Educational Media 101

Delia Pompa: Children show up to school eager to learn. But one thing they already know is TV. Most kids now spend four to five hours each day in front of a television. And that doesn’t count the time they spend with their Nintendos or PCs. What does this growing exposure to media mean for children’s literacy development? How can parents and teachers turn media into an educational tool? Please join me for the four-part Reading Rockets Webcast: Educational Media: Screen Time and Literacy.

Announcer: Funding for the Reading Rockets Webcast Series is provided by the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.

Delia Pompa: Hello, I’m Delia Pompa. Welcome to the Reading Rockets Webcast: Educational Media: Screen Time and Literacy. In this segment of our four-part series, we’ll look at the educational media landscape.

Joining me are three experts. Dr. Deborah Linebarger is an Assistant Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Director and Principal Investigator of the Children’s Media Lab. Lisa Guernsey is an educational journalist and the author of Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children from Birth to Age Five. She is currently Director of the Early Learning Initiative at the New America Foundation. And Marnie Lewis is the Instructional Technology Coordinator at Tuckahoe Elementary in Arlington, Virginia, where she works directly with staff to integrate technology into lessons.

Thank you all for joining us. Then let’s start with you, Lisa. What first prompted you to learn about this topic?

Lisa Guernsey: Well, I was a mother of two very young kids. And I felt pulled in a lot of different directions. And this probably sounds familiar to, you know, parents listening or even teachers with young children. I was hearing the word education all of the time on products and DVDs that were being marketed to kids. And I thought, oh, I really need to do this, like I need to make sure that I get the best things for my kids. On the other hand, I was also hearing in the news headlines, through the doctor’s office that oh, no, no, no, no, timeout and media is bad for kids. Electronic media, you know, don’t turn that on for them. So I was really feeling a little torn there. And then I also, you know, as a mom, I was feeling a little stretched and stressed. And there were times when it would just be so much easier to put in a video so that I could make that phone call and like deal with the health insurance mess-up from last week, and actually have a little bit of time of quiet without having to always be on with my children.

And I wanted to just find out, all right, what really is educational out there? If I’m going to turn on the TV for my kids or put in a DVD, what’s the best experience I can give them?

Delia Pompa: Well, you mentioned one reason why kids were spending time in front of the screen. You were calling the insurance company. But why do kids spend so much time in front of the screen?

Lisa Guernsey: You know, it’s a great question. And I think there’s a lot of things going on at once. We have screens everywhere these days. So it’s not just in the den of the living room, right? There’s the TV in multiple places of the house, but there’s also maybe a computer in the kitchen nook. Children are seeing them at the airport, the doctor’s office. As I mentioned, they’re saying no screen time, but a lot of pediatricians often, as I know, also still have the screen out there in the waiting room.

So, the screens are everywhere. And then also I think what’s happening is that children are seeing adults using screens. I mean, this is our way now, right, of getting information and finding out about the world. And children are learning from adults and modeling their behavior. And they’re seeing that we find it really important. So they too are wanting to kind of zoom in on that. And so I think we really need to think about screens as the new information window, because it really is where information is coming through to most of us. We just don’t know exactly how to use it. And that’s where we need a lot more research.

Delia Pompa: So Marnie, how does this change in the environment affect schools, and how do they adapt to this?

Marnie Lewis: It opens up the door for new tools in the classroom. The way you want to reach students is how they’re being taught at home before they come to the schools. So as Lisa said, there’s a lot of screen time already, and they’re seeing their parents taking screen time. So there’s no reason why you can’t take that as a positive and integrate that into the classroom. With guidance and proper instruction, it can be used as a positive tool. And so it’s getting the teachers prepared to use the educational media in the classroom and make it a positive learning experience for the students and sort of making that home and school connection.

Delia Pompa: Thank you. Deb, before we go any further, let’s talk about what we mean by educational media. And how does that affect screen time? What’s the interplay there?

Deborah Linebarger: Well, there are a lot of different definitions of what educational media claim to be. But technically, we, as researchers, when we categorize something as educational, it typically has a curriculum that was put in place beforehand. They probably have experts on board who help them ensure that they’re doing the best learning strategies or appropriate content for the audience. So there needs to be some emphasis on the curriculum.

And then really good educational products incorporate formative or summative research or both. So formative is we take it out there, we test it out. Do the kids actually learn? And more importantly, do they like it? Because if they don’t like it, they’re not going to come back. And then the summative kinds of evaluations happen, let’s say at the end of season one, so that we can determine whether or not a program like Super Why is meeting its educational goals.

