Nancy Carlsson-Paige is a professor emerita of eTly childhood education at Lesley College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
She has written an informative guide for parents of young children about how to help them during the digital age.
Her guide was posted by DEY, Defending the Early Years, the premier organization supporting the healthy development of young children.
Increasingly, children are surrounded by screens. How much is too much? What should parents do to make sure that their children don’t become addicted to screens?
Count on Nancy Carlsson-Paige for sound advice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
https://nypost.com/2018/11/10/brooklyn-students-hold-walkout-in-protest-of-facebook-designed-online-program/
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How was this allowed in NYC schools? How are teachers supposed to be evaluated on the Danielson rubric if their students are glued to screens and not interacting with each other?!
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Along the same lines, “Reader Come Home” by Maryanne Wolf
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Here’s the link: https://www.deyproject.org/uploads/1/5/5/7/15571834/young_children_in_the_digital_age_final.pdf
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Here’s another one about screen time …
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/11/linking-screen-time-smartphones-stress-among-young-adults/
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“Parents working in Silicon Valley are sending their children to a school where there’s not a computer in sight – and they’re not alone”
“In the heart of Silicon Valley is a nine-classroom school where employees of tech giants Google, Apple and Yahoo send their children. But despite its location in America’s digital centre, there is not an iPad, smartphone or screen in sight.
“Instead teachers at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula prefer a more hands-on, experiential approach to learning that contrasts sharply with the rush to fill classrooms with the latest electronic devices. The pedagogy emphasises the role of imagination in learning and takes a holistic approach that integrates the intellectual, practical and creative development of pupils.
“But the fact that parents working for pioneering technology companies are questioning the value of computers in education begs the question – is the futuristic dream of high-tech classrooms really in the best interests of the next generation?
Wearable technology in the classroom: what’s available and what does it do?
Read more
“A global report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests education systems that have invested heavily in computers have seen “no noticeable improvement” in their results for reading, maths and science in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) tests. The OECD’s education director, Andreas Schleicher says: “If you look at the best-performing education systems, such as those in East Asia, they’ve been very cautious about using technology in their classroom.”
“Those students who use tablets and computers very often tend to do worse than those who use them moderately,” he adds.
https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/dec/02/schools-that-ban-tablets-traditional-education-silicon-valley-london
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Nancy Carlsson-Paige is a wonderful person and scholar. Thanks, Diane.
I downloaded her report and am sharing it. Thanks for the link, Stu.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2018/08/13/blue-light-phones-tablets-could-accelerate-blindness-study/974837002/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28254-8
I do read books online, but having a real book in my hands is always a much more satisfying experience. I can flip back easily, dog-ear pages, write in the margins, highlight words and passages, and much more.
I like the smell of books and how they feel in my hands and what my mind and being experiences.
BOOKS OPEN, We FALL IN, DOORS OPEN!
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This wonderful article by Nancy Carlsson-Paige with great illustrations and sound research should be in every day-care center and pre-school.
I also recommend two books (both 2016, Davis Publications) bringing concepts and photographs of activities and projects from Reggio Emilia to readers in the United States.
One is The Hundred Languages in Ministories: Told by Teachers and Children from Reggio Emilia.
The other is Documenting Children’s Meaning: Engaging in Design and Creativity with Children and Families.
Both publications are stylistically similar to the wonderful examples of learning presented by Nancy Carlsson-Paige.
Both publications have been enabled by long time translator of the work and workers at Reggio Emilia, Lella Gandini. Here is an excellent 2011 interview with Lella Gandini http://www.journalofplay.org/sites/www.journalofplay.org/files/pdf-articles/4-1-interview-gandini.pdf
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Great insights into the need to preserve childhood and eschew technology for younger children that have yet to make sense of the world. We also have little understanding of the impact of technology on the developing brain and eyes. Active rather than passive learning is always better for young children. Children learn through their senses. Let them explore and connect with others.
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ACTIVE RATHER THAN PASSIVE LEARNING: encourage the physical use of pencils, crayons, clay, building blocks, paints, scissors…
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Interesting. I finally got the time to look at this entry. Which says something about how busy I am. If I didn’t have today off I’d be rushing around, getting ready to go to school.
I’m finding that my ability to read actual books is being diminished by all the screen time (and the pace of that screen time) that I spend, especially at work. And, I don’t even own a smart phone. Plus, I’ve been reading (and loving reading books) for decades.
The questions posed by how the most vulnerable among us are being affected by all this new technology are immense. Of course, some of those issues involve politics, especially now that we have this bizarre, tweetstorming, reality distorting, celebrity president.
It’s like the amusement park funhouse from when I was a kid (with it’s spinning lights and crazy mirrors and the walkways that move up and down like a ship at sea.) Except this funhouse we’re in now sure ain’t fun….and it’s everywhere, including in our brains.
Technology helped give our society Trump. And, now Trump is leading us to rely even more on technology, in an unhealthy, even dangerous way.
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On a related note, here’s a very interesting article I just read about how using a high tech algorithm to plan school bus schedules in Boston ending up causing protests, and was later scuttled….though it had some merit. https://www.wired.com/story/joi-ito-ai-and-bus-routes/
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The article is fine for parents, & I wonder (sadly) if it shouldn’t also be shared widely among PreK directors– & PreK staff newcomers: curriculum specialists who seem to spend their time mapping planned activities to absurdly detailed, acad-heavy, post-CCSS state PreK stds. Except for the neurological stuff (which nobody but hard-core science buffs need, for “proof”), it reads at a very basic level for anyone w/even 1 undergrad-level child devpt course, let alone a major in early childhood ed.
I see no tech devices at all in the 4 Preschools currently on my visiting roster. In fact, then-new director at one of them, 7 yrs back, asked me to cut out the 2-3min video musical clips I used to use instead of boombox for certain songs. “They get too much screen time at home already.” And that’s at a commercial chain PreK w/too much teacher-directed & insufficient play time.
But I’m familiar w/3 employee daycares in the region that have long used packaged Span programs [unmonitored by teachers – for 3&4-y.o.’s! – ads claim they ‘teach Spanish’ grr], & I’ll bet they do other stuff by CD-Rom too, to justify laptop purchase. No doubt there are others among the name-brand PreK’s that have popped up like mushrooms over the last 20 yrs. They all advertise state-approved copyrighted PreK curricula which you can’t even look at w/o buying (double grr). Cheap & easy way to run a PreK w/mediocre directors & barely-trained teachers, all severely low-paid.
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It isn’t just pre school. The author is talking about children all the way up to 8 years.,,. I have been teaching young children (pre-K through 2nd grade) for almost 25 years. The reason many of my students now (first grade) are on the computer so often at school is because we are obsessed with “data” driven results. The best way to get data is to plug a child into a computerized “educational game” and assess what he “learns”. I can’t fight this system. My students only get to play at recess and even then many of them are so unskilled in cooperative play that their “games” become shouting matches. I have said for some time that what we are doing to young children (in education) borders on child abuse. It is institutionalized and considered normal by most.
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