activities to further enhance their learning.
• Foster teamwork — Digital media are often faulted for children spending less time socializing face-to-face with peers and family.  Producers should design content that drives participants to interact and play together.
• Design for healthy development — Adults are concerned that digital media are superseding activities including outdoor exercise, imaginative play, and socializing.  Media producers should look to use technology to get children involved in these foundational activities.

The Child-driven Education TED talk

In 1999, Sugata Mitra and his colleagues dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an Internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other.

In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge. Mitra, who's now a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University (UK), calls it "minimally invasive education."

"Education-as-usual assumes that kids are empty vessels who need to be sat down in a room and filled with curricular content. Dr. Mitra's experiments prove that wrong." Linux Journal

Why Technology Integration?

Today’s students grew up with technology; it is a part of their everyday lives. Technology is revolutionizing how we think, work, and play. Many homes have computers and Internet connections. Technologies such as MP3 players, cell phones, and laptop computers have the ability to empower users in a whole new way—especially with user-created Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and YouTube. The way we interact with the Web has changed from a pull-down model to an interactive, push model. Our students EXPECT technology to be used in the classroom and as a part of their learning experience.

More and more studies show that technology integration improves students’ learning processes and outcomes because students become actively engaged in the learning process. George Lucas’ Educational Foundation, Edutopia, the Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET) found that, "when used in collaborative learning methods and leadership that is aimed at improving the school through technology planning, technology impacts achievement in content area learning, promotes higher-order thinking and problem solving skills, and prepares students for the workforce.” reported that “

Another reason for technology integration is the necessity of today's students to have 21st Century Skills. The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory defines Digital-Age Literacy as the following:

• Basic Literacy: Language proficiency (in English) and numeracy at levels necessary to function on the job and in society to achieve one's goals and to develop one's knowledge and potential in this Digital Age.
• Scientific Literacy: Knowledge and understanding of the scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity.
• Economic Literacy: The ability to identify economic problems, alternatives, costs, and benefits; analyze the incentives at work in economic situations; examine the consequences of changes in economic conditions and public policies; collect and organize economic evidence; and weigh costs against benefits.
• Technological Literacy: Knowledge about what technology is, how it works, what purposes it can serve, and how it can be used efficiently and effectively to achieve specific goals.
• Visual Literacy: The ability to interpret, use, appreciate, and create images and video using both conventional and 21st century media in ways that advance thinking, decision making, communication, and learning.
• Information Literacy: The ability to evaluate information across a range of media; recognize when information is needed; locate, synthesize, and use information effectively; and accomplish these functions using technology, communication networks, and electronic resources.
• Multicultural Literacy: The ability to understand and appreciate the similarities and differences in the customs, values, and beliefs of one's own culture and the cultures of others.
• Global Awareness: The recognition and understanding of interrelationships among international organizations, nation-states, public and private economic entities, sociocultural groups, and individuals across the globe.

“I’m not comfortable with technology” or “this is the way I was taught,” or “this is how I’ve taught for 10-15-20 years,” or “I don’t want to seem dumb in front of the students” can no longer be viable excuses. As society changes, the skills needed to negotiate the complexities of life also change. At the turn of the century (1900s), a person who had acquired simple reading, writing, and calculating skills was considered literate. There is an information explosion. Our students must learn HOW to access the information, HOW to analyze and evaluate it, HOW to use it to make personal and socially responsible decisions, HOW to communicate across cultures for interpersonal and presentation needs. Education can no longer be expected to disseminate a discrete body of knowledge and we must change our view of what it means to be “literate” and “educated.”