Nosy Crow turned five years old in January. We published our first print books and apps in early 2011. The timing turned out to be quite significant in relation to our early ambitions for apps.

Photo: Nosy Crow

As a publisher, we are all about reading for pleasure, no matter what the platform or medium. From the very beginning, we knew that we wanted to make apps. And launching when we did meant several things. It meant that we came into being at around the same time as the iPad, when for the first time, there was an incredible opportunity to create children’s digital reading experiences for a mass market—stories that could reach a truly global audience. It meant that we could build a publishing company with all of the necessary skills to make apps ourselves, exactly as we imagined them, rather than having to outsource the work to a digital agency. And because we were a new company, it meant that we didn’t have a backlist. So, rather than trying to turn existing print books into apps, we seized the opportunity to tell stories that were designed specifically for an iPad, and that could take full advantage of all of the incredible technological potential of the device.

Using hardware features like the iPad’s front-facing camera and microphone, the multi-touch touchscreen, and its accelerometer and gyroscope have been incredibly important to the way we develop apps, but not as a means of tacking interactivity onto a story as an afterthought or an embellishment. We don’t ever want technology to distract or detract from a story. It’s important to us because we know that children using an iPad (rightly) have incredibly high expectations of interactivity, and we don’t want to ever disappoint those expectations. We don’t want reading to be the most “boring” thing to do on an iPad. We try to use technology in ways that will enhance a story—ways in which interactivity will be integral to a narrative.

We have just released our 18th app, Goldilocks and Little Bear. We wanted to create something that would really celebrate the potential of digital storytelling for children, and I think that this app embodies the kind of story that can only be told and experienced on a touchscreen device.

Goldilocks and Little Bear tells the traditional fairytale story of Goldilocks, but with a twist. At any point in the narrative, you can flip your iPad and experience a second story taking place in parallel: that of Little Bear. While Goldilocks is in the three bears’ house, eating their porridge, sitting in their chairs, and sleeping in their beds, Little Bear is in Goldilocks’s family’s house, eating their pancakes, wearing their clothes, and reading their books. You can enjoy each story in parallel, individually, or however you’d like—the app allows you to toggle between the two at any point.

As a narrative device, this felt like a very natural, child-friendly mechanism that would be easy to use and understand. The primary audience for Goldilocks and Little Bear is 4–8 year-olds, and the customer feedback that we’ve received since launch suggests that this is a level of interactivity and technical sophistication that’s right for this age group. Just as importantly, it felt like something that would enrich the reading and storytelling experience: the idea of seeing what’s happening elsewhere in the story, off the page, is a really potent one. We design our apps so that they can be enjoyed by a child on their own, or as a shared experience with an adult (there are, for instance, “Read and play” and “Read by myself” options in all of our fairytales), and this mechanism also provided a great opportunity for shared and turn-based reading—by, for example, choosing together whether to stay with the same story or flip for the other story after each scene, or taking turns to pick a story.

Within each story there are lots of different forms of interactivity, too. You can play hide-and-seek with the bears, collect berries in the forest with Goldilocks’s family, help Little Bear try on Goldilocks’s clothes, see yourself in the bedroom using an iPad’s front-facing camera, tilt your device to rock Goldilocks on Little Bear’s chair, try each bowl of porridge and plate of pancakes, and more. And as with all of our apps, there’s an emphasis on reading for pleasure: every scene contains a chunk of narrative text—the “core” part of the story—that can’t be interrupted by any of the forms of interactivity, and in addition, there are hundreds of lines of additional dialogue (voiced by child actors) which can be triggered by touching characters.

I think this app demonstrates a form of storytelling that truly breaks away from the page: we simply couldn’t have told the story in this way in a print format.

Tom Bonnick is Nosy Crow’s Business Development Manager and Commissioning Editor. He works on all of the company’s digital publishing, including its highly-acclaimed program of apps and the innovative Stories Aloud project, and also commissions fiction for the Nosy Crow list.

This post was originally published on The Conversation and appears here with permission.

