Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture brings together insights from several years of work by a multidisciplinary team of scholars who comprise the Families and Media Project (FAM). As members of FAM as well as co-editors of the volume, we’re delighted to have been a part of this project and to have helped bring this book to fruition. We feel that the book, and the work of the FAM researchers as a whole, addresses the need for more nuanced, detailed investigations of how families, especially those with young children, are incorporating digital media into their lives. A particular focus in our research is on the ways that families’ engagement with digital media offers intentional and unintentional opportunities for learning.

The studies that informed the book utilized a wide variety of research methods: survey research with large numbers of respondents to identify patterns in digital media use and learning across families; in-depth interviews with parents, other adult family members, and children; and repeated observations of family life. Particularly important to our collective work was understanding the role of digital media use in the context of families’ lives, not as isolated or separate activities but as caught up in family routines, relationships, values, and aspirations. Also important was our belief that technologies of any sort are not deterministic of particular behaviors or outcomes, but rather that families, including children as well as parents and other adults, actively engage with digital media to serve their own purposes and goals.

We could not have done this work without the willingness of families to participate by answering our questions and allowing us to visit their homes. We watched families playing video games together, rode with kids in the back of the family car as they used mobile devices “on the go,” chatted with parents and teens about telenovelas, and witnessed kids and grandparents collectively troubleshoot issues with video conferencing software. Family members shared their beliefs about the importance of digital media for connecting with each other and with family at a distance, for access to information on topics ranging from parenting to Legos, and for children’s success in school. They also discussed concerns about screen time, conflicts over media use, frustrations with confusing or outdated technologies, and other challenges. Overall, the metaphor of a mosaic perhaps best characterizes the nature of family life and learning that is captured in these pages: digital media have distinctive meanings and roles for each family, while across families we can discern common patterns and themes. Throughout the chapters in this book, the authors have attempted to balance a description of these common themes with rich and detailed examples of individual families’ experiences.

We hope that the insights and stories in this book will be informative for readers with varied backgrounds and interests, including educators, researchers, and designers of digital media. We suspect that readers may find some of the examples and themes resonate with their own family and parenting experiences, while others may be surprising. Much of the material in each chapter provides a counterbalance to the frequently negative portrayal of digital media in family life conveyed by the popular press and more scholarly work. There are many examples of how digital media are bringing families together to pursue shared interests, to help each other with everyday tasks, or to reinforce shared values and family identities. In addition, the chapters show how significant learning takes place in the seemingly routine or even mundane activities that digital media support in the home, be it setting up a new Skype account, creating videos with a smartphone, or dealing with the limitations of translation software.

What impressed us the most, perhaps, was the ingenuity, persistence, and resourcefulness that families demonstrate in how they recruit digital media in the service of their goals and aspirations. Many of the parents in our research were immigrants, with limited English language skills, and few financial resources. Their ability to provide children with up-to-date technology tools and to take advantage of internet resources for supporting children’s formal academic learning was, of course, much more restricted than that of parents with more financial and educational assets. However, as the chapter authors describe, parents of all backgrounds expressed a desire for assistance in learning how to better choose, evaluate, and use digital media to enhance their children’s learning and improve the quality of family life as a whole. We hope that readers will find inspiration in the pages of this book for their own efforts to support a family-centered approach to the design and use of digital media that build on families’ strengths and are responsive to the diverse contexts of families’ lives.

 

Elisabeth R. Gee is the Associate Director for the Center for Games & Impact. Gee is a Professor and holds the Delbert & Jewell Lewis Chair in Reading & Literacy at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. She has published widely on the topics of literacy, gender, gaming, and learning; her recent books include Women and Gaming: The Sims and 21st Century Learning (2010), Language and Learning in a Digital Age (2011), both co-authored with James Gee, and Learning in Video Gaming Affinity Spaces (2012) (co-edited with Sean Duncan). Prof. Hayes is currently the co-director of Play2Connect, a research and outreach project that aims to promote intergenerational learning, communication, and well being through video games. She is a co-editor of Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture.

