Category Archives: early childhood

Choosing Media for Young Children

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CHOOSING MEDIA for YOUNG CHILDREN

A Checklist

There are no simple shortcuts to finding great media for kids. Over the years, research by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and others demonstrates, an “education” label is no guarantee of quality or of educational value. And even recommendations from your best friend, reliance on a trustworthy source like PBSKids, or reviews by well-respected organizations like Parents Choice or Common Sense Media can’t guarantee that every highly rated app or video is right for your child.

The best way to find great media for children is to learn what to look for.

 

GREAT CHILDREN’S MEDIA. . .

۝  Reflect or reinforce values that you want to teach.

⃝ Feature characters that are good role models. Characters, especially main characters or heroes, behave in ways that you want children to behave.

⃝ Reward characters’ positive behavior and show clear, negative consequences for bad behavior.

⃝ Limit dialogue to words that you wouldn’t mind children using.

⃝ Show problem solving strategies that children might actually be able to copy (as opposed to always needing magical powers to solve problems).

⃝ Leave children feeling and behaving in ways that are engaged, calm, or cooperative rather than antsy, withdrawn, upset, or aggressive.

 

۝ Value children as learners and community members rather than as potential consumers.

⃝ Provide positive characters that your child can identify with (e.g., shares your child’s interests or personality traits, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or body type).

⃝ Introduce your child to positive characters from groups that they may not otherwise encounter (e.g., from other places, cultures, or religions).

⃝ Show how to be a good friend.

⃝ Model judging people for what they do, not for what they own or wear, what they look like, or which groups they belong to.

⃝ Avoid repeating negative stereotypes.

⃝ Do not directly ask your child for private information or prompt children to ask grown-ups to buy things for them.

⃝ Are not created in order to sell a toy, brand, or junk food.

 

۝ Are Age-Appropriate

⃝ Use rules that are easy for children to under­stand and follow.

⃝ Use an interface that is “intuitive” (children can use it without much help); it is challenging but not frustrating.

⃝ Focus on topics that young children find interesting and skills that little ones are capable of mastering.

⃝ Present complex or sensitive subjects in ways that are simple without being simplistic. They use language and examples that children can understand without being patronizing.

⃝ Use words that young children understand, and also intentionally introduce a few new words that help children stretch their vocabulary.

⃝ Pace the action and editing slowly enough for little ones to follow and understand.

⃝ Avoid content that is gross, scary, or graphic in ways that might disturb children. Keep in mind that young children tend to be fright­ened by things that look scary. Older chil­dren tend to be frightened by things they think could actually happen.

⃝ For children three and younger, avoids showing actions that would be unsafe for a child to copy. For children ages four and up, unsafe actions are clearly described as off-limits for real children or clearly shown as un­desirable.

⃝ Free of sales pitches (including product placements or in-app sales) presented directly to children.

⃝ Keep age range recommendations reasonable. Though there are some family media that everyone can enjoy, in most cases it is unlikely that what’s appropriate for your twelve-year-old will also be appropriate for your preschooler and vice versa.

 

۝ Merge Education and Entertainment

⃝ Give children interesting things to talk about.

⃝ Take advantage of the unique functions of the technology (e.g., not just a workbook on screen).

⃝ Encourage social interactions with adults and other children.

⃝ Get children excited about developing new skills and/or exploring new things, people, or places.

⃝ Encourage children to be creative.

⃝ Include key messages and concepts in the images, not just the words, and use visuals to focus attention on important content (for example, put the important thing in motion when everything else is still).

⃝ Require players to learn, practice, and demonstrate mastery of key learning concepts in order to succeed.

⃝ Scaffold children’s logical progression from easier to more complex skills and concepts.

⃝ Present problem-solving opportunities and include pauses before providing answers to allow time for viewers or players to figure out answers for themselves.

⃝ Provide evidence of specific educational design and sound pedagogy (there is a coherent theory of how children learn from this particular activity).

⃝ Provide activities or stories that children enjoy. It also helps if grown-ups enjoy themselves, but sometimes what makes media age-appropriate for young children can bore adults, so this isn’t a requirement.

 

No media include all these things, but the suggestions give you an idea of what to look for, especially if you are selecting media options for children aged six and younger.

It’s also helpful to understand your child’s preferences. Just like you, your child likes some types of media more than others. See if you can correctly fill in these blanks:

THIS MONTH, my child’s favorite show, video, movie, book, app, or game is ______________________________________________________.

They like it because ______________________________________________________.

It says “this month” because just as young children’s physical bodies change at a rapid pace, so do their media preferences.

