Mediasnackers

I just found Mediasnackers, a site for videocasts about children and new media that claims to be "topped full of yummy-youth-media-shots of tasty interviews, insights or event coverage." I like the content, and want to learn more about who created it and why. So far this is all I know: it's based in the United Kingdom and was founded by a guy named DK.

But already I'm a fan of its manifesto, part of which pushes its staff to "play constantly—with words, ideas, technology, platforms, structures and others. It's the best way to learn."

Writing about YouTube and kids for Parents' Choice

Could YouTube lead to virtual field trips for young kids today? Maybe -- but if my experience is any indication, Moms and Dads sometimes need to close that browser window pretty darn quick. Here's a story I wrote for Parents' Choice this month that highlights the pitfalls and offers suggestions on more kid-friendly video outlets.

An excerpt:
"... we were clicking through other video clips, asking questions and talking about what we saw. We had taken a virtual field trip -- a mini excursion that lasted 15 minutes, cost nothing, and could be embarked upon as soon as curiosity struck.

But as I soon learned, YouTube field trips require adult chaperones..." Read more.

Reviews of NickJr.com, MyNoggin.com and PBSKids.org

The June issue of The Childrens' Technology Review, edited by Warren Buckleitner, includes reviews of three of the most popular Web sites for preschoolers -- NickJr.com, MyNoggin.com and PBSKids.org.

If you are a parent trying to avoid banner ads and "free" trials that eventually end up on your credit card, these reviews are worth a read. MyNoggin, a $10/month subscription site, gets high marks for design and usability. PBSKids, which is free, fares well too. As Buckleitner noted about the pages within PBSKids.org, "you get the feeling that the people who designed these sites were more interested in learning than selling."

NickJr.com, on the other hand, is criticized for its advertising clutter and its "confusing mashup of inter-linking brands and services" that don't always lead children to the free games they come looking for.

In fact, Buckleitner has been writing up a storm on this topic lately. In a recent report for Consumer Reports' Web Watch, he shone a spotlight on many trouble spots in online Web sites for young children. (The report comes with a series of YouTube videos that are poignant and eye-opening.) And in a story for The New York Times last week, he offered suggestions on how to find digital toys and Web sites that match a child's stage of cognitive and motor development. Not everyone will agree with everything he recommends, but I'm happy to see him raise the bar for discourse on what makes sense for kids online. Go Warren!

Simulating "bugs in the walls"

This past spring, in a few classrooms around Chicago, bugs were crawling through the walls. Students couldn't hear the critters, but they could see them on display screens posted around the rooms that provided a visual example of what was burrowing around in the sheetrock. With field guides in hand, these students tracked these bugs -- counting how many existed in each wall, taking notes of which ones laid eggs, and coming back after lunchtime or P.E. to see how the population had grown when they were gone.

If you happen to send your kids to the Chicago public schools, you might be relieved to hear that these bugs weren't real. They were a learning tool -- a simulation system designed by computer science and education researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Peter Malcolm, a graduate student (right, Peter?) at UIC presented a talk at IDC 08 about these "embedded phenomena" (You can read a little more on Tom Moher's page too.) The embeddedness extends beyond the little display screens around the room. It also refers to tiny nodes attached to the walls; students would use a stethoscope to press against the nodes and see zoomed-in pictures of the "bugs" in those particular places on the wall.

This combination of real and simulated material -- of display screens, field guides, and "pretend" populations to track -- led students to become incredibly animated about the work they were doing. "In the seventh grade class, one kid got so invested in his population," Malcolm said, "that he asked his teacher if he could come into to enter a measurement" on a day the school was closed.

There isn't much on the Web yet about WallCology, as it is called, except an academic paper , masters thesis and some other documents. But I suspect that I'm not the only one who will find these wall bugs to be a fascinating example of how technology could be used to turn kids on to learning.

Quilts, computers and kids learning math

Triangles, squares, symmetry, fractions: Put together a quilt, and you are marinading yourself in mathematics.

So what would happen if you could get children to create "quilts" using computer graphics on a screen?

That is the research question that has propelled K.K. Lamberty in the computer science department at the University of Minnesota at Morris. In a presentation at IDC 08, Lamberty described her studies of how 4th and 5th grade students respond to a software program called DigiQuilt. Teachers in these classrooms challenge the students to, say, create a design for a quilt square using only one line of symmetry. Lamberty has recorded over 500 hours of video showing students grappling with those kinds of math challenges, while making some beautiful, colorful and creative designs in the process.

So did it work to teach math? Lamberty doesn't have data on test scores or mathematical abilities, but her early assessment is that at the very least children were engaged with the projects, talking to each other about the designs they were creating and helping each other over hurdles in understanding geometry and fractions. Call me a sucker for color and shape, but it sure looked like fun.

A toymaker-ivory tower mashup

A mission of IDC 2008 at Northwestern is to foment conversations between designers of children's electronic media and the academics who test how children might respond to them.