We’re thrilled to announce the publication of Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture, edited by Elisabeth Gee,‎ Lori Takeuchi,‎ and Ellen Wartella. The book is based on research conducted by the Families and Media Project (FAM), a multi-disciplinary consortium comprised of researchers from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Arizona State University, California State University-San Marcos, Northwestern University, Rutgers University, Stanford University, Sesame Workshop, and the University of Washington.

Members of the FAM consortium have collaborated across institutions and disciplines with a common goal of producing research to guide practitioners—including educators, policymakers, and media producers—in developing programs, policies, and products that:

• Positively impact the learning, communication, and lifestyle needs of families with children;
• Support family engagement with media—in real-time and asynchronously—by taking advantage of technological affordances that may overcome the various challenges of using media together;
• Better address the needs of today’s families, including single-parent households, non-native speakers, and parents with demanding work schedules;
• Help families be smarter media consumers and wiser in their content selections; and
• Improve education, promote healthy lifestyles, and positively influence family development outcomes.

The studies documented in Children and Families in a Digital Age offer fresh perspectives grounded in large-scale survey research as well as in-depth ethnographic studies of how families with children ages 2-12 use media. These families come from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, but a majority of the studies represented in this volume focus on Hispanic-Latino families.

The editors outline four practical applications for this book. First, the studies offer insights for educators interested in supporting connected, interest-driven learning experiences that motivate young learners.

In particular, this research suggests the critical role of parents, siblings, and other family members in helping children identify and explore these interests, make connections across potentially disparate learning experiences, and resolve issues and barriers to using media to pursue these interests. Indeed, while discussions of interest-driven learning often focus on individual interests, a number of our chapters indicate how shared interests among family members can be focal points for collaborative, social learning activities.

Second, the authors stress the importance of enhancing connections between home and school media use and learning. Educators can benefit from understanding parents’ perceptions of digital media, as well as understanding how students’ families use media at home.

For example, children are taking on roles as teachers, information brokers, and gatekeepers for their siblings and parents, yet the skills they develop and the demands that they face frequently go unrecognized by teachers as opportunities for learning.  In particular, understanding families’ out-of-school use of media and digital technologies may help educators to develop more expansive notions of digital literacies and learning activities that go beyond typical school-oriented or workplace-oriented tasks.

Third, the authors describe forms of joint media engagement that go far beyond how we have typically conceptualized such engagement, suggesting benefits for media designers as well.

Joint media engagement occurs, for example, in the process of troubleshooting media-related problems and can extend to asynchronous interactions over time and space (Chapter 4). Recognizing and designing for these more diverse forms of joint media engagement, as well as supporting parents in taking full advantage of such opportunities for learning, are valuable tasks for designers as well as educators.

And finally, the book offers implications for supporting parents’ learning through and about media and digital technologies.

Our findings indicate how actively parents are involved in navigating the rapidly evolving media landscape, seeking information, resources, and support while trying to align new media practices with their values, parenting approaches, and the perceived needs of their children and families. All parents need assistance in sorting through the wide range of often conflicting opinions and evidence about digital media’s potential for learning and other positive outcomes, and many parents do not feel confident about their ability to make informed decisions about their family’s media access and practices.

We hope that you will find these chapters as illuminating and insightful as we do!  The paperback version is available for pre-order on Amazon, or you can purchase the Kindle version now. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for opportunities to win paperback copies of the book.

 

Children’s learning experiences in home, school, and community settings are often disconnected from one another, and this challenge particularly affects those who are already under-served. How might learning be better linked to support children’s development? How are some communities innovating to address this persistent challenge and how can digital technologies contribute toward solutions?