Delia Pompa: Lisa, Sesame Street began 40 years ago. How does children’s TV evolved since then?

Lisa Guernsey: In really huge ways, you know? Because there were one or two other programs competing with Sesame Street at the time, or maybe even not competing, you know, on at different times of the day, but that were aimed at children, particularly in that two to five age range that Sesame Street shoots for. Today, we’re talking dozens of programs just aimed the 2 to 5-year-olds. Another several dozen that are aimed at the 6 to 10-year-old children.

And they’re on multiple stations. Cable TV is filled with channels that are just aimed at kids at these age ranges. So there’s just so much more products out there being aimed at young children. And there’s a huge variation in how truly educational all of this programming is, or even whether it has any kind of quality content at all involved in it.

Delia Pompa: Why has the number of shows and products being advertised as educational grown so much as of late?

Lisa Guernsey: Well, I think I actually would like to kind of go back to some of the brain science that’s been coming out of the past couple decades. We’ve been seeing a lot of really fascinating research about children’s capacity to learn, even at very young ages. That they really can start to— they’re very aware of what’s around them, they really start to build language development based on what they’re seeing and hearing around them. And the word enrichment became a buzz word of sorts, where it was, you know, this world in which we knew that children that were raised in enriched environments, or in some cases, the researchers are actually just using rats, not children, but they were in enriched environments where they could kind of play or have kind of contact with other rats. That those rat children or those children in other research did have higher brain growth, higher language development, per se.

So what happened, though, is that that kind of has gotten a little bit twisted in our understanding, as we kind of bring that into just kind of general mainstream way of thinking about what’s an enriching experience for kids. And so we’ve seen that folks who are creating products for children have really jumped on that. So how are we going to make this enriching for kids? We’re going to make sure we have as much stimulation and as many kind of moments where they can hear and see as many things as possible. Instead of looking at, okay, well, let’s go back: what do those enriching environments actually look like in that research? Hmm, it was social interaction. We had moments where a child may have actually heard a word and then repeated that word or had a question and asked someone a question and then had a caregiver, an adult answer that question. You know, these are the kind of rich experiences that the kids were having in that early brain research that we’ve seen.

So now we’re up to kind of the present day. And I think what we’re seeing is that people are starting to kind of take a step back and say, okay, wait- what does educational mean after all? And we’re at a moment where we can pause and look at what are the features that make something educational? What kind of social interaction do we need to make sure we couple with that? And how do we avoid these claims of something being educational when, in fact, they really aren’t? They’re just doing a bunch of kind of letters, numbers, colors and objects up on a screen.

Delia Pompa: So much of this exposure happens in the home, Marnie. How has this growth affected the relationship between school and the home and parents?

Marnie Lewis: I think there’s an expectation that the technology will appear in the educational experience that their child will have. They’re expecting to see video usage, website usage. And they’re actually expecting the schools to teach their child the appropriate use as well.

This needs to happen both at home and school. And I think it’s actually helped build that connection. And then parents are always looking for more ways to connect. How can I enrich my child’s experience at home? A teacher can now say, well, on the web, this is what you can find. Here are some great resources. So instead of sending home books and handouts, they can direct them to places on the web, where the child wants to be. And they can get that in meaningful experience that Lisa was talking about, where the child can ask the questions and get answers back. So they can now get that experience both at home and school.

Delia Pompa: Deb, you research a lot of aspects of educational media. How much time should children spend in front of a screen? What’s the optimum amount?

Deborah Linebarger: I don’t think it’s as simple as how much time. And so I always try to avoid that question. It really comes down to all of the literature that I’ve read and all of the research that I’ve conducted comes down to content. So kids are going to learn whatever you’re going to put in front of them. So let’s put some content in front of them that is developmentally appropriate, uses appropriate learning strategies. So if you had to nail me down to a number, maybe, and screen media encompasses not only television, but computers, video games, Nintendos, et cetera.

You know, absent of homework, I would say maybe one to two hours a day. I know that’s not– I have four children, and I know that’s not always realistic. I, you know, was doing a phone call and needed my kids to watch something so I could finish the phone call. So I think focusing more on content and then knowing that there are going to be ups and downs. There doesn’t seem to be any affect of children displacing other, you know, culturally enriching activities. We’d like to believe that, but that’s just not the case. But there are some displacement effects associated with video games that I think we need to be careful of.

