Exploring Key Issues in Early Childhood and Technology

Evolving Perspectives and Innovative Approaches

Chip Donohue

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429854682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Exploring Key Issues in Early Childhood and Technology offers early childhood allies, both in the classroom and out, a cutting-edge overview of the most important topics related to technology and media use in the early years.

In this powerful resource, international experts share their wealth of experience and unpack complex issues into a collection of accessibly written essays. This text is specifically geared towards practitioners looking for actionable information on screen time, cybersafety, makerspaces, coding, computational thinking, STEM, AI and other core issues related to technology and young children in educational settings. Influential thought leaders draw on their own experiences and perspectives, addressing the big ideas, opportunities and challenges around the use of technology and digital media in early childhood. Each chapter provides applications and inspiration, concluding with essential lessons learned, actionable next steps and a helpful list of recommended further reading and resources.

This book is a must-read for anyone looking to explore what we know – and what we still need to know – about the intersection between young children, technology and media in the digital age.

Chapter 1

Media and Marriage

“From This Day Forward, for Better or for Worse”

Lewis Bernstein

From This Day Forward

An odious comparison – Media and Marriage. Or is it? One is supposed to be sacred. Wait: both can be; or unfortunately both can be profane.

When I first began working at Sesame Street as a young researcher I remember reviewing a draft of a particular script. I told one of the creative geniuses of Sesame Street that the script had no educational goal, no real joyful, redeeming entertaining value, no nothing. His response: “it’s a goddam television show”. I was in shock. After all, this was Sesame Street – so much more than just a television show. And then, after getting to know this talented artist better, I recognized he didn’t really believe that, if he did he wouldn’t be working there. He was just complaining about the process – the mandate that had young researchers and educators like me review and critique every (expletive, according to him) idea that he and the other writers were doing. Creatives and educators were indeed in a shotgun marriage for better or worse. We were in it together, despite complaints from both sides, of which there were many, as in every marriage.

Everyone who worked on Sesame Street knew it was much more than just a goddam television show. In fact, quite the opposite, most felt it was a sacred mission, a calling. It grew out of the culture of the late 1960s and the dreams that, as a country, we could engineer both rockets to the moon and a “head start” for all of our nation’s preschool children. We believed we could raise the quality of education for all children through a medium that could reach into every home. A medium that had not been used in the main to educate. A medium that had been called a “vast wasteland” by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman, Newton N. Minow, in 1961.

And yet a medium that Joan Cooney, a creative documentary producer, and Lloyd Morrisett, a cognitive psychologist and foundation executive, decided to experiment with, because of its ubiquitous reach and its unexplored potential to deliver content of value to the nation’s preschool children: especially those who were disadvantaged and unable to attend preschools, but who, in the main, had access to television in their homes. They believed presciently that television’s powerful formats could provide opportunities to educate with action, song, drama and humor.

“We believed we could raise the quality of education for all children through a medium that could reach into every home. A medium that had not been used in the main to educate. A medium that had been called a vast wasteland.”

In some ways, by taking on a heavily criticized medium, Joan and Lloyd were playing with fire. As Marshall McLuhan framed it: “the medium was the message” (1964), and the medium was considered a big negative. I remember when the Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked how he and his Ultra-Orthodox Chasidim could possibly dare to use the television medium to teach values – the very same tool that delivered violence and pornography to so many – he gave an answer still relevant today for producers and consumers of media, alike. The story has been told that he pointed to a knife on his desk saying:

You see this knife – it can be used to cut challah on the Sabbath as an instrument of blessing, or God forbid it could be used as an instrument of violence. It is inherently neutral: it all depends on how it is used.

Responsibility begins with the creator/producer. This is something that most creators and producers are either oblivious to, want no part of, or deny. But there is no getting around that producers have a responsibility to own up to what they produce for future generations. We/they certainly take credit when awards are given out. We/they are not exempt from the negative impact of our productions and acts of creation.

Yet that responsibility is not the creators’ alone; it is shared by others as well – parents, educators and even policymakers – who bear some responsibility about what content is allowed to enter our homes, schools, devices, and through them into the minds of our children. We all share responsibility to mediate our children’s exposure to media. What content do we feel will support children’s cognitive, emotional, social and moral development? What content is akin to food that is pernicious, and what is nutritious, and what is just acceptable as occasional junk food treats? How do we provide guidance and mediation for our children who are inundated with all too many options? How do we guide busy parents and teachers about children’s screen time, and about the contents themselves? And how do we provide guidance to the producers, and pipeline and platform owners, about both their responsibilities and the opportunities they have to contribute to our nation’s children and the future of this country?