At a special TELOS Initiative symposium at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education on November 8, Lori Takeuchi (Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop), June Ahn (NYU), and Andrew Volmert and Kevin Levay (FrameWorks Institute) presented ongoing national research about families and children’s learning beyond school, and Sunanna Chand from Remake Learning shared examples of how educators and organizations in Pittsburgh have worked to build networks that guide students through pathways of connected learning. This symposium kicked off a two-day workshop during which regional teams collaborated on design challenges. Read on for highlights.

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Game Design Special Interest Group recently held a Mentor “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” with Game Writers in conjunction with the National STEM Video Game Challenge. Teachers and students throughout the United States contributed questions about the process of writing original video games. The expert panel moderated by Felix Wilhelmy featured:

• Sheri Graner Ray, an award-winning game designer and CEO of ZombieCat Studios. Sheri has worked for such companies as Schell Games, Origin, Sony Entertainment, and the Cartoon Network.
• Bobby Stein, Associate Narrative Director and Narrative Design Lead at ArenaNet, the maker of Guild Wars.
• Sande Chen, a writer and game designer best known for her work on titles on The Witcher and Wizard 101. Follow her on Twitter @sandechen.

Panelists responded to a variety of thoughtful questions, including:

• What is the biggest challenge in developing a videogame, both in storyline and in general?
• What are some key differences between a good and a bad narrative?
• Where do you see virtual reality and augmented reality going, and how do you think this technology will change games and storytelling?
• What are some ways a designer can tell a story in a game that gives the player opportunities to make real choices that genuinely affect the outcome of the game?
• What would you say is the #1 pitfall in the design of serious games?

Listen to the full AMA panel below or on Soundcloud, and find a full list of questions submitted in the Files section of the IGDA Game Design SIG Facebook group. (The GDSIG is a closed Facebook group, but anyone can join, provided they follow the guidelines.)

 

 

 

The IGDA is an international, non-profit organization whose mission is to advance the careers and improve the lives of game developers. 

 

 The National STEM Video Game Challenge is a multi-year competition whose goal is to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games.

This week, libraries, schools, and organizations across the country are highlighting the importance of media literacy. Regardless of the type of media, children and adults need to be savvy consumers. According to NAMLE, media literacy is defined as “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, create, and act using all forms of communication.” Headlines about fake news and misinformation have driven home the vital need for critical thinking skills among all ages. While much of the media literacy attention focuses on older kids and teens, National Media Literacy Week is for preschoolers, too.

To some, the idea of teaching media literacy to preschoolers seems too sophisticated or academic. Yet, each week, preschoolers visit the Homer Public Library in Alaska for storytime and an informal lesson in media literacy. To passersby, the scene in the children’s library during storytime looks quite playful and very age-appropriate. They might look through the windows separating the children’s library from the rest of the building and see a librarian sharing some books, telling a story with some puppets, leading an activity with an iPad, or introducing an art or science project. My community is growing critical thinkers, and for many families, it all starts at storytime.

Teaching media literacy to preschoolers requires a shift in approach from the more common strategies implemented in programs for teens and older kids. Discussions about fake news, data accuracy, and advertising campaigns are important, but what resonates with young children? The good news is that the storytime culture found in many public libraries these days easily accommodates the key elements of media literacy.

Asking Questions, Active Thinking

Storytime is not a performance, but a conversation. Fortunately, high quality children’s books are rich with content that make teaching aspects of media literacy in a storytime setting easy. For example, books by Mo Willems and Jon Klassen, among others, introduce the idea of unreliable narrators with young children. Their humor, uncluttered illustrations and clear story structure engage little ones and make room for open-ended discussions about the books. Preschoolers are observant and in storytime, they feel welcome to talk about what they see, think and feel. They are also encouraged to ask questions. Depending on the group and the book, I might ask:

• Who is the narrator?
• Who is the creator?
• What do you see?
• Is the story or information real or pretend? How do you know?
• Is it a joke?
• How does the story make you feel?