You’ll have to verify your accuracy with your child, of course. So, consider making conversations about media a regular feature of your family’s routines, even if you can’t be with your little ones every moment that they are viewing, listening, reading, or playing.

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use 
with the credit: From the edublog 
“TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., 
InsightersEducation.com 2021

MEDIA MENTORSHIP & THE COVID-19 DISINFODEMIC

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Let me dispense with the pet peeves first. As media literacy educators well know, words matter. So let’s pay attention to the way we’re framing our current stories. It’s not “social” distancing, it’s “physical” distancing. There are lots of ways to stay socially connected even if we can’t touch.

And also, our world is filled with lots of infringements on liberty. Slavery, forced abortion, forced pregnancy, killing or shooting at journalists, jailing peaceful protestors for crimes committed by disruptors attempting to discredit their cause, banning teaching and materials that attempt to address racism, or having your place of worship shot up by white nationalists to name a few. Note that wearing a mask is not on the list. Wearing a mask is not an infringement of liberty. In fact, it’s the opposite. It provides a way for us to exercise some freedom of movement and interaction, even with a pandemic raging.

Now that that’s out of the way…

BECOMING MEDIA MENTORS

Child care providers are essential – not just “essential workers,” but essential to the well-being of families, children, and communities. In the current pandemic they have been asked to provide near miraculous levels of service without anything close to the amount of support they need or deserve. Despite the obstacles, many have stepped up with creativity and open hearts. I am amazed and inspired by their work. So it feels odd to suggest that in order to successfully navigate current circumstance they need to add another task to their already overwhelming list: becoming media mentors.

The Problem

As a society, we are asking child care providers – among the lowest paid, undervalued professionals in the nation – to carry the weight of life and death decisions. As they tackle the challenge of figuring out how to open their sites in ways that are safe for staff, children, and families, their informed judgment should be enough, but for many people, it’s not. Once policies are put into place, families and staff have to come on board as full partners or it won’t work. With so much misinformation circulating, and so many people resistant or confused about COVID-19, it’s an understatement to say that implementing effective mitigation measures is a challenge.

At the same time, child care professionals are incredibly busy. It isn’t reasonable to expect them to fact-check every new COVID claim uttered by a cable news pundit or posted on FB. Unfortunately, formerly trustworthy sources are now suspect.  CDC, which was once the gold standard of reliable scientific information, has been undermined by political operatives. So we can’t even advise people to rely on the government resources that we pay for with our tax dollars. It’s hard to find easy shortcuts.

Media literacy can’t solve all these issues, but if child care professionals can share it’s strategies with the families they serve, it can help. Towards that end, here are some resources:

FOR RELIABLE COVID INFO

The Federation of American Scientists “Ask A Scientist”  – my “go to” first stop

University of Washington Libraries has aggregated many vetted resources

For a humorous take, check out this graphic from Jordan Shlain, MD: Covid Risk Factor Chart

FOR YOUNG CHILDREN

Videos can help children understand. They also provide developmentally appropriate language that grown-ups can use. To practice media literacy, instead of just answering kids’ questions, look for the answers together. Here are some places to start:

Sesame Street Caring  – an especially helpful collection of videos for families that already trust Sesame Street to provide quality educational media for their children

Stanford Planet v. COVID race – a fun animation about wearing a mask

Colorín Colorado –  a site specializing in info for English Language Learners

To support hand washing with soap – an elementary teacher uses a demo illustrating the impact of soap on surface tension to provide young children with a strong visual image that helps them understand the importance of hand washing

UNDERSTANDING COVID MYTHS

National Geographic “Why misinformation about COVID-19’s origins keeps going viral” – How to sift through the muck by Monique Brouilette & Rebecca Renner

PRACTICE OPPORTUNITIES

University of Washington Spot the Deep Fake – a quick tutorial

Clemson University Spot the Troll  – in a guessing game format, gives detailed explanations of the clues you can use to discern legit and troll

Jonathan Jarry, McGill University’s Office for Science and Society “Moss Cures Cancer” video  –  Pause before you get to the “reveal” in the second half to see if people can spot the techniques being used to sell this false cure. Because no genuine journalism organizations would hire them, lots of conspiracy theorists sell dubious health supplements to provide income, so learning to spot the deception is important.

MEDIA LITERACY QUESTIONS

For questions appropriate for young children, see my blog post: Media Literacy Inquiry with Young Children 

For questions appropriate for staff, download the free pdf at Project Look Sharp

GENERAL FACT CHECKING

Snopes.com is typically my first “go to,” but for claims involving photographic or video “evidence,” check HoaxEye.com.

