Digital Citizenship in Early Childhood: FHI 360's National Initiative, Lecture notes of Engineering Science and Technology

Download Digital Citizenship in Early Childhood: FHI 360's National Initiative and more Lecture notes Engineering Science and Technology in PDF only on Docsity! AN FHI 360 NATIONAL INITIATIVE Right From the Start IN THE DIGITAL AGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Right from the Start in the Digital Age national initiative has benefitted from the expertise of individuals and organizations who are committed to helping children gain the skills they need to enter the digital world safely and responsibly. We gratefully acknowledge their contributions to this paper. We want to express our deepest appreciation to the funders who provided support for this effort: the Free to Be You and Me Foundation, which underwrote the foundational study that led to this paper; and the FHI 360 Catalyst Fund, which funded the development of the paper and the launch of the national initiative. We also extend our thanks to the thoughtful and innovative FHI 360 team who worked with us on this project: Natalia Abel, Program Officer, Social Marketing and Communications; Patrick Cook, former Training and Technical Assistance Director, Social Marketing and Communication; Anne Quito, Director, Design Lab 360; Frances Santiago, Administrative Associate, School and Community Services; and Danielle K. Smith, former Communications Manager, Education, Social and Economic Development. We thank the contributors who gave generously of their time for interviews during the foundational study that was the first phase of our work: Nancy Gropper, former Associate Academic Dean, Bank Street College of Education; Marge Keiser, Parent Coordinator, PS 321, Brooklyn, NY; Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, Executive Director, National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE); Liz Phillips, Principal, PS 321, Brooklyn, NY; Ayelet Segal, Parent, Bank Street School for Children; Lori Skopp, Principal, Abraham Joshua Heschel Middle School; Alexis Wright, Dean of Children’s Programs, Bank Street School for Children. On March 20, 2015, FHI 360 held an Expert Convening at their New York office to further develop ideas for this position paper. The contributions of the participants have been invaluable in shaping its content as well as the initiative that was conceived at the meeting. We extend our deepest appreciation to: Kathy Charner, Editor-in-Chief, Books and Related Resources, National Association for the Education of Young Children; Shayna Cook, Program Associate, New America; Chip Donohue, Dean of Distance Learning and Continuing Education, TEC Director, Fred Rogers Center Advisory Council Member; Ed Greene, Vice President, Partnerships and Community Engagement, Hispanic Information Television Network; Nancy Gropper, former Associate Academic Dean, Bank Street College of Education; Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, Executive Director, NAMLE; Liz Phillips, Principal, PS 321, Brooklyn, NY. On June 26, 2015, FHI 360 held a second Expert Convening in conjunction with the NAMLE biennial conference in Philadelphia, PA. Once again, we were fortunate to have the contributions of national experts in both media literacy and early child education to add to our perspective. We extend our deepest appreciation to: Tanya L. Baronti, Digital Media & Learning Project, Saint Vincent College; Vanessa Domine, Professor of Secondary and Special Education, Montclair State University; Lisa Guernsey, Director, Early Education Initiative, New America; Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, Executive Director, NAMLE; Karen N. Nemeth, Author/Consultant, Language Castle LLC; Faith Rogow, Media Literacy Education Maven, Insighters Educational Consulting; Mary Rothschild, Director, Healthy Media Choices, Fordham and Adelphi Universities; Roberta L. Schomburg, Senior Fellow, Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media; Kelly Whitney, Chief Product Officer, iCivics; Shimira Williams, Integration Specialist, TEKSmart; and Karen Wohlwend, Associate Professor, Indiana University, Bloomington. 3 Right from the Start in the Digital Age: An FHI 360 National Initiative Bullying, which has expanded from real time in the classroom and community to the Internet, has become a pervasive source of harm. Its prevalence and permanence is a cause of low-self-esteem, depression and physical and mental illness; it is estimated that 2.2 million students in grades 9-12 experienced cyberbullying in 2011 (NCES, 2013). According to the Pew Research Project, 88 percent of teens who use social media have witnessed other people being mean or cruel on social media sites (Lenhart et al., 2011). Girls are more than twice as likely as boys to experience online bullying. At the extreme end of harm, according to a survey of students conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2014), 16 percent of students who were victims of online bullying reported seriously considering suicide, 13 percent reported creating a plan for suicide and 8 percent reported trying to take their own life in the year preceding the survey. Because cyberbullying reaches its highest level in middle school, starting early to change the tendency of cruelty online among adolescents is critical. We all know how important it is to teach our children right from wrong, and knowing right from wrong online is no exception. The rapid shift to digital media is reshaping the work of young children, but providing guidance about how they should behave is lagging behind. Therefore, it is important for adults to help children develop skills and establish principles that will help them thrive in both the real and digital world in which they are growing up. Families and teachers alike are searching for ways to address this new form of citizenship so they have age-appropriate ways to help children to be safe, be respectful and use good judgment while online. As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” FHI 360’S STUDY In 2012, the Free to Be Foundation awarded a grant to