With open-ended questions like these, librarians encourage young children to extend the discussion about the relationship between the pictures and the words read aloud. Sometimes the illustrations and text align, and in other books they intentionally tell a different story. Look ahead 10 years, and the preschooler who has learned these critical thinking skills has become a teen who can discuss the relationship between the images and text in an ad, and what that ad’s message really is.

High Quality Media of all Kinds

Librarians are good at selecting high quality media of all kinds, which is a fundamental aspect of media literacy. Featuring stories and information in storytime that include a wide variety of topics and perspectives grow young children’s understanding of the world around them. Authentic tales from around the world, informational books about places, animals or holidays, and images or videos of real animals featured in illustrated stories all have value. A broad appreciation for the world beyond their own helps children evaluate media based on their own experience. Access to a variety of media helps children feel comfortable with a range of resources they will one day use in school and beyond to support or refute things that they read, hear, and see.

Storytime is an ideal time to introduce media that challenges stereotypes. Sharing vehicle books in storytime might alienate some listeners. But selecting truck books that feature characters of both genders contributing to the action, or a storyline that might appeal to children who love animals or reading or music, helps young listeners and their families connect with the story in different ways. A young girl who has not seen herself in books may see bulldozers, as in the case of Candace Flemings’ books, in a new light. To be successful, as librarians, educators, and caregivers, we must recognize our own biases especially when choosing and sharing media with children. Introducing books and other media that reflect children’s experiences and that are different from what they are already familiar with encourages them to analyze what they read, hear, and see as they get older.

Creating Content

Storytime at the Homer Public Library includes time for children and their caregivers to create media with hands-on art and science projects. Regardless of the design, these projects offer little ones the opportunity to tell their own stories, test different materials, and extend their learning. Children learn about the different parts of media, and the tools used to make them, through this process. As they draw, cut, paint and mold, they talk story. The beauty—and the lesson—are in the process rather than the final product. Families make finger puppets to use while retelling a shared story, they paint or draw images with colors or materials similar to those used in a featured book, or they draw and write in an app on the library’s mounted iPad. As they grow, these preschoolers will have the chance to create comics, build apps, and much more.

Fundamentally, media literacy is really about literacy in the Digital Age. Our concept of what media is has broadened, but the value of literacy has not. Librarians, as media mentors, are tasked with supporting the media, literacy and information needs of families. We do this by providing access to experiences that help children and their families develop their critical thinking skills with a variety of media. At storytime, preschoolers are accessing, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and acting. They are also expanding their vocabulary, letter knowledge, narrative skills, background knowledge and collaborative skills. Media savvy adults begins in preschool. Come see for yourself. Bring a little one to storytime this week to celebrate Media Literacy Week!

 

More resources:

• ABC’s of Media Literacy: What Can Pre-Schoolers Learn? – by Faith Rogow
• How do I start teaching media literacy to my preschooler? – Common Sense Media
• Media Literacy in Early Childhood: A Critical Conversation – TEC Ericson Center

 

Claudia Haines leads storytimes, hosts Maker programs, and gets great media into the hands of kids and teens as the Youth Services Librarian and Media Mentor at the Homer Public Library (Alaska). She is a co-author of the Association for Library Service to Children’s white paper, Media  Mentorship in Libraries Serving Youth (2015). She trains other librarians as media mentors and serves on both local and national committees that support families and literacy. She blogs at www.nevershushed.com. @claudiahaines

The Interaction Design and Children Conference took place in June 2017 at Stanford University. The conference brought together a multidisciplinary community, focused on multiple aspects related to the design of technology for children.

As part of the conference, we put together a workshop to discuss Joint Media Engagement (JME) as it relates to the development and consumption of apps for children and their caregivers and peers. We framed the discussion around previous theoretical work done on this topic. We also considered primary research conducted at Google observing trends on parents and kids using apps together and building stronger bonds through joint media use. During the workshop, participants covered a range of topics related to JME, such as social interaction and child development, connecting hospitalized kids with family through virtual reality games, co-engagement with the natural world, role-playing and toys, as well as interactive robots.