GENERAL NEWS LITERACY

For current examples accompanied by analysis, subscribe to the News Literacy Project’s free newsletter, The Sift.

For more resources, scroll to the bottom of my blog post: How to Adjust Your “Brights” to See Through the Fog of “Fake” News 

TALKING WITH COVID DENIERS

Infodemic Blog – Mike Caulfield at Washington State University has created this excellent resource on how to evaluate COVID-19 claims and how to talk with deniers.

Among other recommendations, he suggests doing what a news fact-checker would do. Look to see what other sources are saying on the same topic (lateral reading). In other words, rather than trying to disprove or affirm the claim itself, investigate the source to see if it’s trustworthy.

I’d add these strategies:

  1. Share information about media routinely. Make it a feature in your newsletter. Don’t tell people what to think, show them how to investigate. Point out specific flaws in news stories or social media posts (like overgeneralizations, e.g., one person made a mistaken claim about masks, so all claims must be false; or false equivalencies, e.g., 95% of scientists make a particular recommendation, but 5% don’t so we can’t really know because we weight both sides equally even though they aren’t equal). Be sure families understand concepts like “confirmation bias” (that we seek and believe things that affirm our existing beliefs and are more likely to dismiss things that challenge our current beliefs) and “band wagon” (making it seem like most people – or at least most “cool” people – think a particular way, so you should, too).
  1. Suggest media literacy analysis questions about sources and provide opportunities for discussion. For example: On a topic like COVID-19, why would we especially want to seek information from scientists? Are there any reasons not to trust information from scientists? How might we discern when/who to trust a scientist and when to avoid them? What would you want to know about a scientist to discern whether or not they are trustworthy on this topic? What sorts of lateral reading could you do to discover whether they have relevant experience to the questions you’re asking or what their peers think of their work/expertise?
  1. Remind families of their aspirations for their children and help them see the connection to logic and reasoning skills (e.g., you can’t be a doctor or lawyer or business executive without some serious science and math chops). Note that it will help their children succeed if their thinking skills are nurtured at home, as well as in your care.
  1. Share real-life examples about schools that re-opened and did or didn’t follow the protocols you’re using. What happened?

This list isn’t intended to be comprehensive. It suggests places to start for early childhood educators who only have time to look at a couple of resources. My apologies to the creators of many fine materials that have been left out.

As I write this, more than 200,000 Americans have died and nearly 7 million have tested positive for COVID-19, including half a million children. We don’t know what the long-term medical, economic, or social consequences will be for the people who recovered from their initial symptoms. Clearly this is serious and the grown-ups in the room can’t afford to cover their eyes like a toddler to make it all go away. Be a media mentor. Keep yourself and the people around you from getting infected – with the disease or with ignorance.

This post was created as a resource to supplement an Engagement Strategies Early Childhood Investigations webinar: “Engage Families and Staff about COVID-19 Protocols Using Using Media Literacy “ 

If you’re interested in media literacy education in early childhood, you might want to also take a look at the post MEDIA LITERACY AND OUTDOOR EDUCATION FOR YOUNG CHILDREN .

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2020

Media Literacy Inquiry with Young Children

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At first glance, developing the habits of inquiry that are central to media literacy might seem too sophisticated or beyond the reach of young children. Some types of questions – like those that require an understanding of purely abstract concepts – may well be too difficult for toddlers and preschoolers. But young children are often capable of more insight than we give them credit for. Often it’s just a matter of finding developmentally appropriate language. Here’s some help:

If you’re just starting out, model asking relevant questions as you play with, view, read, or listen to media with children. Weave inquiry into normal activities. Make it routine. And model how to find credible answers. Eventually, encourage children to follow your lead and ask the questions for themselves. Before long, they’ll have a hard time using media without having questions come to mind – and that’s the goal.

If you want to see how the wording of these questions compare to the wording we use with older children and adults, you can download a free pdf from Project Look Sharp.

If you liked this post, you might want to also take a look at MEDIA LITERACY AND OUTDOOR EDUCATION FOR YOUNG CHILDREN .

May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2020

MEDIA LITERACY and OUTDOOR EDUCATION for YOUNG CHILDREN

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A few weeks ago, on NAEYC’s online discussion forum, awesome science educator Peggy Ashbrook (Science is Simple), asked me how one might integrate media literacy into early childhood outdoor education. So, with thanks to Peggy for inspiring me to think more deeply about the topic, here’s my response. It’s not intended to be comprehensive. Think of the ideas as springboards to help you dive in and create your own media literacy lessons for children aged 4-7.

