Educational Media: Audience Questions

Delia Pompa: How can educational media help engaged reluctant readers? What is the role of libraries in this equation? What can this medium do for English language learners? For the answers to these and other questions from our audience please join us for segment four of the 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: Hi I’m Delia Pompa. Welcome to the Reading Rockets Webcast- Educational Media: Screen Time and Literacy. In earlier segments, we’ve discussed the reach of media, its impact on children’s literacy skills and how it can best be used. Now it’s time to hear from our audience.

But first, let’s welcome back our guests, Dr. Linebarger, Ms. Lewis and Ms. Guernsey, my old pals here. So if you’re ready we’re going to get started with the first question from the audience.

Audience Questioner #1: What can libraries and media specialists do to help parents navigate the field of educational media?

Delia Pompa: Marnie why don’t you take this one?

Marnie Lewis: It’s a great question. They have an avenue through the web and also through newsletters. I think it would be great if more library media specialists would communicate and share the resources with the parents at home, whether creating a website for themselves on the web or creating a newsletter, or evening offering an evening session which I’ve done in the past to expose parents to the resources that are available to them.

Delia Pompa: Thanks. Lisa we’ve got one for you.

Audience Questioner #2: What value does educational media offer in terms of social development?

Lisa Guernsey: Well, if we think back to the context, the importance of context, we can gain a lot from educational media when it comes to the social component. We know that the way children play can have a really positive impact on their social development and their interaction with peers and their ability to kind of self-regulate, hold themselves back, not be too impulsive. If we can think about using educational media as a platform for better play, for more play, for more creative scenarios that children can set up then it can be a great trampoline for them.

But we have to make sure that we give them some time when they don’t have it always on. We do need to give children some moments where we turned off the TV and they’re not in front of the computer, and they can just go and play with their friends and use the themes and the ideas that they’ve learned from the media and then really take it from there.

Delia Pompa: Okay well let’s go to the media ourselves to electronic media and we’re going to take an e-mail question. This one comes from Ryan in New York and Ryan asks how can educational media be used to help improve the literacy skills of English language learners. Deb would you like to take that?

Deborah Linebarger: Sure. I’ve done a number of studies, and there is a growing body of literature with English language learners; that one of the key features and it’s not unique to this population of children but media is incredibly engaging. And so what it can do is motivate them in ways that traditional instruction may have difficulty and they can feel confident with it. And we have found the actually more robust effects with English language learners than with some other populations of children who are struggling to learn to read. And I think a lot of that comes from the way that language is used in educational media really can support the needs of an English language learner and it’s sort of coupling it with the whole engagement appeal factor.

Delia Pompa: We’ve got so much to learn. We have a person waiting at the mic right now and I believe this question is going to be for Marnie.

Audience Questioner #3: How can this medium be used to help motivate reluctant readers?

Marnie Lewis: I think the key is engagement where we’re talking about characters that are known to these students that they find to love it. So it encourages them to maybe explore new topics in the library when they go back to school or even with their parents when they go to the local library, is to find out more about dinosaurs or to find out more about the rain forest that they learned about by watching Zoboomafoo or by watching Arthur when he travels. So the educational media gives that visual queue to say hey this is really interesting: go out and learn more about it.

Delia Pompa: Lots of information. We have another question in the studio audience.

Audience Questioner #4: A growing trend is to put TV’s in children’s bedrooms. What impact does that seem to have on a child’s literacy development?

Delia Pompa: Deb, I think you’ve done some research on this.

Deborah Linebarger: I’ve done some research and this is another one of those five years ago I would have clearly said absolutely not and I mostly stick by that because usually the kind of exposure is unmonitored. Kids with bedroom televisions as a whole tend to watch more media, they also tend to have video games; a lot of unsupervised, unmonitoring going on.

However, in a recent study with American Indian Alaska-native preschoolers who all lived below the poverty threshold, all lived on reservations, when those children who had bedroom televisions actually didn’t have books in the home or had very few, their literary scores were actually at the same level as the kids who had the traditional roots to literacy. So, I wondered if this was a cultural phenomenon or was this a resource phenomenon.

So we just completed a large parent survey, we oversampled American Indian Alaska-native children again; this is from eight months to eight years. We also had a large sample of economically disadvantaged children. I tested it with language this time and found the relationship again with American Indian Alaska-native preschoolers, and I found it in a low income sample. So what I think it provides for these children, low income and minority children tend to watch more media, they place more value on it and watching more and valuing it more has in other kinds of research led to learning more from it. And so what I think is going on is it provides a resource. One of my favorite papers by Keith Mielke in 1994- I cite it in practically every paper I write- is educational television in his case can provide an unduplicated educational resource for these families. And in this regard, I would say that a bedroom television can help kids who may not have the traditional roots to literacy.

Delia Pompa: Well while we’re on controversial questions, let me go to the e-mail where we have a question that might also press some buttons. How should parents deal with the recommendation from pediatricians that kids under two years old should not be exposed to television or any screen time. Lisa?

Lisa Guernsey: Yeah, well I get that question quite a bit and I really understand the reason behind it. First let me give you some context. The American Academy of Pediatrics in 1999 said, “We really don’t think that there’s any value at all to a child under the age of two being exposed to media, and we recommend that parents have zero screen time for children at that age.”