Educational Equity at FHI 360 to advance its long- standing work to address teasing and bullying behavior beginning in early childhood. The grant supported a foundational study of how to create safe and good digital citizenship in young children as they enter the digital world. Activities included interviews with school administrators, parents and a digital media expert, as well as an online parent survey on children’s use of technology. The interviews highlighted the need for good digital citizenship and underscored issues that are critical to the prevention of cyberbullying. One overall message that emerged was “start early.” Interviewees and survey respondents agreed that children’s use of all forms of digital media was increasing rapidly and was beginning at earlier ages. In addition, during the interviews, the lack of resources for guiding positive use of digital media was noted time and again. While there are excellent resources for all ages in the area of bullying and teasing in real time, there are far fewer that relate to this issue in cyberspace, particularly for younger children. Especially missing are picture books, easy-reader chapter books and classroom curricula activities for children in grades PreK-3. A major reason to start early to create good net citizenship is to avoid the need to remediate online behavior when children use the Internet more independently starting in 4th or 5th grade. Parents and other family members are able to exercise more control over use and content with younger children, 4 Right from the Start in the Digital Age: An FHI 360 National Initiative ensuring safe interactions. In addition, they can help children choose games that are not violent and that don’t promote excessive consumerism. In all of the interviews, safety was a key concern. A universal suggestion was for close monitoring; keeping the computer and other digital devices in open spaces where a parent or caregiver can see what the child is engaged in. Another strategy that came up frequently was to have ongoing discussions with children about what is and is not acceptable online behavior. In every interview with parents, the discussion turned to the challenges of keeping a balance between the positive aspects of digital access — such as self-initiated learning, social interaction, fun and entertainment — and concerns about safety such as overuse, diminished physical playtime and lack of understanding about the consequences of online mistakes. School administrators expressed concern that, despite rules that restrict classroom computers to in-school use for curricula projects, students find ways to circumvent those rules, which can and does lead to cyberbullying. The schools where interviews were conducted are known for instilling strong ethics and kindness in students, and each institution has issued guidelines for parents and other family members. In spite of the care taken to mitigate bullying and teasing, it still occurs and increasingly happens online. An expert on media literacy raised issues that are at the crux of addressing teaching positive net citizenship to young children. A key point that she makes in her workshops for parents and educators is that young children are tech savvy but not necessarily media literate. They might know how to use the device but they don’t truly understand its purpose and power. The challenge is how to convey abstract concepts of safety, permanence and privacy in terms that young children can understand. In addition to the interviews, a survey was conducted to gain further insight into how parents are handling their children’s entry into the digital world. The 39 survey respondents are parents of children in grades K-5 in New York City public schools. While the sample is small, the results clearly show that technology is part of these children’s lives, with about one-third using the technology to interact with friends online. Parents have devised a number of strategies to limit and/or supervise their children’s use of technology. However, not many parents are providing proactive guidance about good net citizenship. Fewer than half the parents have talked about cyberbullying with their children, and in very few cases has it been brought up in school. (A summary of the survey is attached.) A REVIEW OF THE LANDSCAPE To better understand how various sectors are addressing the constantly expanding use of digital media, FHI 360 looked at what government agencies and programs, private foundations, media and early childhood and other nonprofit organizations are doing in this arena. At present, school districts, universities and government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Education, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Commerce provide a range of programs and services to address violence prevention in real time and online. These programs center mostly on 5 Right from the Start in the Digital Age: An FHI 360 National Initiative preventing youth violence, providing schools and school districts with resources including strategy booklets, model policy statements, staff training and curricula. For example, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has developed KnowBullying, a free app for parents and caregivers that contains bullying prevention tips and strategies. Private foundations such as the Cybersmile Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by parents of children directly affected by cyberbullying, and media groups have sponsored TED talks and funded media campaigns to address online bullying. Examples include To the Bullied and the Beautiful, a TED video that has reached 3 million viewers, and Beware/Be Aware an animated graphic sponsored by MTV. Internationally, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, to name just a few, have promoted bullying prevention programs for youth. While some of the initiatives try to span the K-12 age group, the vast majority focus on students in middle through high school. Recently, however, Child Trends has published a white paper, “Bullies in the Block Area: The Early Childhood Origins of ‘Mean’ Behavior,” which provides an