 

BACKGROUND

If you’re like many people, the term “media literacy” conjures an image of a child looking at a screen. And that’s not without cause. In our digital world, it is impossible to become media literate without using screen-based technologies. But media aren’t limited to screens and neither is media literacy education (MLE).

MLE is not about teaching the same old things with new technologies. Nor is MLE focused on protecting children from media or convincing them to spend less time using screens. Rather, MLE is an expansion of traditional literacy that prepares children to be thinkers and makers in the digital  world. That means devoting attention to image- and audio-based communication as well as to text.

MLE pedagogy is inquiry based; its goals are to help children develop the habits of inquiry and skills of expression demanded by the multimedia world that is their reality. MLE helps young children recognize and understand

  • constructedness (i.e., that media are made by people who make choices about what to include and exclude),
  • ways that we shape and are shaped by media, and
  • how we can use various media forms to communicate feelings and ideas effectively.

There are substantial overlaps between science skills and media literacy skills. Both science and media literacy education ask people to:

• Make, describe, and record careful observations
• Analyze observations using “compare and contrast”
• Link opinions or conclusions to evidence
• Use reason and logic to evaluate evidence and information sources

Keeping these goals in mind, here a few activity ideas…

 

STRATEGIES

1. Guide children to notice and analyze media that are in outdoor spaces.

Many hiking trails and parks include a multitude of signs: no motorized vehicles on trails; dogs welcome (or forbidden); historical plaques; park logos; trail maps; explanation panels of natural features; and even hiker-created trail markers. You could guide children in analyzing any or all of these and ask questions like: What does that sign mean? How do you know? Why do you think they made a special marker to help us notice this rock formation? What colors do they use on the signs and why do you think they chose those colors? Why do you think the park logo includes a tree?

Analysis develops

  • Awareness – (I never really noticed that sign before).
  • A sense of constructedness – (Someone drew that map and made choices about what to include).
  • Curiosity (Why did the person who made that sign choose to include flowers but not bugs?).

With some adult guidance, all of these insights can later be applied to screen media.

In combination with analysis, making media helps children synthesize and reflect on what they have learned. Invite kids to design their own trail markers, park logos, or playground signs. What would they highlight and why? What do they think the signs should look like and where should they be posted (or not posted)? Is it okay to have media everywhere, or do we want to have some spaces where there isn’t any media?

 

2. Document outdoor experiences.

In children’s hands, digital devices that can record audio, video, or photos offer a multitude of opportunities to combine learning about the natural world and media literacy. To transform tech use into a media literacy experience:

1) Involve children in decision making, and
2) Have follow-up conversations about the choices they make.

Photography and Video

By putting a lens in between a person and a subject, cameras provide an opportunity to see things in a new way. Once children have experienced the outdoors directly and from their own point of view, offer them cameras and prompt them to record as if they were looking through someone (or something) else’s eyes. What does the park look like from the perspective of a tree, a bird, a snake, or a gecko? Let them experiment with the camera to figure out what they need to do with it to help people see that perspective. Follow up by pointing out how authors, illustrators, app creators, and/or video makers show “point of view.”

Or you might introduce children to apps or device functions that transform a tablet’s or phone’s camera into a macro lens. Guide them to notice the differences between pictures with and without a macro lens. Use media terminology (e.g., pointing to what is included or excluded from the “frame” when you select a “close-up” or when you “zoom out” for a “wide shot”). That helps children develop the vocabulary they’ll need in later years to engage in more sophisticated media analysis.
Then give a prompt (connected to curricular goals) that provides an opportunity to decide when it would be helpful to use a macro or close-up and when a wider shot might be a better choice. For example, you might build on lessons about butterfly habitat:

a) Invite children to choose a “target audience” (families, other children, community leaders, etc.).
b) Use questions to help children plan how best to tell that audience what needs to be saved or expanded to preserve butterfly-friendly areas: Would it be better to use a macro shot of the pattern in a butterfly’s wing, or a wider shot of butterflies on the plants they need?

Note that there isn’t one “right answer” to that question. One child might opt for the wide shot because it would show the plants that need to be in the habitat while another might reason that people will enjoy the beauty of the butterfly wing and as a result, will want to know more about what happens to butterflies if they can’t find the plants they need.
The point isn’t to guide children to a correct answer; it’s to help them develop the habit of reasoning. We ask them to explain their choice as a way of offering an opportunity to practice linking choices to evidence. We guide them with additional prompts to help them see the strengths and shortcomings of their ideas: If we use the macro shot, how will we tell people which plants are important?
Follow that up with an opportunity for children to make and publicly share a multimedia or video documentary about why butterflies (and other pollinators) are important and what these important insects need to thrive, and you’ve now got kids who know they have the power to make a difference in the world!