Theory behind the workshop

Consider the following scenarios:

Scenario 1

Noah heard about the new Pokemon GO game from his friends at school and immediately downloaded it. As an 8-year-old, he uses his dad’s old phone to play games after school or during the weekends. His aunt is visiting, and he asked her to download the game on her own phone so he could teach her how to use it, and catch Pokemons together while they are out spending time together.

Scenario 2

Ana’s 11-year-old daughter loves to play Candy Crush Saga and is constantly talking about it with her friends. Ana decided to download the game on her phone and start playing as an opportunity to bond and connect with her daughter. She sometimes asks her daughter for help, even if she doesn’t really need it.

Scenario 3

Sara often lets her 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter play games and watch videos on her old tablet while she cooks dinner. Her kids have to share the tablet so they take turns and often fight over who gets to play first or what to watch. A family friend told Sara about the game Sago Mini Doodlecast. When Sara’s kids tried the app, they worked together on the drawings and enjoyed recording their voices. They were also excited to share what they made together with Sara.

These scenarios are examples of case studies we have come across during our own research and practice, and represent different ways in which parents and kids are using mobile games to enrich both digital and real-life experiences. Together, they demonstrate how mobile games are no longer just a way for isolated users to spend free time, but are also instruments for social bonding and keeping abreast of each other’s interests. Recent research by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center supports that playing digital games together is growing in popularity, particularly among families with children age 4-10, and suggests that when it comes to kids and media, context matters (Joan Ganz Cooney Center, 2017).

In her book Screen Time, Lisa Guernsey writes about the importance of context, and how parents’ attitudes towards media matters (Guernsey, 2012). She encourages parents to consider what she refers to as the Three Cs—content, the individual child, and context— when selecting, using, and developing digital media with and for young children. When parents choose good content and coview/co-use digital media with their children, media becomes a way to enrich the relationship and connection between parent and child. Decades of research on television and young children, as well as emerging research on children’s use of digital media, also suggest that the educational value of media is enhanced when kids and parents use media together (e.g., Takeuchi & Stevens, 2011) because kids learn best in the context of interactions and relationships with tuned-in, caring and responsive adults (Donohue, 2015).

Although Guernsey’s Three Cs are the same in terms of their level of importance, context tends to be a more nebulous concept to grasp and design for. When designing technology for children, products tend to focus on providing content that is both engaging and appropriate for children at a given age and developmental stage. By purposefully including context as a design parameter for the design of technology for children, product developers can aspire to not only create engaging games, toys, books, etc., but also meaningful experiences and connections between children and their parents and peers.

Over the last six years, field leaders from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the Fred Rogers Center, and the TEC Center at Erikson Institute have produced a number of publications that provide insight into the context of conjoint technology usage and suggest various design strategies for encouraging co-engagement (e.g., Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College, 2012; Takeuchi, 2011; Takeuchi & Stevens, 2011; Vaala, Ly, & Levine, 2015). For example, creating content that challenges and appeals to both kids and parents, that can be played or used together. Other ways to encourage JME include extending play beyond the screen, connecting in-app experiences to the real-world, and encouraging communication with family members, caregivers, or friends. These design strategies provided the starting point for our workshop.

Outcome of the workshop

Our workshop participants used all the information outlined previously as a base to start a discussion on designing technology for children that fosters co-engagement. We formed smaller groups and discussed the topic based on three age buckets: Preschool (2 to 5 years), Early elementary (6 to 8 years), and Later elementary / Middle school (9 to 12 years).