Flickr / Travis Warren CC BY-NC 2.0

Most parents have profound concerns about their children reading digital books on tablets. In a new survey of 1,500 parents of under-eights in the UK about their attitudes to children’s use of technology and digital books at home, we found that only 8% have no concerns about them using tablets to read. For using digital media in general, only 16% of parents had no concerns.

By comparing the results with data from a similar survey conducted by the US-based Joan Ganz Cooney Center in 2014, the research also found that parents in the UK and US had different reasons for using or not using digital devices with their children. For example, more American than UK parents said that they use digital media together with their child to ensure they are not exposed to inappropriate content.

Our survey, commissioned by the charity Book Trust, highlighted the various opinions on technology “rights and wrongs” held by British parents. For example, 35% of parents thought that using interactive e-books would mean they lose interest in print books, 26% worried they would affect chidren’s attention span, and 14% that it would inhibit their learning.

Parents prefer to read print rather than digital books with their children under eight-years-old, but they do recognise the value of digital books for specific learning situations. The findings indicate that education and literacy charities need to maintain an open dialogue with parents about the various ways families use media.

But there are also key questions around who has access to technology. Another US survey of nearly 1,200 lower-income parents of school-age children and in-depth interviews with Hispanic families in three lower-income communities located in Arizona, California, and Colorado found that although most families (94%) had an internet connection, the access was often too slow, interrupted or from a shared digital device. These profoundly influenced children’s educational opportunities.

Strategies for parents
In their recent book, Tap Click Read, chief executive of Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Michael Levine and journalist Lisa Guernsey recognize the diversity of families and ask the uncomfortable question: what if the differences in technology exacerbate the educational divide between rich and poor?

The authors go on to describe how the use of digital media varies among poor and rich people, but also first-time mothers, tech-savvy parents or immigrant families. The book is accompanied by several video vignettes of programs and initiatives that hold a promise to offer children equal access to the learning opportunities offered by technology.

Play and learning strategies for parents.

The variety of family expectations and motivations concerning children’s technology is important for all stakeholders working with young children, including technology producers and policy-makers. So far, the focus of attention has been on the increased access and ownership of technology by young children, notably touchscreens.

A third of under-fives have a tablet
Another recent UK survey of 2,000 families found that 31% of children under the age of five have their own tablet at home. The report of the Tech and Play project at the University of Sheffield recommended that children have access to tablets in schools if they do not have a device at home. The researchers also encouraged development of better-designed apps for toddlers by informing developers about aspects that promote play and creativity.

While the Tech and Play report is based on data from families who already have tablet computers at home, the fact that increasingly young children have access to, and own, various technologies has also been documented in surveys with nationally representative samples.

For example, in the UK, the 2015 Ofcom survey reported that 71% of five to 15-year-olds have access to a tablet device at home. In the US, Common Sense Media reported the rising trend in 2013, with the finding that children aged eight-years-old and under were five times more likely to own a tablet compared than in 2011.

The extent to which young children, especially those under the age of two, can actually learn and benefit from tablets’ use is currently being heavily debated by the American Association of Peadiatrics (APA), with an updated guidance due to be issued in autumn 2016.

Whatever the APA recommendations, family culture and parents’ perceptions profoundly shape the strategies they employ to support children’s actual technology use. With tablets and toddlers in particular, it is not just about who has access to what, but also about what parents think is important for their child.

But we need to urgently develop strategies to address the profound inequality gaps when it comes to using technology.

Dr. Natalia Kucirkova researches innovative ways of supporting shared book reading and the role of personalisation in early years. Natalia’s doctoral research inspired the development of the Our Story tablet/smartphone app. You can follow her work via http://open.academia.edu/NataliaKucirkova or Twitter @NKucirkova.