And if you’re skeptical about young children’s abilities to impact their communities, take a lesson from second graders at Caroline Elementary School. As part of a science curriculum that integrates media literacy, they made a documentary about caring for the watershed in back of their school and convinced a reluctant school board to allocate $5,000 to their bridge repair efforts! (More on that project in a later post).

Audio

Photography not your thing? How about recording sounds to make a podcast. What sounds would children intentionally record? Which parts of their audio track would they use for various purposes/topics and why? When children are asked to make those sorts of editing decisions, they begin to attune to sounds in a different way, paying attention to details that previously went unnoticed. That leads to a richer experience.

Imagine, for example, the response to a question like, “What did you hear?” Children are likely to respond with something general: “I heard birds.” In contrast, children listening to the playback of their recording several times with a focus on selecting a few seconds of the best examples will begin to notice that the bird calls included different patterns and different tones. As children notice more, they typically have more questions. Perhaps there were different types of birds? Perhaps the birds were saying different things? Can birds have a conversation? Their questions lead to deeper thinking. With a bit of prompting, their observations will also carry over to the next outdoor opportunity, much the way that knowing what to listen for enriches the experience of hearing a jazz improv session.

As children improve their listening skills, you can also guide them to apply what they notice to the audio in the mainstream media they use. Background sounds influence our interpretation of media, whether we consciously take note of them or not. Children who produce podcasts (or other types of audio recordings) know that media makers make choices (i.e., media are constructed). This knowledge primes them to pay attention to media makers’ audio choices. In the world of media literacy education, awareness always leads to new questions: Is that game’s sound effect really the sound that fish make? Why does the movie start with such soft music? Why can I see the rocket lift off but not hear any noise?

Or children could conduct and record interviews. Perhaps on the group’s last adventure, two children saw a chipmunk run into its hole, but the others missed it. They could record an interview with the kids who saw the chipmunks. Imagine the language development as interviewers craft questions and interviewees describe what the animals look liked and what they did!
Or perhaps each individual child could become an expert on a different animal in their neighborhood and they could be interviewed as if they were that animal. So the interview isn’t with the kids who saw the chipmunk, it’s with the classmate who is pretending to be the chipmunk.

 

3. Document change over time.

Everyone teaches the seasons. How about helping children analyze common depictions of seasons (e.g., posters at schools, holiday cards, store signs and decorations) and compare those media to their actual lives?

At its best, media literacy can help children see their world in a new way, with new insight. Start by analyzing existing media. You might ask: When you look at a picture, are there clues that tell you what season it is? What clues would you look for if you were looking for a picture of autumn? What could you put in a picture if you wanted to show it was really cold or really humid outside? What would people be wearing? What would they be doing?

Questions lead to more questions, offering children opportunities to ponder the world more deeply as they go. For example, many posters printed in the U.S. use similar imagery to differentiate the seasons: snow indicates winter, rain (and sometimes seedlings) for spring, sun for summer, and changing or falling leaves for autumn. But how do you know when it’s winter in Phoenix or Miami – places where it never snows? And is it always sunny in the summer in Chicago? Never sunny in winter in Vail? If it’s raining, does that mean it is spring, even in Seattle or San Francisco or Los Angeles? And when it’s fall in your town, is it fall everywhere in the world? Can you guess from the pictures on the poster where the artist lives?
To help children compare the poster’s messages about seasons to what really happens where they live, have them take a picture of the same thing(s) outdoors over the course of a school year and note the changes over time. Ask children to determine what they should photograph. What in their environment changes and what stays the same? You might want to invite them to photograph different types of plants to see which change a lot and which seem not to change at all. That might spark an investigation of the difference between, say, deciduous trees and evergreens. This could be especially effective if your poster of the seasons uses a changing tree to symbolize the four seasons.
The pictures could be used to prompt additional observations: What did the subject of the photo look like at the beginning of the year? Just before winter break? At the end of the year? Or they could be used as reminders before heading out: What did the park look like when we first visited at the beginning of the year? Let’s pay attention to what’s different now.
You could start the unit by teaching about animation and show a short video that uses high speed video to show long term change in a very short viewing experience. Explain that to achieve this effect, the camera has to be stationary – in exactly the same place – every time they take a picture. Assign children to take the picture(s) daily or at a set time each week. If you aren’t savvy at video production, work with a parent, aide, library media specialist, intern or older child who knows a little bit about producing video to help edit the pictures together and speed them up, so you can see the change over time quickly. Then, at the end of the unit, the kids have not only learned about the changing seasons; they’ve also learned about animation and special effects!
Another version of seasonal explorations is to involve children in linking common holiday traditions, foods, and media representations with what’s happening in the natural world. Why do Thanksgiving decorations often include a cornucopia and how does that relate to it being a fall holiday? Similarly, would Halloween imagery be filled with pumpkins if we celebrated it in May?