At the end of the discussion, our takeaways were transformed into a series of guidelines that can be used by developers of children’s media who wish to foster co-engagement:

Preschool (2 to 5 years old)

• Provide tangible objects for play
• Activities that go from screen to real world
• Activities that are motivating to both children and adults
• Scaffolds for parents’ co-engagement
• Extended familiar play patterns or daily routines of parents and children
• Open-ended play to enable personal creativity
• Intuitive gameplay with minimal instructions
• Flexibility of design for both co-play and solitary play
• Distribution of roles and many points of access for play

Early Elementary (6 to 8 years old)

• Find ways to allow co-play between peers and parents with varying degrees of parental involvement. Help the child bring in the parent (passive co-engagement)
• Ensure rapid prototype test with kids and parents (“test early, test often”)
• Design for the kid’s context (consider their challenges)
• Allow kids to express themselves and share it with their peers on the platform (not social media)
• Include multiple roles, possibilities, and guidance; but allow for flexibility and the ability to play individually as well as with others
• Ensure the design is inviting to parents and compelling across ages
• Needs to be on a variety of devices, i.e.not tablet only
• Be visually driven, but some amount of text can be considered

Later elementary / Middle school (9 to 12 years old)

• Abstraction and shared understanding can be included at this age. Not everything needs to be spelled out, and parents and kids can work together to solve quests.
• Foster autonomy. Give more responsibility to the kids and less to the parents, allow kids to teach parents how to play games, solve quests, etc. Foster co-creation and play with others.
• Promote a higher understanding of one’s self. Foster confidence, guided mastery and adaptive feedback.
• Social sharing. Foster ownership of one’s achievements and failures by sharing creations and building on them or creating ways to start conversations.
• Show and tell to foster different levels of relationships.
• Understand parental roles at this age, and design optimal ways of involvement.

Next steps

This workshop was just our first step for starting the conversation on joint media engagement with a highly multidisciplinary group focused on the design of children’s media. The guidelines we crafted are an initial attempt to look deeper into this topic as it relates to different stages of child development and to provide guidance to developers of media who wish to offer co-engagement experiences in their products.

We definitely wish to continue the conversation and work on this area! You can join the group we created for this community here. And you’ll find more information on the workshop website.

 

References

Donohue, C (Ed.). (2015). Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years: Tools for Teaching and Learning. New York: Routledge and Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College. (2012). A framework for quality in digital media for children: Considerations for parents, educators, and media creators. Latrobe, PA: Fred Rogers Center

Guernsey, L. (2012). Screen Time: How Electronic Media—From Baby Videos to Educational Software—Affects Your Young Child. New York: Basic Books.

Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., boyd, d., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., … Tripp, L. (2010). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Takeuchi, L., (2011). Families matter: Designing media for a digital age. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

Takeuchi, L., & Stevens, R. (2011, December). The new coviewing: Designing for learning through joint media engagement. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center. (2017, January). [Digital Games and Family Life: Families play both board/card games and digital games together] [Infographic]. Retrieved from http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/JGCC-DGFL-4.pdf

Vaala, S., Ly, A., & Levine, M.H. (2015). Getting a read on the app stores: A market scan and analysis of children’s literacy apps. New York, NY: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.

 

Catalina Naranjo-Bock is a Senior User Experience Researcher at Google Play, where she leads the Kids & Family UX research vertical. Prior to joining Google, Catalina led product research and design at the LEGO Group, Nickelodeon, Yahoo, and YouTube. She holds and MFA in Product Design and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) from the Ohio State university. Catalina has also served as an advisor at Stanford University, University of Berkeley, and the California College of the Arts.

Jennie Ito, Ph.D. is a Policy Expert for Google Play, focused on the Kids & Family section of the app & games Play Store. She has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, with a specialization in children’s play and social cognition. She began her career as a Fellow in Museum Evaluation and Museum Education at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. Prior to joining Google, Dr. Ito had her own play and toy consultancy where she reviewed toys and helped toy and media companies such as LeapFrog, Coolabi, and Peaceable Kingdom create meaningful play experiences for young children.