Two distinct mainstream narratives about the Internet really stand out. The first worries that too much digital media will erode our collective moral fiber. The second hails the Internet as a great social equalizer. Both of these narratives end up looking pretty absurd when considered alongside a new study from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

Some folks worry that civilization as we know it will crumble due to changes in the etiquette of communication and relationships; some even argue that screens are a pediatric health concern. I would argue that beneath the obsession about “too much screen time” lies a resistance to change. In fact, each era’s technological innovations are accompanied by a similar moral panic: the fear of losing our habitual ways of being. Each generation, parents struggle to maintain their well-worn identity narratives within the context of a life lived with new tools—and then project that anxiety onto their children.

But parents often forget that what is “comfortable” is not necessarily the same as what is “right.” And they may not notice that they are attempting to hold their children accountable to developmental ideals that are only relevant within obsolete contexts.

Now take that fear of overexposure and compare it to the notion that the Internet is civilization’s great equalizer. Consider how it gets caught up with our familiar love of the underdog story.

For example, if you listen carefully, you can hear a celebration of web-equity in the myth of the heroic YouTuber who becomes a superstar, circumventing the big media conglomerates that hold a monopoly on our entertainment industry. Read between the lines and you’ll find it in each aspirational rags-to-riches news features chronicling the making of an Etsy or eBay fortune. It’s lurking in the promise that with fiber-optic cable, an Intel chip, and clear understanding of computer science, you might have mined your way to wealth in the early days of the BitCoin gold rush.

It turns out that both of these narratives—which are concerned with issues of exposure, equity and access—are way out of whack. When you look at Victoria Rideout’s and Vikki Katz’s new report, Opportunity for All: Technology and Learning in Lower Income Families, it is clear that a huge chunk of the U.S. population is under-connected. That means they really can’t be over-exposed, nor can they take advantage of the opportunities that saturate a supposedly equitable web-economy.  

Consider the notion that most families, regardless of income level, have some form of Internet connection. But many are limited to mobile-only access or have inconsistent connections. According to the report, 23% of American families whose income falls below the median level, and 33% below the poverty level, rely on mobile-only Internet access that’s not dependable. A fast desktop or laptop computer with a good broadband connection is just not financially feasible for many Americans, so they’re stuck with Internet that’s too slow (52%), shared by too many family members (26%), cut off for lack of payment (20%), and/or reached the data limit in the last year (29%).

Despite admirable efforts (such as President Obama’s “ConnectHome” initiative) to provide more equitable access to broadband, discounted Internet programs like these are still reaching very few people. Only 6% of eligible families are taking advantage of such resources. And the data gets even more disheartening when broken down by race and ethnicity. “Families headed by Hispanic immigrants are less connected than other low- and moderate-income families. One in ten (10%) immigrant Hispanic families have no Internet access at all, compared with 7% U.S.-born Hispanics, 5% of Whites, 1% of Blacks.”

Use of the World Wide Web, it seems, remains far from equitable. This means it is probably a stretch to assume that our society, on average, is over-exposed. And it is even more absurd to imagine the web as if it were some sort of equalizer. Let’s be crystal clear and say that again: the human race as a whole is not on its way to becoming a bunch of anti-social cyborgs. And the way we are implementing networked digital technologies is not helping to create an even playing field. Instead, it is reinforcing the disparate socio-economic lines along which opportunity, information-exposure and cultural alienation has been distributed for centuries.

I suspect that when most of us think about what it means to be under-connected, all of the news media, information, and data that we encounter on a daily basis comes immediately to mind. When studies like Rideout’s and Katz’s highlight the divide between the under-connected and the adequately-connected, we all acknowledge how it will inevitably lead to a widening skills gap—particularly when it comes to computer skills like writing code and using sophisticated business software. We also probably recognize the advantage that some students enjoy in more traditional academic subjects just because they have the tools to easily complete their homework without needing to visit a public library or a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi.

But that’s not the whole issue. Parents of adequately-connected computer-savvy children should also consider what is happening when their kids spend interacting with PC games like Minecraft and tablet games like Little Alchemy. Recognize that while your children are playing, they are also learning to be comfortable in a connected world. They’re developing the confidence to easily operate and experiment with digital tools. They are experientially applying higher order thinking skills within virtual environments. And therefore, they are also becoming acclimated to subtle social cues and nuanced behaviors that will ultimately make them easily identifiable as the privileged, the cultured, and the elite. They’re procuring habits-of-mind that will eventually draw the line between the insiders and the alienated.

