Every day there are new apps for mobile devices (iPhone/iPad/iTouch, smartphones, etc.), with more and more of them aimed at kids of all ages, including the very youngest.
But are they educational, and are kids actually learning from them. According to Learning: Is there an app for that?, a new national survey of parents and observation of K3-7 learning and interacting with mobile media, released yesterday by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop ( http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/Reports.html ), in collaboration with PBS Kids Raising Readers and Hotspex, most parents let their young kids use their mobile devices even though they don't think their kids are learning anything beneficial.
The study also found that kids can and are learning things (including literacy skills) through age appropriate educational apps, and also offers some guidance for developers to produce better educational apps and make parents aware of their benefits.
The report refers to the 'pass-back effect' - which is when a parent hands a mobile device to a kid to occupy them, say in car, restaurant or grocery cart, and the kid plays with it until the parent takes it back.
A 2009 content analysis conducted by The Cooney Center showed that 60% of the 25 top-selling paid applications in the education section of the iTunes App Store target toddlers and preschoolers. In addition, a Kaiser Family Foundation study noted that kids spend an average of about one hour per day using mobile devices. Some findings from Learning: Is there an app for that? include:
The mobile media pass-back effect - Two-thirds of K4-7 have used an iPhone or iPod touch and 85% have used one owned by a parent. Kids most often use the devices when they are passed-back by a parent while in a car.
Evidence that kids can learn from apps - Mobile apps based on PBS Kids programs Martha Speaks and Super Why! were independently evaluated with 90 K3-7 who played with them for 2 weeks. Kids made gains in vocabulary comprehension, letter-identification and rhyming after use of the apps. Vocabulary improved as much as 31% for kids who played with the Martha Speaks Dog Party App.
Young kids are surprisingly adept at using smart mobile devices - Nearly all of the kids observed in the studies could master operations, even after initial difficulty.
Create apps that sustain interest - Children use apps for short periods of time and interest quickly diminishes. Developers should design activities that incorporate specific educational goals and incentives to hold their interest.
Use mobile devices as supplemental tools - App content can be developed around curriculum goals in literacy, math and science as well as life skills to supplement and extend school-based learning.
Inform parents - App developers' claims of educational impact are largely unsubstantiated and should be based on specific evidence. Parents need more information on how mobile devices can and should be used as learning tools.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Study: Social Media Makes Kids Sick, Bad
Erik Sass, Nov 10, 2010 05:35 PM
Scarcely a week goes by without the news media circulating a questionable, but highly reportable, study purporting to document the ills caused by social media. This week is no exception: the latest entry comes from Case Western Reserve's School of Medicine, with a study warning that excessive use of social media -- specifically, "hypertexting" (sending more than 120 messages per school day) and "hypernetworking" (spending more than three hours per day on sites like Facebook) -- is linked to dangerous health problems and antisocial behavior in teens.
Among the Case Western findings, teens who hypertext are twice as likely to have tried alcohol; 3.5 times more likely to have had sex; 40% more likely to have tried cigarettes; 41% more likely to have used illicit drugs; 43% more likely to be binge drinkers; 55% more likely to have been in a physical fight; and 90% more likely to report four or more sexual partners.
Hypernetworkers were 60% more likely to have four or more sexual partners; 62% more likely to have tried cigarettes; 69% more likely to be binge drinkers; 69% more likely to have had sex; 79% more likely to have tried alcohol; 84% more likely to have used illicit drugs; and 94% more likely to have been in a physical fight.
According to lead researcher Scott Frank, "The startling results of this study suggest that when left unchecked texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected can have dangerous health effects on teenagers.
This should be a wake-up call for parents to not only help their children stay safe by not texting and driving, but by discouraging excessive use of the cell phone or social websites in general."
This would seem to suggest a causal link between texting and social networking and these negative outcomes -- and Frank speculated in an interview with CNN (but not the study itself) that all the texting and social media use enables "high-tech peer pressure." But he also concedes that the study "does not demonstrate cause and effect," which seems to contradict that statement.
In fact, he adds: "We are not saying texting causes these behaviors." So what are we saying? Well, it's kind of ambiguous: "We can recognize that these kinds of connections ... may be facilitating or enabling these kinds of behaviors, but we certainly can't think of (the online connections) as causing them."
"Facilitating" versus "causing" -- perhaps a minor distinction, at first glance. But once you accept that texting and social networks aren't actually causing these behaviors, they become just two more members of a group of correlated behaviors which may describe -- but can't explain -- a certain kind of personality, more prone to engage in risky and self-destructive activity.
Once again, I would argue that excessive social media use and texting are just symptoms of social ills that already existed for some time. It's well known that adolescents, struggling with unstable identities and mood swings, are more likely to engage in self-destructive behavior.