And I haven’t seen to date- that doesn’t mean it’s not there- the internet displacing. I suppose it would depend on what content you were using on the internet.

Delia Pompa: So how do these recommendations compare with the actual amount of screen time kids spend?

Deborah Linebarger: Oh, kids spend way more. You know, the average for kids under two is about an hour and a half of screen media. And it grows linearly from that point until they enter formal school. And then it sort of levels off for a little bit because, you know, more than half their day is taken up at school. And then it actually begins to jump with 20-somethings who are either new moms or don’t have employment or, you know, college, that sort of thing, so it jumps back up.

I think with older kids, they’re spending about three to four hours a day, which is above that recommendation. But again, when I’ve looked at relationships among different kind of content categories, educational television can really buffer the amount of time that kids spend with media or educational media in general. So I would rather emphasize content over time.

Delia Pompa: Well, that’s an optimistic note. Marnie, very young kids are fascinated by computers. Can they manage them on their own?

Marnie Lewis: On their own? At the age level we’re talking, we’re talking, you know, pre-K to third, there needs to be guidance. There needs to be the modeling of proper use. How to determine appropriate versus inappropriate. And those guidelines need to be set up by the parent. You wouldn’t send your child to play out in the street without setting up rules and regulations, or even keeping an eye on them, for that matter. So you wouldn’t set your child in front of a TV or a computer, hopefully, and not do the same. Especially a computer, because there’s so many avenues in which they could digress into other areas. So you want to set up those sites that they can go to that you’ve already checked.

TV as well, you know, you set those guidelines. And hopefully those stay true and get followed.

Deborah Linebarger: Can I add to that? You know, we just did a recent study looking at children living in economically disadvantaged circumstances. And were interviewing parents about what they thought their expectations were for teachers and for them and what their role should be in technology. And actually, they believe that the school should be doing all of the instruction. And in a sort of mini-ethnography, we were using web-based media. And they said, I don’t want to have to sit there with them. These were with 3, 4 and 5-year-olds. I want them to be able to do it on their own. And so if I have to sit there and help them navigate, it’s not something that I’m going to continue to do, which is really discouraging.

And I don’t know how, you know, this was a population entirely of economically disadvantaged families. So it’s not clear if this translates to other families.

Marnie Lewis: It goes both ways.

Deborah Linebarger: Yes.

Marnie Lewis: Because I work with a very advantaged population. And I had parents come to me and say to me, Marnie, how do I know what’s okay for my kids to use? And I would tell them. I said, like the example I gave you, you wouldn’t send your child out into the world without setting up guidelines or knowing where they’re going or watching them, what they’re doing. I said, the same happens on the computer. We’re going to teach them rules here too. But the thing is, there’s parameters. And most school systems, there are firewalls set up.

So they’re protected. There’s a filter. But at home, unless you’ve set that up on your own, it’s going to be a free-for-all.

Delia Pompa: We’ve established that kids are spending lots of time in front of screens. So Lisa, what factors contribute to making sure the screen time is literacy-rich?

Lisa Guernsey: The one piece of advice that I give a lot is to think about content and context. And so it goes back to what Deb was talking about with content. And let me just give an example here to maybe bring this home. So parents may find that as long as children are watching a show on Noggin or PBS or Discovery or something that seems aimed at kids, it’s probably to be okay for them. And hey, they’re probably going to learn something, right? There are some shows, though, that are not— the content is not designed so that the kids can actually really receive that information and be able to call it later and really learn it.

So Bob the Builder is the example I’ve given a couple of times. And it’s just really based on watching my own children watch Bob the Builder. There was an episode that was all about Bob having to create this festival. And he was supposed to build a stall where they could sell popcorn. And so most of the show was how Bob was going to build a stall, and he was going to get all of his friends to help him build this stall. And I think he probably used the word stall a dozen times on the show. And this is one I happened to be watching with my kids. And they were three and five at the time, so slightly maybe younger than what we’re talking about. But I think some of this stuff still applies.

At the end of the show, it was over, and I just happened to ask, I was like, so what is a stall? And my 3-year-old just looked at me blankly. No idea what a stall. My 5-year-old says, you know, mommy, I have no idea. And the show had been all about building a stall. So what happened was at no moment on that show did the character on screen actually point to, point and label, point to what he was talking about and say I’m going to build this, and this is what it looks like, and here is the definition of it. So there was a constant repetition of the word, but not in a way that it helped them learn.