These are some of the questions that I am concerned with in my post-Sesame Street years. My attention has shifted from television to the big platforms that reach so many of the world’s children. These are the ubiquitous platforms of today, akin to the television medium when Sesame Street first began. Many of the executives I have met, at Facebook and elsewhere, are very aware of their responsibilities and are legitimately concerned about protecting children from the downside of media and the perils that can prey on them. But that is only half of the equation: the glass half-empty approach. My physician wife shared a basic premise of medicine with me when I first began working at Sesame Street: primum non nocere – first do no harm. But that’s just a beginning – necessary but insufficient. Education and enlightenment is about more. Just as medicine is concerned with preventing as well as treating disease – it is also importantly concerned about wellness, nutrition, exercise and immunizations too. Big media and the big platforms, like Facebook, Google and Yahoo, Amazon, Netflix and others, need to be concerned about potential and opportunities, not only safety and protection, and damage control.

“… how do we provide guidance to the producers, and pipeline and platform owners, about both their responsibilities and the opportunities they have to contribute to our nation’s children and the future of this country?”

What do I advise big media based on what I have learned through my 40-plus years at Sesame? Below are four big ideas I learned working both sides of the creative/educator shotgun marriage that was Sesame. I recommend producers, parents, educators and policymakers alike think seriously and systematically about them all. Above all, I recommend they do their best to foster learning through joy, humor, play, adventure and safe, guided experimentation for all children; that they mine children’s potential for agency, empowerment, creativity, expression and build children’s ability and belief in themselves to change the world for the better. And I remind them that 40 years ago Sesame Street served as a window to the world for children, especially disadvantaged children who typically would not be exposed to those different from themselves, or places far away.

“I remind these mega media platforms that they have the unique opportunity today to introduce children to a diversity of people and cultures, ideas and perspectives from around the world and encourage learning about the ‘other’ while learning most importantly about themselves, our own nation’s values, as well as timeless universal ones.”

Big media can do that too. Sesame Street provided virtual visits to museums to expose children to art created by the world’s great artists, and music by the world’s best musicians, and so I remind these mega media platforms that they have the unique opportunity today to introduce children to a diversity of people and cultures, ideas and perspectives from around the world and encourage learning about the “other” while learning most importantly about themselves, our own nation’s values, as well as timeless universal ones.

Vision, Values and Zeitgeist

It all begins with a vision that takes into account the values that one feels are essential to convey to the next generation, especially during a particular zeitgeist – the social, cultural, educational and political climate of the times. Of course, one needs to convey the timeless universal values that transcend a particular zeitgeist. But being sensitive to the needs of a particular moment in time provides opportunity, and at times a readiness for acceptance that might not be available at another point in time.

In the late 1960s, when Sesame Street began, it was not only a time of the launching of rockets to the moon, but also a time of great cultural upheaval – protests against racism, protests against an unpopular war, the beginning of the Great Society programs: in short, a time of great experimentation. Sesame Street, too, was an experiment to see if the television medium could be used to educate. And, within the series, Sesame launched mini-experiments with new formats for television – short commercial-like segments purposefully intended to teach letters, words, numbers, mathematical concepts and more, instead of persuading consumers to purchase a particular product. The thinking: if Tony the Tiger could sell Frosted Flakes, short segments could be used to educate. The street scenes and live-action films were intentional too: to support a vision of pluralism, of harmony from diversity, modeling Blacks and Whites, a Jewish shopkeeper and an Hispanic fix-it shop owner, Muppets of all colors and temperaments, all living together on one street, listening to each other and resolving their clear differences with humor and, mostly, amicably.

What were those transcendent and timeless values that Sesame Street was conveying implicitly and explicitly?

• First and foremost, it was recognition of, respect for and an embrace of the richness of human diversity, with a social agenda for inclusiveness – whether that inclusiveness was of different races, economic strata, language groups, immigrants or native-born Americans, and/or level of ability or challenge.
• Second, was the message that everyone can learn, probably differently, with some formats and curriculum goals more appealing and easier for some, and others for others, leading us to try lots of different approaches.
• Third, learning can be and should be fun, so we integrated joy with learning, education with entertainment.
• Fourth since our whole Sesame endeavor was an experiment, the ultimate arbiters of our success or failure, of what would be included and continued, was to be decided through research: what did our audience of children engage in and learn from best?