Since then there’s been more and more media available to children at that age, and parents I really do believe parents just are really stretched. I mean, two parent, two income families, there’s very little time to do the things they need to do around the house. So they’re trying to find these kinds of times and when you have the very, very young kids it’s incredibly time-intensive. What I’ve been saying to folks when they ask me that question is let’s think about what the AAP was doing when they put out that information. They were looking at the research that we know on how much social interaction matters to young children; how much they need to hear mom and dad talk to them, converse with them, even when they’re as young as nine months old, even when they’re as young as six months old, even younger. They need to have that back and forth. That’s so important to them, and there is the worry that screen media would replace that.

What I tell parents is: if we’re going to use media with children at these very young ages, just make sure it’s not replacing any value in that direction. Don’t ever think it’s better what you can provide as a parent. What you can provide is the best thing for your kids which is that really loving kind of one on one interaction with them in that language that they can hear and respond to.

Delia Pompa: It’s the more, not the instead of. We want to get in more questions so let’s go to the microphone.

Audience Questioner #5: Hi. How can educational media be useful for students with learning disabilities?

Delia Pompa: Marnie you have some experience you want to share with us around that.

Marnie Lewis:Definitely. I think this goes back to differentiating. The set up is similar in that most of these educational medias are multimodal in that there is a visual, there’s audio, and there’s tactile opportunities for learners with disabilities to meet their needs across the spectrum. So I think we’re doing a good job in developing educational media that serves the needs of this population. The educator needs to be there to reinforce its usage.

Delia Pompa: Thank you. We’re going back to the e-mail inbox for our next question which is from Mary in Delaware and Mary asks how much do we know about screen time’s impact on a child’s brain development? Lisa?

Lisa Guernsey: We don’t know as much as we think we do. I think that’s a short answer there. We certainly know a lot more about brain development in young children. And we know much- as I said this kind of really language-rich conversation, rich experiences, are important to young children. And we’re learning more about how if a child could perhaps have some sort of language rich experience through a screening, maybe they’ll get that same benefit.

What we don’t know are long-term what are the effects of this, we don’t know how to slice by content area very well in terms of what is happening in the brain when a child sees something really aggressive on-screen or something really scary on-screen, how is that impacting them in the short term and the long term. So there’s just a lot more that we need to focus on there in terms of what’s happening up there with the synapses and the connections that are being made in the brain that children watch.

Delia Pompa: Thanks. Let’s go back to the studio audience for the next question.

Audience Questioner #6: How will mobile technologies like iPods and cell phones change the landscape of educational media?

Delia Pompa: Lisa would you take this one also?

Lisa Guernsey: Yeah, well I’ve been looking at some of the research that Sesame workshop’s been doing with the iPod and I find it really fascinating because I think that we may be getting to a place where children are becoming- even at very young ages, six, seven years old- they’re interacting with cell phones, they’re interacting with iPods. My seven year old has an iPod for instance, and they’re very adept with that. They like the touch screen technology that we see on the iPhone and it enables them to manipulate things in the way they can’t with the tiny little keyboards right? So, over time we may find that those become as much an educational device for young children as books and as larger screens do. But again, we need more research and let me just finish this. Sesame workshop research was looking at how parents and young children could interact with an iPod-like device when they show a video of a particular word. Say, the word of the day is “persevere” or the word of the day is “crayon” or whatever is appropriate for that age group; and then they would show a video related to that word and then they would give tips to parents through text messages- tips to parents on how you might use this word later as a way to kind of reinforce it. And so maybe and over time we’ll start seeing that those can be used in educational context more readily.

Delia Pompa: That’s a good place to end looking at the future. Thank you, everyone for your thoughtful answers. I’m going to put you all on the spot just one more time. Could each of you leave us with one final thought about screen time and literacy and let’s start with you Deb.

Deborah Linebarger: I guess my final thought and my mantra is, it really comes down to content and content is key. So Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement that the medium is the message- no it’s not, the content is the message. The message is the message. So, if we can help parents understand what good content looks like I don’t think it’s going to matter which device brings it to their children. It’s really going to come back to content and how that content is created for a particular age group.

Delia Pompa: Thanks Deb. Lisa, a final thought?

Lisa Guernsey: Yes, I would just stress that we know that educational media is not going away, and we know that screens are this new kind of window on the world for children. So, we’ve got to start thinking about how to use them as a jumping off point than to the rich or social interactions that we know are so important to kids; and to the content knowledge that we know is so important for reading comprehension in the later years. And we shouldn’t be thinking of it as just another wedge out of time where we’re not really going to pay attention to what children really need. We have to understand it as an information window.

Delia Pompa: Close it out for us Marnie.

Marnie Lewis: I think it comes down to moderation as with anything in life. It may get purposeful, and the experiences for children need to be guided. We need to model, we need to show them at this young age the appropriate ways to use the technology, to get the best benefit out of it and if you just put the time in early on as with any kind of discipline with your child, any kind of rearing, you’re going to find that the benefit outweighs the exhaustive time that it’s going to take you maybe to teach those basics. But it will pay off in the end. So take the time, make it guided and moderate it.

Delia Pompa: Thanks Marnie. Thank you all so much and thank you for joining us. To view all segments of this webcast and for more information about how you can help the struggling readers in your life, 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.