At the end of the day, remember that child development and education are both always about how young people learn to make use of language, knowledge, and academic content within the context of lived experience. Although we often think of “context” as if it were some sort of abstract cultural or historical zeitgeist, the reality is much simpler. For humans, context is all about how we use a particular sets of tools to intellectually, emotionally, economically and materially fabricate our world. Lacking exposure to those tools is like being locked in closest for most of your childhood.

If we can’t figure out a way to equally distribute the context, then all the other well-meaning social, economic, and educational initiatives can’t succeed either.

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) recently interviewed Michael Levine about his groundbreaking work in video games and learning, why games will become a common part of the workplace, and how his kids use video games to dominate their fantasy leagues. This was originally published in The ESA Newsletter and appears here with permission.

Thanks for speaking with us, Michael. Could you introduce yourself and your work?

Sure, my background is in child development research, philanthropy and public policy. I’ve worked for a fascinating set of organizations, ranging from the entertainment industry to public policymakers to global nonprofits over the years. I currently run the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. The Cooney Center is a “think and do” tank – it conducts research and invests in scaling up innovations in digital technologies for children and families. We are leaders in the emerging field of game-based learning. I’m also on the senior team of the Sesame Workshop, which is the world leader in developing educational media for kids. I’m inspired by the ongoing power of the Muppets to help them grow up ready to master and enjoy all that life offers.

You’ve been involved in the video game industry for quite some time. How did you first become interested in working with video games?

When I founded the Center in 2008 we conducted a wide range of interviews with leaders in the field of digital media and authored an analysis of which trends might have the most transformative educational potential.

One of the field’s top pioneers, James Paul Gee – then at the University of Wisconsin and now at Arizona State University, and I began a study of the potential of game-based learning for early literacy development. That research then became the basis for a larger study that we conducted with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. That study, “Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health,” was issued in 2009, and got the attention of Mike Gallagher and Erik Huey at ESA. Both then helped lead a new set of national initiatives to respond to the recommendations, including the launching of an annual summit on games-based learning and health at E3.

Following that work we began two new initiatives to help build interest in games for learning. The first, the National STEM Video Game Challenge, is an effort launched by the White House, ESA, other industry partners and our colleagues at E-Line Media to help youth and educators learn about STEM skills and game development through a design challenge. Second, we launched a multi-sector working group called the Games and Learning Publishing Council which has served as a “backbone” for disseminating important research and practical guidance for educators, designers and developers. We started up an independent news site where the games-based learning (GBL) sector can turn for rapid translations of research and current trends.

What is it about your day-to-day job that you enjoy?

The incredible variety of projects and activities that I have the privilege of working on. I have an incredible staff team – all of whom are more knowledgeable about digital media than I am so I have to be attentive at all times!

In addition to my work at the Center and the Workshop I am a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow, and I serve on several boards that are doing great work in the tech in learning and youth development spaces. For example, I am on the board of the We are Family Foundation, founded by the legendary music producer Nile Rodgers; the math apps company Woot Math led by former Disney executive Krista Marks; the GBL nonprofit Classroom Inc., which is led by former publishing executive Lisa Holton; and the films for education impact leader, Journeys in Film, led by the master educator Joanne Ashe, which recently did an incredible curriculum project in collaboration with the new film, “Malala.”

Where do you see video games in 10 years? What broader applications across society can we expect in games’ future?

I’m convinced that game applications will become commonplace in the next generation of in-school and on-the-job assessments of competencies. Games are super flexible in the creation of personal learning pathways and we will soon see their adaptability in play much more widely in schools and among employers. I can imagine, too, that educators and health professionals will turn to games to tune-up and practice their skills much more frequently, from surgeons to pilots to teachers.

What trend, either in the industry or in creative applications of game technology, do you think people should pay more attention to?