I believe behaviors like "hypertexting" and "hypernetworking" are closely related to the sense of incompleteness and insecurity which bedevils many teens (not to mention a good number of adults): like alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, they serve to occupy a restless, wandering, attention-seeking personality, which believes itself totally unable to find peace and tranquility on its own terms.
I should also point out that the Case Western study is simply a snapshot of teen behaviors at one moment in time. It doesn't examine changes in these behaviors over time, making it even harder to draw any conclusions about correlation versus causation.
On the other hand, many indices for negative behaviors among teens have remained flat over the last decade -- coinciding with the social media boom.
The proportion of teens ages 15-19 having sex before marriage has remained stable at 42% from 2002-2010, according to National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile the proportion of eighth graders who believe smoking marijuana regularly is harmful remained flat at around 70% from 2002-2009, according to a national study by the University of Michigan.
Scarcely a week goes by without the news media circulating a questionable, but highly reportable, study purporting to document the ills caused by social media. This week is no exception: the latest entry comes from Case Western Reserve's School of Medicine, with a study warning that excessive use of social media -- specifically, "hypertexting" (sending more than 120 messages per school day) and "hypernetworking" (spending more than three hours per day on sites like Facebook) -- is linked to dangerous health problems and antisocial behavior in teens.
Among the Case Western findings, teens who hypertext are twice as likely to have tried alcohol; 3.5 times more likely to have had sex; 40% more likely to have tried cigarettes; 41% more likely to have used illicit drugs; 43% more likely to be binge drinkers; 55% more likely to have been in a physical fight; and 90% more likely to report four or more sexual partners.
Hypernetworkers were 60% more likely to have four or more sexual partners; 62% more likely to have tried cigarettes; 69% more likely to be binge drinkers; 69% more likely to have had sex; 79% more likely to have tried alcohol; 84% more likely to have used illicit drugs; and 94% more likely to have been in a physical fight.
According to lead researcher Scott Frank, "The startling results of this study suggest that when left unchecked texting and other widely popular methods of staying connected can have dangerous health effects on teenagers.
This should be a wake-up call for parents to not only help their children stay safe by not texting and driving, but by discouraging excessive use of the cell phone or social websites in general."
This would seem to suggest a causal link between texting and social networking and these negative outcomes -- and Frank speculated in an interview with CNN (but not the study itself) that all the texting and social media use enables "high-tech peer pressure." But he also concedes that the study "does not demonstrate cause and effect," which seems to contradict that statement.
In fact, he adds: "We are not saying texting causes these behaviors." So what are we saying? Well, it's kind of ambiguous: "We can recognize that these kinds of connections ... may be facilitating or enabling these kinds of behaviors, but we certainly can't think of (the online connections) as causing them."
"Facilitating" versus "causing" -- perhaps a minor distinction, at first glance. But once you accept that texting and social networks aren't actually causing these behaviors, they become just two more members of a group of correlated behaviors which may describe -- but can't explain -- a certain kind of personality, more prone to engage in risky and self-destructive activity.
Once again, I would argue that excessive social media use and texting are just symptoms of social ills that already existed for some time. It's well known that adolescents, struggling with unstable identities and mood swings, are more likely to engage in self-destructive behavior.
I believe behaviors like "hypertexting" and "hypernetworking" are closely related to the sense of incompleteness and insecurity which bedevils many teens (not to mention a good number of adults): like alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, they serve to occupy a restless, wandering, attention-seeking personality, which believes itself totally unable to find peace and tranquility on its own terms.
I should also point out that the Case Western study is simply a snapshot of teen behaviors at one moment in time. It doesn't examine changes in these behaviors over time, making it even harder to draw any conclusions about correlation versus causation.
On the other hand, many indices for negative behaviors among teens have remained flat over the last decade -- coinciding with the social media boom.
The proportion of teens ages 15-19 having sex before marriage has remained stable at 42% from 2002-2010, according to National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Meanwhile the proportion of eighth graders who believe smoking marijuana regularly is harmful remained flat at around 70% from 2002-2009, according to a national study by the University of Michigan.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
PBSKids.org
PBSKids.org ( www.pbskids.org ) becomes the top kid-targeted website for free videos streamed based on number of videos viewed, per comScore Video Metrix (September 2010).
For the month of September 2010, kids spent an average of 47 minutes viewing free educational videos, reaching close to 88 million video streams for the month, which is twice the monthly average for free educational videos from other kid-centric sites.
For the month of September 2010, kids spent an average of 47 minutes viewing free educational videos, reaching close to 88 million video streams for the month, which is twice the monthly average for free educational videos from other kid-centric sites.
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