Educational Media: Screen Time and Literacy

Program description

With televisions, computers, video games, and cell phones, modern culture makes it difficult to escape time in front of a screen, especially for our newest generation of kids. Today, children six and under watch over 28 hours of television a week, nearly half of them have used a computer, and more than one in four has played a video game.

What does this growing exposure mean for our children's literacy development? Is it more harmful than helpful? Can parents and teachers use media effectively in their homes and schools? If so, how? In this webcast, three experts will tackle the questions raised by the new and growing field of educational media and discuss the research being done, the practical solutions available, and the many answers we're still hoping to find.

Presenters

Deb Linebarger, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the director and principal investigator of the Children's Media Lab. Her research focuses on the relationships among children's developmental status, their use of media, and their larger social worlds. Her work has been presented at numerous conferences and published in psychology, communication, education, and pediatric medicine books and journals.

Lisa Guernsey, is the author of Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children From Birth to Age 5. She is also the Director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan think tank and incubator for explanatory and investigative journalism on pressing policy issues, and a regular contributor to the Early Ed Watch blog. Lisa has been writing about education for nearly 15 years, as a staff writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times, and has contributed articles to The Washington Post, Newsweek and other publications.

Marnie Lewis is the Instructional Technology Coordinator at Tuckahoe Elementary in Arlington, Virginia where she evaluates educational sites and software to enhance instruction and works directly with staff to integrate technology in to lessons. She received a B.S. in elementary education from Northeastern University, completed graduate work in instructional technology through George Mason University, and has taught in classrooms for over 10 years. She is also a PBS Teacher, a Smart Exemplary Educator, and a Discovery Star Educator.

Recommended resources

For parents

This book by presenter Lisa Guernsey presents practical advice on the best ways to use and manage screen time with your kids.

• Into the Minds of Babes: How Screen Time Affects Children from Birth to Age Five

These sites help child learn how to read at home and identify letters and sounds.

• Starfall
• PBS KIDS Raising Readers

These sites help kids from pre-K to 3rd grade begin to understand what a social network is and how to properly interact in that environment.

• Panwapa
• Club Penguin

For teachers

• VoiceThread allows the user to create a multimedia presentation that consists of photos, text, and audio. Here are four examples from panelist Marnie Lewis' school.
• BrainPOP Jr provides lots of free interactive learning games for reading, writing, science, social studies, and math.
• Sheppard Software offers lots of free online games, activities, and quizzes. Topics include vocabulary, U.S. and world geography, history, animals, math, and nutrition.
• Lit2Go includes a database of audio recordings of various stories and poems.
• Google Lit Trips demonstrates how to use Google Earth to show children the location of events in a story.
• ReadWriteThink offers lots of lesson ideas, and they help with everything from writing poems to graphic organizers.

Educational media companion sites discussed in the webcast

• Dora, The Explorer on Nick, Jr.
• Sesame Street
• Between the Lions from PBS Kids

Other media organizations and sites to know about

• Joan Ganz Cooney Center
  From their site: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will focus new attention on the challenges children face today, asking the 21st century equivalent of the original question, "How can emerging media help children learn?"
• Common Sense Media
  From their site: Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the media and entertainment lives of kids and families. We exist because media and entertainment profoundly impact the social, emotional, and physical development of our nation's children.
• Annenberg School of Communication: Children & Media
  From their site: Through rigorous program evaluations and research projects, we are working to provide media developers and families with information that contributes both to the design and use of children's media.
• New America Foundation Early Education Initiative
  From their site: The Early Education Initiative seeks to promote a high-quality and continuous system of early care and education for all children, birth to age 8. Much of our focus is on pre-K up through 3rd grade.