One example spotlighted this morning was the Fisher-Price "Play Is Learning Council" that, for two years, brought childhood experts and media researchers together with designers to ensure that new toys fit a child's needs and stage of development.

"We would show them toys and they were not shy about tearing them apart," said Kathleen Alfano, director of child research at Fisher-Price.

Seemingly brilliant designs don't always hold up when tested with real kids. Scott Traylor, founder of the research company 360Kid, showed how tricky it can be to create a stylus-type application for young children who don't yet have perfect motor control in their hands. And Erik Strommen, founder of the tech-toy consultancy Playful Efforts, amused the audience with stories of how young kids couldn't resist pressing the TV-screen belly of an interactive Tinky Winky prototype when asked to wake it up.

Just what is "Interaction Design for Children"?

Today I'm here in Evanston, Ill., where Northwestern University is hosting an international conference for about 150 people who work in a field called "interaction design for children."

Just what does that mean? I wondered myself, and I'm not 100 percent sure even today. But from what I gather, it's an approach to designing a product (software program, toy, whatever) that gives high value to the way a user will interact with it.

As designer, consultant and entrepreneur Nathan Shedoff once wrote, interaction design can go by other names too, like information design, instructional design, or "just plain common sense."

This conference -- Interaction Design for Children 2008 -- puts the emphasis on how designers can create toys, software, games, Web sites and tools for children that take into account their motor skills, their cognitive skills, their desires, their experiences, their potential for using it in ways that adults may not expect.

Justine Cassell, a Northwestern professor who is internationally known for her work on children and technology, is leading the conference. (I'm looking forward to picking her brain about new projects in her Center for Technology & Social Behavior.)

A note on me and full disclosure

As a reporter, I believe it's important to try to avoid entanglements and stay relatively independent. But given my freelance budget, I've also got to accept payments for much of my travel and speaking. So I'll do my best to be transparent about which organizations are paying my way when I attend conferences. Last month, I blogged about the Joan Ganz Cooney symposium after having moderated a panel there on literacy technologies. In that case, the Cooney center paid for my travel and hotel. The NAEYC institute that I just blogged about was on my dime. The next conference (IDC '08, which I'll start writing about tonight) is at Northwestern. I've been invited to facilitate a panel about "screen cultures," and IDC '08 is sponsoring my travel, lodging and a small honorarium.

Subverting superheroes

Superheroes often swoop into the conversation when preschool educators talk about the impact of the media. Children latch onto the imagery of Batman (if they aren't too scared by it), pretend to be Superman, jump and kick their way into the roles of Power Rangers. For many teachers (and parents), this is problematic. Suddenly the playground is a screaming zone of chasing and pulling, and sometimes kicking and wrestling too. Coping with the aggression can wear on the most stalwart teacher.

One of the sessions yesterday at the NAEYC Institute focused on how the Joyce M. Huggins Early Education Center at Cal State-Fresno moved from banning superhero play to a qualified embrace of it. The point was not to immerse children in mass media imagery. Instead, through the use of fairy tales and other story telling techniques, the kids were encouraged to create their own superheroes (like "Night Man" and "Underwater Girl"), draw them, create paper mache models of them and build story books. "We were repositioning mass media images for literacy development," said Sharon Arias, a teacher at the center.

Educators listening intently to Arias. But they had questions: How did parents feel about the new emphasis on superheroes? (Arias said they came around to like it, but acknowledged that there were reports of more night wakings and "being scared.") How did teachers handle moments of aggression? (By showing students how to pretend to be aggressive, instead of actually pulling a jacket or hurting someone.)

I sensed a skepticisim in the room. And I admit that I too, having written a chapter in my book on how 2- and 3-year -old children respond to fearful, aggressive imagery, came away with a lot of questions. But the output of the children couldn't be disputed: home-made books, stories and artwork showed a grasp of story-telling that seemed rare among children this young.

Speaking of superheroes, I should mention that Diane Levin (see my post from yesterday) and Susan Linn of the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (who was with me on the panel about technology and play) raised some provocative points about the marketing of PG-13 movies to toddlers and preschoolers.

One of Levin's examples was The Incredible Hulk, coming to theaters this summer and aimed at adolescents. She showed a slide with a photo of "The Incredible Hulk Smash Hands," a toy from a few years ago that is labeled as being recommended for children 5 and up.

Computer use in Reggio Emilia preschools

A hot new approach to preschool education is called the Reggio Emilia method, in which children exert control over their learning while teachers guide and document much of what they see, touch and explore.

In a session here at the NAEYC Institute, attendees were shown how Reggio schools use technology. Dee Stegelin of Clemson University and Lenna Young of the TRI-County Technical Institute hosted the session, providing lists of technology that are used, and often necessary, to the Reggio approach. Digital cameras, for example, are essential. And computers, they said, should be in the classroom -- not in laboratories down the hall.