Delia Pompa: So you’ve looked at a number of TV programs for the quality of their educational program. What are you finding about their literacy instruction?

Deborah Linebarger: There are a variety of programs. And they all sort of come at it in different ways, which I think is a good thing. Because kids need lots of opportunities, varied formats and repetition of similar ideas across these varied contexts. And so what we’re finding is, depending upon the age and the child’s previous experience, narrative formatted programs tend to really help kids develop narrative production comprehension skills, and help them to be able to organize and structure a story sequence. Expository programs, something like Zoboomafoo, which is my 3-year-old’s current favorite. And I think I’ve watched some of the episodes about 17 times.

Lisa Guernsey: We’re very familiar with that one in our house, too.

Deborah Linebarger: Spots and Stripes! That’s an informational kind of text. And a lot of times, that’s really what they think contributes dramatically to the fourth grade slump. Kids don’t have time with informational text. And so television can provide that opportunity. So sort of at a macro-genre level, narratives really support comprehending processes, and the way that kids comprehend at age six, from a television show, predicts later reading comprehension. So the same underlying skills, but we can identify kids sooner.

Whereas informational texts seem to support vocabulary and conceptual kinds of learning, which is also vitally important, especially for children who may not have all those kinds of things in their homes. And so it can provide vocabulary and connections to that vocabulary. But they need a lot of practice, because informational text, even in print, like a DK, I think the one my daughter’s been reading is horses, so it gives you all the facts about horses and that sort of thing. But if you don’t have any experience, you don’t know how to— the structural features, you know, cause and effect, compare and contrast are really challenging. So that probably needs a lot more support in it.

And then we just find that code skills, literacy skills are really powerfully supported when you can visually represent them. So there’s a great segment, Between the Lions, where they have Wayne’s Word. And so you have one knight running with his horse, and he might have an “h”. And the other one’s running and has “at.” And so you hear the one say /h/ and then /at/ and /h/ and /at/, and then they run into each other and they make “hat.”

And that visual kinesthetic almost way of putting the letters together is incredibly powerful. And the coolest thing about that was when kids watched it and the light bulb went on, it was amazing, it was amazing.

Delia Pompa: So if there’s positive content like this, does this mean, Lisa, that television and video games are an acceptable substitute for parents and teachers?

Lisa Guernsey: As a substitute, no, no. But I think what we need to do is think about kind of how to build some harmony between these two worlds, right?

For the longest time, we’ve been seeing that that should just be the kid’s domain, you know? And that’s when they’re kind of going and playing on their own. And absolutely, kids will need some time when parents shouldn’t be in their face all the time asking them questions. But we need to be thinking about how to use these video games and these TV shows or computer-based kind of video to help inform what’s happening at school. And we need to find ways to bring the school day into more in line with what kids are engaging with at home. And until we kind of get there, we’re going to have this total disconnect. And they’re going to feel like they haven’t gotten anything really engaging out of their experience.

Delia Pompa: Great. Lisa, then, what can this media explicitly not offer kids?

Lisa Guernsey: What it can’t do is the social interaction part. I mentioned at the beginning, and I think this is where perhaps technology will get us there over time, but we need to think seriously about how much children are missing when they don’t have a back-and-forth conversation with someone. And when it’s just thoughts from media, they don’t do that.

Delia Pompa: Thank you. Thank you. Marnie, then what can this media not offer teachers?

Marnie Lewis: The respite. What Lisa was talking about, often teachers use it as a filler. And it can be misused. And it’s something I work to fight all the time, and to get the teachers to just put some sort of assessment in place, questioning going around.

Because even if you bring your classroom into a lab and just letting them navigate a website, there has to be a purpose set in place so that you’re assessing it and leading with some kind of knowledge gained, opposed to just the fun experience. You want that to be part of it as well, but there needs to be an end result.

Delia Pompa: Thank you. And thank you everyone. We’ll wrap up this segment now, but the discussion isn’t over. Please join us for Part 2 of this webcast, when we’ll be talking about the impact and the quality of educational media. For more information about how you can help the struggling reader in your life, and to watch the rest of this webcast, please visit us at www.readingrockets.org. Again, thank you for joining us.

Announcer: Funding for the Reading Rockets Webcast Series is provided by the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.