The role that games and other kinds of adaptive learning technologies can play to prompt behavioral health management and to be an incentive to change. We have already seen some great possibilities demonstrated with cancer and diabetes patients, for example, and in the management of nutrition and exercise.

The rise of ‘wearable’ and sensing technologies are all the rage at the moment and the accompanying research in behavioral economics and neuroscience will likely cause a new generation of tools very soon. I am also smitten with the prospect that virtual reality will finally break through on a major scale in classrooms and health settings to demonstrate how a third dimension of meaning can enhance the human condition.

OK, now a fun one. What is your favorite video game and why?

How about two?  At home for family fun, I am a huge fan of EA Sports, especially Madden Football and FIFA. EA Sports practically raised my boys who also learned a huge number of coaching and management moves that help them dominate their fantasy leagues. Second, I’m so impressed by a new emphasis on global education and cultural knowledge that the new game studio E-Line Media is taking with their partners at Upper One Games. Their debut game, an absolutely stunning, incredibly beautiful quest for life’s meaning called Never Alone, which paired Alaska Native storytellers with world-class game developers. I hope it’s a new formula of deeply educational and engaging film and game making that we will be seeing across the industry in the future.

We recently released Getting a Read on the App Stores: A Market Scan and Analysis of Children’s Literacy Apps, in which we discuss the challenges facing parents and educators who are looking for quality literacy apps for young children. We invited our colleagues at Common Sense Media—whom we cite as an expert source of reliable app reviews for parents—to tell us more about Graphite, which aims to help educators find high quality apps for students by criteria such as platform, subject areas, grade levels, and skills.

From an app to an overheard projector, from a paperweight to a pencil: any tool is tech. But that’s not how everyone sees it. In the hyper-competitive, boom or bust, move fast world of edtech evangelism and the startup culture within which its embedded, tech is now and apps are the great equalizers. Each new tool changes everything. All apps solve some long lingering problem. Every product launch brings light to the darkness and balance to the force. And if you think I’m being dramatic, you need to start checking out some startup websites and promotional videos.

That’s not to say there isn’t cool stuff happening in edtech (or tech more broadly). There is, and it’s exciting. The problem is that if you’re an active teacher or administrator looking to make a purchase for your school or district, it’s tough to separate signal from noise or substance from sales pitch. You can talk to colleagues, but they’re also way too busy to find everything and give it a good look. There’s Google, of course, and the various app stores and aggregators, but how do you make sense of tens of thousands to millions of results influenced by just about everything but what works best for teachers?

This was the main problem we built Common Sense Graphite to solve: sorting through edtech and elevating the best of the best. We’re a non-profit and completely free to use with no biases or strings attached, and most of the editorial staff has spent time in classrooms (or still is!). We pride ourselves on offering some refreshing real talk and a trustworthy take.

It’s been over two years now, and we’ve been tirelessly reviewing, rating, categorizing, and curating edtech. We’ve also been cultivating a community of active teachers who do the same. We’ve now got thousands of reviews and teacher-curated boards as well as a couple hundred best-of lists curated and updated by our editors.

Our editorial reviews, if I can brag a little, are unlike anything else out there: they’re in-depth (but still easy to skim), backed by a rubric aligned to the latest research on learning design, and designed from the ground up to give teachers the information they need. Every review is evaluated by at least two staff members who are some of the most knowledgeable people about edtech in the country. Better yet: after the review is published our community of tens of thousands of teachers get to weigh in—providing a nice balance of unbiased editorial evaluation and on-the-ground perspective.

For us, success has been getting a teacher to stop in and quickly find something awesome and inspiring to use in his/her classroom the next day. What we’ve realized though is that this takes more than just reviews and lists of tools. Why? Because tech is tech; a tool alone will never transform a classroom. Transformation is what teachers do—not tools; it’s a simple thing, really, but something the edtech world too-often ignores in favor of technological solutionism.

