Reprinted from Huffington Post. As President Obama discusses our State of the Union with a much needed focus on innovation, education and investment in America’s future, let’s focus on one area that is ripe for radical change: how digital media can be used for education and hands-on, lifelong learning beginning right from the start. We need to focus more attention on the potential long-term effects of a major investment in the early years, especially in building an entirely new learning equation for the children who will graduate in 2025. New studies and stronger investments in children under 10 are needed because relatively little research or breakthrough program development has been done on the preschool and middle-childhood periods, which scholars in child development, behavioral and cognitive psychology, and neuroscience have pointed to as critical for all that follows. (more…)