"Computers are used a lot in Reggio schools," Stegelin said. Examples given included the use of KidPix software and word processing systems to give children a way to document and easily distribute stories of what they have seen and heard.

"Use your words": Giving parents language to talk about media

Diane Levin, an author and professor of early childhood education at Wheelock College in Boston, gave a 2-hour talk here this morning about media's influence on children. She focused on the bad: too much violence, too much commercialism, too much sex. But the end of her session struck me as useful -- not just for early childhood educators, but for parents too. She gave examples of how to talk to kids about what they are seeing and hearing.

"This is very different than just saying 'No'," Levin said.

In one example, she showed a dialogue between a teacher and her elementary school children (kindergarteners, I think) about whether toy guns should be allowed to be created in one of the hands-on crafts centers. She suggested that teachers ground the conversation in safety -- "We want to feel safe" -- and then asking children questions like: 'Do you like it when your friends point a gun at you? What should you do?' and enabling children to voice their ideas about what to say when a friend pretends to shoot.

Levin has a new book, So Sexy So Soon, coming out in August from Random House.

What do cartoons have to do with learning to read?

A lot, if you follow the arguments made by representatives for PBS. who gave a presentation at the NAEYC Institute yesterday.

Super Why! and Word World, two new TV shows for children ages 4 to 6, are part of a national five-year research project investigating whether targeted media can help young kids learn to read.

"We want to tap into the powers of characters that are so beloved on PBS," said Jayne W. James, executive director of the Ready to Learn program for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. Leaders of the program stress, however, that this is not about simply getting kids to fall in love with Princess Presto (a SuperWhy character with a magic spelling wand and a bouncy pink dress). "The shows don't evolve from a cute idea," James said. "They are grounded in research."

The shows are also making their way across platforms, onto the Web and into iPods, and the research project includes a study of how -- and if -- that makes a difference. Audience members got a peek at one part of this yesterday: Jen Rodriguez of PBS showed the beta version of PBS Kids Island, a free carnival-like world where children can play literacy games on the computer.

I've been interested in the Ready to Learn program for several years and will be waiting with baited breath for the results of the current studies. Alas, solid data won't be out for many more years, but I'll be keeping my eyes open for tidbits.

Focusing on creative playtime (and using video to do it)

There's something delightful about watching young children immerse themselves in make-believe worlds, and although there are no kids here at this NAEYC institute in New Orleans, there have been several opportunities to watch videos of kids playing "pretend."

This morning in a session organized by the Alliance for Childhood, I gave a talk called "Video Screens and Cardboard Boxes," in which I showed a home video of my girls playing with two big boxes and some oversized pieces of chalk -- all of which was inspired by their watching of Pinky Dinky Doo on Noggin. (One of my points was that we need to be more specific in talking about technology: Let's look more closely at what content and forms of technology inspire versus stifle creative play.)

An hour later, video clips were the highlight of a presentation by Deborah Leong of the Metropolitan State College of Denver and Elena Bodrova of Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning. They started by zooming in on theories of how children's play evolves, first with simple props but then graduating to moments of role-play and "invisible" friends. These are levels of play that can be hard to grasp when you read about them on paper, but that become perfectly understandable when you see the kids playing.

The larger point of Leong and Bodrova's talk, however, was to recommend the use of video and photographs as a way of giving preschoolers "virtual field trips." Their research, they said, has shown that today's children need some guidance on how to play pretend. In their experience, adults in children's lives often say they are too busy to bring their children along on shopping outings or let them get involved in preparing dinner.

This is why, they said, teachers have to step in. "Teachers have to teach play intentionally," Leong said.

They suggest showing children videos of people interacting in various settings -- such as bakeries where cashiers talk to customers or medical offices where doctors treat patients. (They described real-life field trips too, but pointed out that they aren't always possible.) These videos, they said, give children new ideas for play, leading them to re-enact what they saw -- with and without guidance from nearby preschool teachers.

By the end of the session, a representative for the Fred Rogers Institute was chatting with Leong about how to use old clips of Mister Rogers' field trips to bring more videos into her preschool curriculum. (Anyone remember that field trip episode of Mister Rogers at the crayon factory?)

Early childhood educators talk tech

Picture a preschool teacher, and someone on the cutting edge of technology may not be the first image to come to mind. But this year, the professional development institute for the National Association for the Education of Young Children is focused on children and technology -- and part of it is a recognition that computers, software and interactive games are aimed at children before they hit kindergarten. I'll be blogging from the NAEYC institute over the next couple of days in New Orleans. I suspect that much of the conversation will be about teacher preparation, like how educators might be able to use some new tracking and assessment tools. But I'll zoom in on the sessions that focus on how new media technology is being used among children in preschool and early elementary grades.

I'll also have my own two cents to throw into the pot, with a presentation I'm giving bright and early tomorrow morning about technology and child's play. Don't be shy about posting what you think.