As we further evolve Graphite, what we’re trying to do is better connect the dots between great teachers, tools, and teaching practice—presenting opportunities for inventive teachers to use tech in ways that expand the possibility space in a classroom.

Wrangling tech and using it effectively isn’t easy though. Tools aren’t always tuned to the realities of classrooms let alone promoting effective and innovative pedagogical approaches. Far from reinventing (dare I say “disrupting”) teaching or pushing boundaries, a lot of edtech looks awfully similar to business as usual and can easily be used in classrooms to just tread water. Out of the over 2,000 tools we’ve reviewed at Graphite, less than 10% have received our five-star rating and even fewer get five stars from both our editorial team and teacher community.

What has been especially exciting is seeing developers respond to our reviews. While teachers are Graphite’s main audience, and we set up a very clear firewall between our editorial staff and developers, we want to communicate and collaborate with developers through our reviews. The way we see it: we’re all in this thing together. Our hope is that we give developers fair, substantive feedback that can help them iterate. We’ve seen some evidence of this happening. Since our reviews are “living” and get regularly updated, we’ve watched as a good share of tools’ ratings gradually climb with each updated review. We’ve also seen an increasing amount of developers with classroom experience, or a dedication to working closely with teachers and schools to pilot their products.

The most exciting thing of all though is getting surprised by teachers with creative, unexpected uses for tools. On Graphite, teachers can take tools and structure them in a lesson plan creation tool, sharing their best practices and activities with others. We didn’t promote this functionality much initially, but it exploded in popularity. Teachers, especially the bleeding edge innovators who were Graphite’s core user base, were excited to share the stuff that had been working for them. What we noticed was that many of these lessons featured tools we liked but didn’t quite love. That didn’t matter though, because teachers made them shine anyway. That’s what’s really special about teachers: they can make any tool great. They’ve been doing it with everything from post-its to blackboards for decades.

This brings me to what’s fundamentally wrong with much of the Silicon Valley-fueled discussion about technology and learning. It’s too often thought of as a kind of science and if you just get the right tool and teach it in the right way then you’ll get the right result. But teachers aren’t scientists or technicians, they’re artists. They improvise, tinker, and create. They make experiences that change how students see the world. Art isn’t exact; it’s messy and weird. It doesn’t always go as planned, and not everyone gets it. And while technology shapes art (always has, always will), technology, in an artist/teacher’s hands, will always be one step behind her.

Tanner Higgin is Senior Manager of Education Content at Common Sense Education. His focus is on Graphite.org where he serves as staff expert on game-based learning and guides the editorial direction for arts and teacher tools. He’s also the editorial team’s content strategist and product development liaison. Previously, he taught writing and media literacy for six years, and has a PhD from the University of California, Riverside. His research on video games and culture has been published in journals, books, and online, presented at conferences nationwide, and continues to be cited in research and taught in classes around the world. 

This post was originally published on the Common Sense Media Kids Action blog and appears here with permission. Read in Spanish here.

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Howard County Library System

In today’s society, access to technology is the path to academic and economic opportunity. This is especially true for kids, who increasingly need access to computers, printers and the Internet to keep up with schoolwork.

But too many American children still don’t have access to the technology they need to succeed. New research from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center shows that this technology is still out of reach for many American families, putting their kids at a disadvantage in the classroom.

The digital divide is creating new challenges for low-income families, and making it harder for many kids to keep up. Ensuring digital equity is essential to ensuring every child gets the right start.

As schools increasingly turn to digital learning tools, it is evermore important for tweens and teens to be able to access school portals and class websites from home. Teachers are moving class reading lists, homework assignments and other important school-related announcements online.  Among 10- to 13-year-olds who use computers or the Internet, 81% often or sometimes use computers or the Internet to do homework, according to the Cooney Center report.

Yet for too many Americans – particularly low-income kids – regular Internet access is hard to come by. For middle and upper-income parents focused on limiting their kids’ time spent online, that may not seem like a terrible thing. But the truth is, technology is  now so ingrained in our schools that students without it are at a real disadvantage.

