Tech Together: A New Model for Using Phones with Young Kids
An LSX Project
Blog Post
Learning Sciences Exchange video
Aug. 10, 2022
The Learning Sciences Exchange (LSX) is a two-year fellowship program that brings together experts from five sectors (journalism, entertainment, education policy, social entrepreneurship, and the science of learning) across multiple countries. In addition to learning about each other’s fields and sharing insights about their work, LSX fellows are matched up to form three groups, with members of each group working collaboratively to design research-based and innovative projects that advance children’s learning. This is one of those projects. For more, see www.learningsciencesexchange.org
Nearly every parent has a smartphone, and those phones can easily be filled with apps and games for young children. But do those apps really help children grow and explore? Could there be other ways to use the phone to stimulate learning?
In a project called Tech Together, a group of LSX fellows has designed a list of activities that offer an alternative. They don’t advocate for banning screentime or keeping kids away from the phone—instead they offer ideas for harnessing its functionality and features to give children and their caregivers new ways of interacting and learning together.
The group has developed a list of activities and games that can easily be played with the technology embedded in almost any touchscreen phone today, such as the stop watch, the maps app, camera, and more. In using the maps app and GPS, for example, parents can talk with their children about distance, math, geography, and time: “Maybe you put in grandma’s house. “|‘How far is it to Grandma’s house’?” suggests LSX fellow Brenda Bushouse. Or, as LSX fellow Ariel Zekelman says, simply using the photos can be a way to have healthy screen time interactions: “Hey let’s look at a picture of when we were on our last vacation.”
Simple and accessible graphics showcasing these ideas are under development. The idea is to distribute and share them on social media to parents and educators around the world.
Members of the team included Brenda Bushouse, Judith Danovitch, Tammy Kwan, Annie Murphy Paul, and Ariel Zekelman.
Hear their story in the video below, check their Instagram account at kids_tech_together, and check back on this page for updates on how Tech Together ideas may be distributed in the future.
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