These issues are still relevant today, but given the current zeitgeist we need to go much further, by emphasizing civility, the need to listen to each other, especially to opinions that different from our own. We need not only to protect children from too much of anything that will pollute their brains – on whatever medium they may be using at the moment – but we need also, and maybe even more importantly, help children develop their own internal filters to distinguish between fact and fiction, truth from lies, something important from something trivial. We need to help children to also develop a sense of justice, fairness, compassion and a way to distinguish right from wrong. We cannot assume that children will develop these precious filters and even more precious values by osmosis: certainly, not from any political leadership. And we need to help children develop an understanding of how to manage and balance their time for maximum benefit on the continuity that for them consists of both online and off-line experiences.

“These issues are still relevant today but given the current zeitgeist, we need to go much further, by emphasizing civility, the need to listen to each other, especially to opinions that different from our own … and help children to develop their own internal filters to distinguish between fact and fiction, a sense of justice, fairness, compassion and a way to distinguish right from wrong.”

The Child, Family and Community

In his poem, “The Diameter of the Bomb”, Yehuda Amichai (1996) describes the limited but lethal size of a bomb, and how its impact diffuses across the lives of those it wounds, and those relatives close by and far away perhaps on the other side of the world, and even God on his throne above. And what is the diameter of an education? It starts with an individual child with a unique character who – if we are good teachers – we help to learn first about who he or she is and who he or she can become, about developing his or her physical, cognitive, social and moral self. Then we help teach that child to relate to siblings, parents, family, friends and the other. What we teach has the potential to not only funnel inwards and enter a child’s mind, heart and soul, but through media can also ripple outwards not only to the child’s parents and siblings, but further into the world so much more widely. We media producers think about the masses who can be exposed to what we produce. But we need to begin by thinking about the unique characteristics of each individual child, his and her needs, abilities, tastes, as well as the collective universal values and contents that will help build that child’s character to become a contributing member of a world he or she will lead into the future.

Tradition, Experimentation and Personal Responsibility

We know a lot about education and media. We need to transmit and build on what we know – both in terms of content and formats. But we also need to innovate and experiment with the formats of how we convey knowledge and allow our children to assimilate and share knowledge. At Sesame Street when we began, we knew a lot about modeling theory, associative learning and more. But how we put those theories into practice through the television medium demanded experimentation, which we did lots of, learning through empirical iterative research what worked and what didn’t. We need a dose of that same kind of experimentation with the new tech tools of today that can allow for the different skills that we want our children to master. We would be wise to support both foundational learning of traditional skills in classic education as well as to experiment with new ways to transmit knowledge, legacy and values. We must not be afraid to embrace the unknown. Yet – as James Oberg a space engineer once said – “let’s not be so open minded that our brains fall out” (Sagan, 1996, p. 187). We have a responsibility to be vigilant and mediate how and how much our children use these wonderful new tools. We need to remember and take greater advantage of the fact that education is not confined to the limited time our children spend in the classroom. I remember when our eldest daughter had her first playdate with a neighbor’s child. The father asked me a question about what my child was learning, and I told him I wasn’t sure, but I trusted her excellent teacher. He responded: are you going to leave the education of your child to her school alone? That comment struck a deep chord. You mean I now had to do something too? I was now on the line, responsible, no longer fully comfortable delegating the education of my child just to her school.

What does that mean today for all of us who are so busy with all the opportunities and risks of the world in front of our children though all the me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Foreword: Milton Chen
• Spotlight on Innovation, Impact and Influence
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Introduction
• 1. Media and Marriage: “From This Day Forward, for Better or for Worse”
• 2. Five Things That Haven’t Changed (Much)
• 3. Fred Rogers: The Media Mentor We Need to Navigate the Digital Age
• 4. Smartphones and Tablets and Kids – Oh My, Oh My
• 5. When the Technology Disappears
• 6. Seeing Is Believing: Racial Diversity in Children’s Media
• 7. Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs: Children’s Rights in the Digital Environment
• 8. Child-Centered Design: Integrating Children’s Rights and Ethics into the Heart of the Design Process
• 9. Digital Play
• 10. Coding as Another Language: Why Computer Science in Early Childhood Should Not Be STEM
• 11. Personalized Education and Technology: How Can We Find an Optimal Balance?
• 12. Makerspaces in the Early Years: Enhancing Digital Literacy and Creativity
• 13. Mobile Media and Parent–Child Interaction
• 14. No Surprise: Families Matter in Digital-Based Learning
• 15. A Mission for Media Mentors: Creating Critical Thinkers
• 16. Digesting the iScreen Decade: What Should Media Makers, Policymakers and Philanthropy Do Next?
• 17. Childhood 2040: A Wish List
• Afterword
• Learn More
• Index