 

4. Analyze representations of nature.

Before you ever meet a child for the first time, their ideas about nature and being outside have been shaped by their personal experiences and by media. All media – even when we know it’s not real – influence ideas about the world. You can teach children to ask the types of questions that will help them recognize media influences and learn to discern which media messages are helpful or trustworthy. (A developmentally appropriate sampling of such questions is available in my chapter in Chip Donohue’s NAEYC anthology, Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years).

When weather precludes time outdoors, turn attention to analyzing media messages about nature, ecology, or sustainability. Help children use media literacy questions to examine their books, apps, movies, or games. Focusing on media they already know works best. Model asking questions like:

What are the messages about nature? Is it something to be conquered? A source of food? Should we fear going into the forest? How about the ocean? What’s accurate about SpongeBob Squarepants’ habitat and the actual habitats of lobsters and starfish? Also, What sorts of people spend time outdoors? Do any of them look like me? What do they do when they are outside? And, What are the messages about animals? Are they scary? Friendly? Do lions really look like the pictures in the book? What’s the difference between what the turtle could do in the story and what they do in real life? Follow every prompt with a probe for evidence: How do you know? What makes you say that?

You might also help children look at food packaging. Identify food packaging as a form of advertising, which is a form of communication. What’s the package saying to us?  Are there clues that children can spot that tell them which packages contain foods that are from plants, trees, vines, or bushes? Which just pretend that real fruit or vegetables are inside? Hint: Teach children to look for the word “flavored.” Even if the word is different in their home language, the packages they are likely to encounter in the U.S. will use the English word, so teach the word in both languages. Pre-readers can look for the first couple of letters, “F” and “L.” When the word “flavored” is accompanied by pictures of real fruit or vegetables it means that the package is almost certainly wearing a disguise. Real foods don’t need fancy or disguised packages to tempt us – they’re delicious all by themselves!
To use media literacy as a bridge between outdoor education, sustainability, and nutrition lessons, follow-up by taking a walk around the neighborhood and look at the sorts of things that end up as litter. How many of the items that children spot are food packages, especially food packages that disguise what’s inside? Help children see that they can help the environment by picking up the litter, and also by eating fresh produce instead of things that are wrapped in a lot of packaging. Compare what happens to the remains of, say, an orange you eat and orange flavored Jello, soda, or snack cakes.

 

5. Find credible answers.

Central to being media literate is the ability to ask relevant questions and  find credible answers. We rob children of the opportunity to learn how to find answers when our first impulse is to provide answers every time they ask a question. Instead, consider making it a habit for your first response to be, How could we find out? Then we can model how we would find the answers.

Being outdoors, especially in new environments, sparks lots of questions. There are skills to be mastered, unfamiliar creatures to investigate, intriguing rocks, and so much more.
Whether it’s in the moment using a phone or tablet, or later on when you have an Internet connection, if you go online to find an answer, describe each step of what you are doing and involve the child as much as possible: We can use a search engine to find an answer.* See this box here? I can upload the picture you took to help us figure out what it is. Or, I can type in a question. What question should I ask? When the list appears, talk through how you select what you’ll click on: The top sites are trying to sell me something and I’m not interested in buying anything right now, so I’m going to skip those. This one says it is a collection of pictures from a university where people specialize in studying about insects in our state, so I think that’s a good place to start. For young children, it doesn’t have to get any more complicated than that. It’s just a way to let them know that there are criteria people use to distinguish useful and not so useful sources. And you’re introducing media vocabulary in the process.

You can continue to expand children’s thinking about good sources by describing how you choose all sorts of things:

  • Introduce books by explaining how you picked them. It doesn’t have to be more than a sentence: I especially like this book because the illustrations are drawn by an artist who really studied animals and the pictures of wolves and beavers are very realistic.
  • Introduce guests by explaining their expertise: I invited Mr. Shemesh to help in our garden today because he grows organic strawberries that have won awards at the state fair! He can give us tips on how to keep our plants healthy without using pesticides that might hurt the bees.