overview of risk factors in early childhood for later involvement in bullying and summarizes a variety of strategies, intervention and guidance for parents, caregivers, teachers and others for addressing and preventing bullying behavior in young children (DeVooght, et al., 2015). Leading early childhood educational organizations and advocacy groups have issued policy statements and guidelines about how to integrate digital devices and programming in developmentally appropriate ways. The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE), a major organization in this field, works in formal and informal settings to improve media literacy education, which has been defined as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, communicate and act using all forms of media. NAMLE holds a biennial conference that draws a unique mix of educators, media literacy practitioners, scholars, content producers, media-industry leaders and others passionate about media literacy education to share their work and learn from one another. This past year, NAMLE held a pre-conference Symposium on Media Literacy Education for Early Childhood. The symposium emphasized the importance of beginning media literacy as early as possible — to establish the ABCs of media literacy, the skills and knowledge that form the building blocks for the complex capabilities children need as they grow. It also highlighted the importance of using media and technology as powerful tools for learning, communicating, collaborating and creating. The Early Education initiative at New America provides policy analysis and reporting, and publishes a newsletter, books and other resources concerned with the well-being of children birth through age 8and their families. A policy brief, “Envisioning a Digital Age Architecture for Early Education,” measures the degree to which children and parents use media together (Guernsey, 2014). The NAEYC and Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media have issued a position statement, “Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8” (2012). NAEYC has also co-published a book with Routledge, edited by Chip Donohue, a leading proponent of developmentally appropriate use of digital media (2015). 8 Right from the Start in the Digital Age: An FHI 360 National Initiative solve conflicts peacefully. As adults, we also need to pay attention to the need to embrace these traditional early education principles as we prepare children for digital citizenship. By taking an approach that integrates social-emotional development, we are developing skills that will serve children well when they enter the world of social media and online interaction. THE NATIONAL INITIATIVE Many groups and individuals nationally are interested in helping children enter the digital world ready to take advantage of the positive advantages it presents and equipped with the skills they need to become responsible users of the Internet throughout their school years and into adulthood. FHI 360 has drawn on the expertise of media literacy leaders, early childhood organizations, school administrators, producers of early childhood media and teacher educators to develop partnerships and collaborations that support Right from the Start in the Digital Age. Through discussions with these experts, important topics have emerged to be addressed by the initiative: build awareness, promote Inclusion, take a multi- context approach, provide tools for families and teachers and teach media literacy skills. FHI 360 will create a national awareness campaign and work with publishers to develop picture books and trans- media learning materials to address these topics. In addition, FHI 360 will bring Quit it!, Educational Equity at FHI 360’s evidence-based program to address teasing and bullying in grades K-3, into the digital age. Quit it! has successfully reduced real- time teasing and bullying behavior in urban and suburban schools in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut by more than 35 percent. Quit it! A Teacher’s Guide on Teasing and Bullying for Use with Students in Grades K-3 is listed in Human Rights Education in the School Systems of Europe, Central Asia, and North America: A Compendium of Good Practice (OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, 2009), which includes citizenship education and education for mutual respect and understanding. Under this initiative, Quit it! will be updated to include lessons for children about responsible use of the Internet and strategies that adults can use in the classroom and at home. The expanded version of Quit it! will be available in a digital format suitable for downloading to a cellphone, tablet or other digital device. FHI 360 is excited and challenged by the opportunity to spearhead a national initiative to address digital citizenship beginning with children in grades PreK-3. We look forward to bringing this critical issue to the forefront of early education. 9 Right from the Start in the Digital Age: An FHI 360 National Initiative REFERENCES Alper, M. (2011 December 28). Developmentally appropriate New Media Literacies: Supporting cultural competencies and social skills in early childhood education. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 13(2): 175- 196. CASEL. (2015). Social and emotional learning core competencies. http://www.casel.org/social-and- emotional-learning/core-competencies/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2014 December 16). National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/injury; http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/index.html. Common Sense Media. (2013, fall). Zero to eight: Children’s media use in America. A Common Sense Media Research Study. DeVooght, K., Daily, S., Darling-Churchill, K., Temkin, D., Novak, M, & VanderVen, K. (2015, August). Bullies in the block area: The early childhood origins of ‘mean’ behavior. Bethesda, MD: Child Trends, Inc. Donohue, C., ed. (2015). Technology and digital media in the early years: Tools for teaching and learning. New York: Routledge & NAEYC. Englander, E.K. (2011). Research findings: MARC 2011 survey grades 3-12. In MARC Research Reports. Paper 2. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/marc_reports/2. Flewitt, R.S. (2011). Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a digital age. Qualitative Research 11 (3): 293-310. Galinsky, E. (2010). Mind in the making. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence: Why it can happen. New York: Bantam Books. Guernsey, L. (2014 March 26). Envisioning a digital age architecture for early education. Washington, DC: New America Foundation. Gutnick, A.L., Robb, M., Takeuchi, L., & Jennifer, K. (2010). Always connected: The new digital media habits of young children. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Lenhart, A., Madden, M., Smith, A., Purcell, K., Zickuhr, K., & Rainie, L. (2011, November 9). Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites: How American teens navigate the new world of digital citizenship. Pew Research Center. Available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2011/11/09/teens- kindess-and-cruelty-on-social-netowork-sites/ Linebarger, D.L., Piotrowski, J.T., & Lapierre, M. (2009). The relationship between media use and the language and literacy skills of young children: Results from a national parent survey. Paper presented at the NAEYC annual conference, November 18-21, Washington, DC. NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College (2012 January). Technology and interactive media as tools in early childhood programs serving children from birth through age 8. Available at: http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PS_tec hnology_WEB2.pdf NCES (2013 August). Student reports of bullying and cyber-bullying: Results from the 2011 school crime supplement to the national crime victimization survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights , Council of Europe, United Nations Human Rights, United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization. (2009). Human rights education in the school systems of Europe, Central Asia, and North America: A compendium of good practice. Warsaw: OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Payton, J., Weissberg, R.P., Durlak, J.A., Dymnicki, A.B., Taylor, R.D., Shellinger, K.B., & Pachan, M. (2008, December). The positive impact of social and emotional learning for kindergarten to eighth-grade students. Chicago: Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Rogow, F. (2015). Media literacy in early childhood education: Inquiry-based technology integration. In C. Donohue (Ed), Technology and digital media in the early years: Tools for teaching and learning (New York: Routledge & NAEYC). Schweinhart, L. J., Barnes, H. V., & Weikart, D. P. (1993). Significant benefits: The HighScope Perry Preschool study through age 27 (Monographs of the HighScope Educational Research Foundation, 10). Ypsilanti: HighScope Press. FHI 360 PARENT SURVEY ON USE OF TECHNOLOGY AND CYBERBULLYING The thirty nine (39) parents who responded to this survey in 2013 are parents of children in grades K-5 in New York City public schools. While the sample is small, the results clearly show that technology is a part of these children’s lives, with about a third using the technology to interact with friends online. Parents have devised a number of strategies to limit and/or supervise their children’s use of technology. However, not many parents are providing proactive guidance about good digital citizenship. Fewer than half the parents have talked about cyberbullying with their children, and in very few cases has it been brought up in school. Following is a summary of the results of the survey. What types of technology does your child use? All parents in the survey reported that their children, regardless of grade level, used some sort of technology. A computer was the technology predominately used, with 84.2 percent of parents reporting this result; a tablet came in second, with 60.5 percent; a cellphone third with 42.1 percent and an iPod fourth with 36.8 percent. There was little difference between grade levels for use of all types of technology. Do you have family guidelines for the use of technology? A large majority – 32 out of 39 (84.2 percent) -- of parents reported “Yes” to this question. Most of the guidelines related to limits and/or supervision such as time restrictions, parental approval of sites, controls and filters on devices, and discussions of games played. Two parents reported having guidelines that addressed good digital citizenship, for example, “Don’t text anything that you wouldn’t say in person to someone.” Does your child interact online with friends? Seventy three (73) percent of parents – the majority of which had children in grades K-1 -- reported “No” to this question. Those whose children did interact online, described those interactions as playing games, texting, using Instagram, using Face Time and sending occasional emails. Do you talk about cyberbullying with your child at home? More than half (57.9 percent) answered “No” to this question. Those who answered “Yes,” described that they “explain how it’s just as bad as bullying in person -- either way it is just wrong” and that nothing is to be put in an email or text that is hurtful or could be misconstrued as hurtful. One parent said that her daughter, who was in 4th grade, received a group text saying that they should talk about someone. “I told her that no matter how she is feeling about that person at the moment and wants to talk about them with the others, she needs to think about every possible consequence first. She should assume that the person they wanted to text about would eventually see every text about her. I told her if she wanted she could just text back that she was busy and couldn’t text if she didn’t know how to get out of it otherwise.” Has the issue of cyberbullying come up at school? The majority of parents answered “No” to this question. Only 7 said “Yes;” in one case because of an incident in the middle school. In two cases, parents responded that while cyberbullying had not been discussed, the general issue of bullying had, with one school having had an anti-bullying workshop.