The Cooney Center report illustrates that today’s parents understand how crucial Internet access is for their kids’ futures.  Cash-strapped, low-income parents prioritize Internet access. More than half of all parents who purchased a computer said the purchase was aimed to improve their child’s education.

But for some, getting online is simply too expensive. Forty percent of surveyed parents who do not have a computer say money is the main reason (by contrast, only 4% say it is because they use computers elsewhere).

Similarly, 42% of those without home Internet access indicated that cost is the main reason that they do not have it. This is particularly true among families below the poverty level, where half of those without a home computer (53%) or home Internet access (50%) cite money as the main reason.

We can do more to ensure online access is available to all. Advocates for digital equity, including Common Sense Media, have made important strides, working with the FCC to modernize and expand the federal E-Rate program to help bridge the digital divide.

But more work needs to be done. As the Cooney Center report shows, Internet service is still prohibitively expensive for many Americans, keeping many low-income kids off line, or trying to access digital content through dial ups and mobile phones. The Cooney Center report finding that cost is an overwhelming deterrent for lower-income families to having their homes wired is one reason advocates are supporting the modernization of the FCC’s Lifeline program to cover broadband access for low income homes.

As we embrace the educational possibilities of technology, it is not enough to ensure our classrooms are wired. We must make sure that all American children have reliable high-speed Internet access at home too, so they can take advantage of the educational opportunities that technology provides. It is up to all of us to make sure all kids keep up in the classroom and at home in our increasingly digital world.

James Steyer is one of the most respected experts and entrepreneurs on issues related to children’s media and education in the United States.  He is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Common Sense Media, the nation’s leading non-partisan organization dedicated to improving media and technology choices for kids and families. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Center for the Next Generation. 

Este post ha sido publicado originalmente por Common Sense Media y aparece aquí con permiso. Lea la versión en Inglés aquí.

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Howard County Library System

En la sociedad de hoy, el acceso a la tecnología es la puerta a las oportunidades académicas y económicas. Esto es especialmente cierto en el caso de los niños, quienes necesitan tener acceso a computadoras, impresoras y el Internet para poder mantenerse al día con los trabajos en la escuela.

Pero muchos niños en Estados Unidos todavía no tienen acceso a la tecnología que necesitan para ser exitosos. Un nuevo estudio de Joan Ganz Cooney Center muestra que esta tecnología esta todavía fuera del alcance de muchas familias estadounidenses, dejando sus hijos en desventaja en el salón de clases.

La brecha digital está creando nuevos retos para las familias de bajos ingresos y hace más difícil que los niños se mantengan al día. Asegurar la equidad digital es esencial para asegurar que todos los niños tengan un comienzo justo.

Cada vez más las escuelas apuestan por las herramientas digital de aprendizaje, y es cada vez más importante que niños y jóvenes puedan tener acceso portales de la escuela y sitios web de cada clase desde su hogar. Los maestros ahora comparten las listas de lectura, asignatura de tareas y otros recursos importantes relacionados a la escuela en línea. Entre los niños de 10 a 13 años de edad que usan las computadoras o el internet, el 81%, siempre o casi siempre, usan las computadoras o el internet para hacer la tarea, reporta el estudio del Cooney Center.

Sin embargo, para muchos estadounidenses, particularmente niños de bajos ingresos, es difícil tener acceso frecuente al Internet. Para padres de familia de ingresos medios y altos que se preocupan por limitar el tiempo que sus hijos pasan en línea, esto puede no parecer tan terrible. Pero la verdad es que la tecnología es ahora parte integral de nuestras escuelas y los estudiantes que no tienen acceso a ella están en gran desventaja.

El estudio de Cooney Center reporta que los padres de hoy entienden que el acceso a Internet es crucial para el futuro de sus hijos. Los padres de ingresos limitados tienen como prioridad el acceso a internet. Más de la mitad de los padres que compraron una computadora dicen que lo hicieron para mejorar la educación de sus hijos.