BTW, If you want a great example of how kindergartners compared websites to learn how best to grow tomato plants, check out Vivian Vasquez’s & Carol Felderman’s brilliant book, Technology and Critical Literacy in Early Childhood.

*Note that there are search engines other than Google. I like DuckDuckGo because it doesn’t track users, but there are others. And all voice controlled devices (Alexa, Siri, etc.) are also search engines (except they only provide one answer to your query rather than a list).

 

6. Make art.

Artists have long taken drawing and painting tools into the wilderness to capture the beauty, mystery, grandeur, and peace of the natural world. This generation has an additional set of tools made possible by digital tech. For children who haven’t yet developed the fine motor skills to paint what they are seeing or experiencing, or situations where taking art supplies outside is impractical, cameras can be a profound tool.
Ask children how they could share the feeling of a special outdoor spot. Have a conversation about how people use selfies and emojis to indicate that they like something and then help them think beyond just liking or not liking a place. What is it about the place that makes it special? What could they show to someone else to let them know what the spot looks, feels, and sounds like (not just that they like it)?

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When we think of media in terms of literacy — i.e. as the mastery of symbolic communication — all sorts of interesting possibilities emerge! And so many media literacy activities support selected Next Gen Science Standards for Kindergarten:

  • Proficiency in asking questions
  • Analyzing and interpreting data
  • Engaging in argument from evidence
  • Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

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Your Turn

I am always on the lookout for other classroom-tested or childcare-tested ideas that reach beyond technology integration to help young children develop communication, reasoning, and analysis skills. If you’re willing to share your experiences, I’d love to hear from you. Or if you try out any of the ideas here, let me know how it goes. If you’d rather talk instead of taking the time to write a summary, that works, too. You can reach me via my website: InsightersEducation.com. Thanks!

May be reprinted or excerpted for educational, non-profit use with the credit: From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2018

 

Responding To Resistance: Why We Should Mandate Media Literacy in Early Childhood Education

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Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics grudgingly recognized the diversity of activities available using electronic screens and they have acknowledged that minimal screen time for toddlers and preschoolers might not ruin children for life and, in some cases, might even have some benefit. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that part of me wants to say, “I told you so”; I’ve been arguing for at least twenty years that, unless you are talking about very heavy users, what children do with screens is more important than counting the minutes they spend with the devices. If the content or activity is harmful, then the amount of acceptable screen time should be zero. But what if they are doing media literacy?

The thing is, you can’t teach media literacy skills without allowing children to engage with media, including some electronic screens. If it were up to me, I’d mandate purposeful use of digital media as a requirement for credentialing, but I understand why many early childhood professionals resist.

Whether they are

  • getting push back from well-meaning (but ill-informed) parents,
  • limited by administrators who shun screens as if doing so earned their programs some sort of merit badge,
  • subject to evaluations using antiquated quality rating scales that designate screens as a waste of time, or
  • simply lack confidence in their own tech skills,

too many early childhood professionals reject media literacy because it involves use of screen media.

We should always look at screen time relative to other activities, using media mindfully and with intention and ensuring that it is part of a balanced day of rich and varied activities. That said, here are my top 15 responses to those who continue to resist integrating media literacy into early childhood education:

  1. We live in a digital world. A quick look at a favorite website, online news source, or social network reveals that the digital world routinely merges print, image, and audio.  The only way that children will thrive in this world – and harness the power that has traditionally accrued to those who are literate – is to learn how to “read” and “write” with pictures and sound, as well as with text.
  1. Young children are already using media technologies, and they will continue to use them with or without us. Better that they use them with us. Otherwise their technology habits are likely to come from marketers, peers, or others who don’t care about children as much as we do, and who may not share our values or expertise.       By the way, early childhood professionals are also already using media technologies, both in their personal lives and with children.  Media literacy provides the guidance they need to use that technology well and avoid modeling bad habits that children have to unlearn later.
  1. It’s our job to prepare children for the world we live in, not for the world that existed when our education system was designed. When the U.S. school system was developed, books, magazines, and newspapers – all forms of mass media – were the primary method of disseminating uniform information to a lot of people. So every year that a child is in school, they are required to spend a considerable amount of time learning read and analyze print media. It’s time to update our efforts by recognizing that access to digital media technologies changes our relationship to information. Media literacy education gives educators a way to help children develop the judgment and ethics they need to navigate their online lives.
  1. A commitment to equal opportunity demands that we address the “digital divide.” Digital media technologies are central to the worlds of learning, work, and citizenship; that, alone obligates us to use classrooms, libraries, and child care sites to provide tech opportunities for children with limited home access. But the digital divide isn’t just about access; it’s also about whether or not children use devices productively. Media literacy education methods help early childhood educators model effective technology use, give children carefully scaffolded opportunities to practice, and encourage youngsters to share what they know with one another.
  1. The digital world does more than combine modes of communication; it also merges the means of communication. As today’s preschoolers grow into adolescence, they won’t be choosing between computers, televisions, radios, music players, game consoles, e-readers, or phones; everything will routinely be accessed through a single device.   That means the things we want children to do will be hard to separate from things to which we would prefer they not have access. And in a world where traditional adult “gatekeeping” of media content is less and less possible, it is essential to teach children how to analyze and evaluate content for themselves.
  1. Communication with image and sound is a natural for preschoolers who don’t yet have text-based language skills. Digital cameras (including those in phones and tablets) allow young children to escape the limits of their existing fine motor skills and nascent vocabulary by enabling them to communicate ideas, create art, interact socially, and recall events, in rich and complex ways.
  1. Media literacy education approaches technologies as tools, not learning outcomes. The goal of media literacy education isn’t technology use; it’s to prepare children to thrive in a media and technology-rich world. That approach keeps the emphasis where it should be: on sound pedagogy and learning. So media literacy lesson planning starts with the question, “What do we want children to learn?” Only then do we look at how digital devices and media literacy methods can help accomplish the goals.
  1. Education is never a game of “keep away.” It may be easier to ‘just say no’ to screens than to help children (and their teachers) learn how to use media tech in healthy and productive ways, but just as we can’t teach children to read by keeping them away from books, we can’t teach them to be media literate by keeping them away from media, including screen media.

keep-away

This is especially true because young children don’t typically apply learning from one domain to another. So even if we talk with preschoolers about books and consciously teach critical inquiry skills in the process, they won’t necessarily use those skills in relation to electronic media. If we want children to apply reasoning and reflection to all the media they use and create, we have to model that habit and provide opportunities to practice. That doesn’t mean allowing hours of daily screen time – media literacy is not an “anything goes” approach to technology. But it does require that we use screen media with children on a regular basis.

  1. Children don’t gain critical inquiry skills by osmosis just because they use technology. That’s why media literacy education infuses technology use with thinking and reasoning in developmentally appropriate ways. Those who are most concerned about negative media effects should be the first to adopt media literacy because the essence of the method is analysis, reflection, awareness, and action.
  1. We should believe the research, not the headlines. Research has unquestionably shown that screen time can have negative effects, but in the vast majority of cases the concern-worthy findings apply only to “heavy” users/viewers. Most parents and educators don’t actually read the research, so they miss that nuance. Instead, dramatic news headlines (intended to sell, more than inform) mislead us into questioning any screen use. However, going back to at least the 1980s (e.g., the California Assessment Program studies) research indicates that moderate use of high quality educational media results in better academic performance than no exposure at all, especially for children from under-resourced communities. We need to stop guilt-tripping people who use screen media in thoughtful, intentional, and balanced ways.
  1. Media literacy helps children develop healthy habits in personalized ways.  Because media literacy educators acknowledge that everyone interprets media through the lens of their own personal experiences, they don’t dictate one “right” approach for every situation. Rather, they provide guidance that colleagues and families can use to find their own pathways to healthy and balanced routines that integrate digital media technologies as part of a rich array of daily activities.
  1. Children are excited by digital media. Reports from classrooms across the country indicate increased engagement and participation by reluctant learners when media technologies are integrated into learning environments. Students who feel marginalized often find their voice when teachers use media literacy education methods.
  1. Media literacy education offers a way to meet children where they are. It provides a way to question media influence and choices while also respecting the media aspects of family and youth culture in the same way that we would respect children’s ethnic identity or religion.
  1. Media literacy is included in current professional standards. See, for example, Standard 15.4 on Computer and Information Technology in the PA Pre-K Learning Standards for Early Childhood or the NAEYC/Fred Rogers Center Joint Position Statement: Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8 .
  1. If not in early childhood, then when? We rightfully expect high quality childhood education to lay the foundation for traditional literacy; it is also the logical time to lay the foundation for digital and media literacy.  Because behavior patterns aren’t yet firmly entrenched, early childhood is an ideal time to develop good habits. By modeling intentional and balanced use of media technologies, media literacy can help children develop healthy and productive media use habits that will last a lifetime.
May be reprinted for educational, non-profit use with the credit:  From the edublog “TUNE IN Next Time” by Faith Rogow, Ph.D., InsightersEducation.com 2016