A Role for Early Ed Tech: Strengthening Connections Among Teachers, Librarians and Coaches

Lisa Guernsey
This post originally appeared on Early Ed Watch.

Apps on iPads are dominating the ed-tech conversation these days, but last week I had an opportunity to move beyond a trumpeting of the touchscreen and examine how online, digital media could change the early ed workforce. In a presentation for a meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers in Indianapolis, I talked to early childhood specialists in state education agencies about some untapped areas for enhancing training and forming partnerships among educators , including librarians, via digital technology.

The beginning of the presentation, Digital Intersections: Where and How Digital Technology Should Meet Early Childhood Policy, gives a status report on the growing use of digital media and screen-based tools, like touchscreen tablets, in families with young children. It also highlights some of the research on how, and if, young children learn from screen-based media –  studies that will be familiar to those who know my book as well as some new material gathered for a recent article for NAEYC Families. (The article, “How True Are Our Assumptions About Screen Time,” spotlights some recent eye-opening studies, including new research on sleep and media published in Pediatrics this summer.)

But it was the section on “the role of states” that probably had the most relevance for the policy experts in the room. Based in part on recent policy brief published by the Education Commission of the States,Technology in Early Education, I singled out two areas that state-level policymakers could focus on: building partnerships between libraries and early education and improving professional development and teacher training.  Libraries should be seen as integral partners for early education programs, especially in the area of technology given the online curating skills and technical know-how that many children’s librarians possess today. On teacher training, I borrow many ideas from Take a Giant Step: A Blueprint for Teaching Young Children in a Digital Age, a report published by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in 2011 on how to bring more tools and training to the early education workforce. The report also emphasizes the need to help teachers gain a better understanding of when and how it makes sense to use digital media and how to integrate it into the curriculum, instead of seeing it as an add-on.

Harnessing digital media to improve teaching in early childhood was also the topic of a presentation last week by Doug Powell, professor of human development and family studies at Purdue University, who has been studying the impact of video-based professional development programs for preschool teachers. Powell found that a video-based coaching model not only has a positive impact on teachers, it also has a positive impact on children’s outcomes in letter knowledge, blending of sounds, concepts of print and writing.  Other video-based programs such as MyTeachingPartner, which is based on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) that we’ve written about as an observation tool, are also finding video-based technology to be a cost-effective tool for use in professional development programs. 

P.S. On a slightly different edu-tech track: If you haven’t yet read Annie Murphy Paul’s piece about computerized tutoring in the New York Times Magazine last month, don’t miss it. The New America Foundation just named Paul as one of our Schwartz Fellows this year, and we’re looking forward to exploring intersections between what the Early Education Initiative learns about the science of early learning and the research Paul is exploring. You can read more of Paul’s work and sign up for her newsletter on her forthcoming book Brilliant: The Science of Smart on her website.