Pero para algunos, conectarse a internet es simplemente muy costoso. Cuarenta por cierto de los padres encuestados que no tienen una computadora dicen que el costo es la principal razón (en contraste, solo el 4% dice que es porque usan las computadoras en otros lados).

De manera similar, 42% de los encuestados que no tienen acceso a internet en casa indicaron que el costo es la principal razón para no tenerlo. Esto es especialmente cierto entre las familias con ingresos por debajo de la línea de pobreza, donde la mitad de los encuestados sin computadora en casa (53%) o acceso a internet en casa (50%) dicen que el dinero es la principal razón.

Podemos hacer mas para asegurar que el acceso a internet este disponible para todos. Los defensores de la equidad digital, incluyendo Common Sense Media, han dado pasos importantes trabajando con la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones (FCC) para modernizar y expandir el programa federal E-Rate y ayudar a reducir la brecha digital.

Pero aún queda mucho trabajo por hacer. El Cooney Report muestra que el servicio de internet es demasiado caro para muchos estadounidenses, y no permite que muchos niños de bajos ingresos estén en línea o se traten de conectar a internet por medio de teléfonos móviles o conexiones con muy baja capacidad de datos.  Los hallazgos del estudio del Cooney Center dicen que el costo del internet es la razón mas grande para que las familias de bajos ingresos decidan no conectare a internet en casa, y esta es una de las razones por la que los grupos defensores apoyan la modernización del programa Lifeline del FCC para cubrir el costo de acceso a internet de banda ancha en los hogares de familias con bajos ingresos.

Mientras adoptamos todas las posibilidades educacionales que brinda la tecnología, no es suficiente asegurarnos que los salones de clases tengan acceso a internet. Debemos cerciorarnos que todos los niños estadounidenses también tenga acceso a internet de banda ancha y de buena calidad en casa para que puedan aprovechar las oportunidades educativas que trae la tecnología. Es el deber de todos asegurarnos que todos los niños se mantengan al día en la escuela y en la casa sobre nuestro creciente mundo digital.

James Steyer is one of the most respected experts and entrepreneurs on issues related to children’s media and education in the United States.  He is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Common Sense Media, the nation’s leading non-partisan organization dedicated to improving media and technology choices for kids and families. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Center for the Next Generation.

Are you the parent or guardian of a child between 4 and 13 years of age?  Does your child play video games?  If so, you are eligible to take a survey about digital games and family life by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.  Parents who complete the survey will have a chance to win one of two $25 gift cards to Amazon.com.

In 2014, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center launched a study to learn about digital game play in families.  We are expanding our study to gather current information about how families are playing digital games in 2016.  If you are the parent of a child between ages 4 and 13 and your child plays digital games, please consider taking our survey.

Taking this survey is completely voluntary, and you may stop at any time by closing your web browser tab or window.  We are not collecting any personally-identifiable information in this study, such as your name or address.  All of your responses will be kept private and will not be shared with any other person or organization.  If you have any questions about this research, you may contact the Cooney Center at jgcc.research@sesame.org.

After completing the survey, you will also have a chance to enter your email address into a drawing for a $25 Amazon.com gift card.  Entering this drawing is also voluntary.  Your email address will not be used for any other reason than to contact you if you win the drawing.  Your email address will not be connected in any way to your survey responses, and will be deleted immediately after the prize winner is selected and contacted.

Ready?  http://bit.ly/1maChvZ

Former Fellows Jason Yip and Anna Ly with Briana Pressey and Lori Takeuchi (L-R).

Want to join the Joan Ganz Cooney Center team? Apply to be the 2016-2017 Cooney Center Fellow! The Cooney Center Fellows Program encourages research, innovation, and dissemination to promote children’s learning. Fellows participate in a wide range of projects and, in doing so, develop broad exposure to scholarship, policy, and practice in the field of digital media and learning. We are accepting fellowship applications now through April 4, 2016.

Learn more about the program, eligibility requirements and how to apply. And check out some insightful (and humorous) thoughts from past Cooney Center Fellows: Jason Yip and Sarah Vaala, Ph.D.