A Tap, Click, Read Toolkit to Promote Early Literacy in a World of Screens

 Over
the past several years, New America and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame
Workshop have become known for our book Tap,
Click, Read and for our joint research and analysis on how digital
technologies could be used to improve, instead of impede, early literacy.  Now our two organizations are going a
step further: We are releasing a toolkit of free materials designed to help
educators and other leaders put these insights into practice to help children
learn to read.  Fourteen
research-based resources—including tipsheets, discussion guides, ratings lists,
and a quiz—are now downloadable and free for further distribution at TapClickRead.org/TakeAction.  

These
materials will be reaching large audiences through our partnerships with First
Book and the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, two organizations dedicated to closing literacy divides and ensuring that children in low-income
families and high-need schools have access to high-quality teaching and reading
materials. They are featured in the Digital Learning Hub
of the First Book Marketplace,
which includes short videos of Q-and-A. And they will be highlighted through
four blog posts on the Huddle, an online
forum for the 200+ cities participating in the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. You will also see them in the coming months through Media Literacy Week (Oct 31-Nov 4) and at the annual meeting of the National Association for the Education of Young
Children in Los Angeles in a featured session on
November 3.

With the creation of these resources, we are trying to “walk the talk.” We recognize that in today’s
high-paced world, adults as well as children are learning in multiple ways, and
they need easy access to multimedia materials that spark conversation and new
ideas. Since the book’s
release in October 2015, we have been providing information in as many
formats as possible: through the stories and brilliant people we introduce in
the chapters of our book, through forums and presentations we have given around
the country, through five videos that are freely available on our site, on YouTube,
and on Vimeo; through social media
conversations at #TapClickRead
on Twitter and throughout Facebook; through the one-and-two page downloadables
we are announcing today (including ratings charts, quizzes, and expert advice);
and through just-released discussion guides (see below) that are designed to
prompt critical thinking by educators and other leaders throughout
communities. 

Our book
and the accompanying resources lay out a vision for building
21^st century ecosystems of learning that combine the best of media
and reading. We playfully call this combination “Readialand.”  We believe that Readialand ecosystems
can be created in communities around the country through new collaborations
between educators, families, and community leaders who recognize that 21^st-century
learning has to be human-powered first and tech-assisted second.  The downloadable resources are:

• What Educators Can Do—A list of recommendations for updating
  teaching methods, working with libraries and public media, and more.
• What Parents Can Do—A list of ideas for parents and
  caregivers, including the importance of listening to and talking with children
  about the media they use and why.

• How to Use Media to Support Children’s Home
  Language—Used well, media can
  spark opportunities for children to converse with their family members at home
  in their native languages. This helps them build a foundation for learning
  English too.
• How to Promote Creation and Authorship—Children need to learn what it means
  to be a creator, not just a consumer, of media. New tools bring this concept to
  life.
• How to Find Apps for Literacy Learning—Choose wisely. Use app-review sites
  and advice from literacy experts to find materials that match your students’
  needs.
• The Three C’s—Content, context, and the individual child. Become more
  mindful in using digital technology with young children by taking this quiz.
• A Modern Action Plan for
  States and Communities—A guide for community and state leaders on how to make
  progress in solving America’s reading crisis and strengthening family-centered
  approaches that will endure over time.
• 12 Actions to Take Now—A one-page
  list of “must-dos” for community leaders, district administrators,
  and policymakers to break out of the literacy crisis and bring opportunities to
  all children.
• What Developers Can Do—Media and
  technology developers can become a key part of creating ecosystems of learning
  by partnering with educators and recognizing the needs of today’s diverse
  families.

We have also produced five discussion guides to
accompany short videos that could be used to spark dialogue in community
workshops or professional learning community meetings:

Comienza en Casa: Helping immigrant families prepare their
children for kindergarten.

• Video
  vignette (5:15 minutes)
• Discussion guide

Tutormate: Matching community volunteers with first-grade students
for weekly reading sessions.

• Video vignette (4:18 minutes)
• Discussion guide

Parents And Children Together (PACT): Encouraging parents to read
with their children using e-books and text messages.

• Video vignette (5:05 minutes)
• Discussion guide

Play and Learning Strategies (PALS): Helping parents see how to
create language-rich moments with their children.

• Video vignette (5:37 minutes)
• Discussion guide

Univision and Too Small to Fail: Spreading messages about the
importance of talking, singing, and reading with young children.

• Video vignette (4:06 minutes)
• Discussion guide

 Funding from the Pritzker Children’s Initiative has made it possible for
us to do the lion’s share of writing and researching the book, producing the
videos, and creating and distributing the toolkit comprised of these 9 downloadable
resources and 5 discussion guides. The idea for this project was sparked by the
Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. We are grateful to the Pritzker Children’s
Initiative and CGLR for their support. All royalties from sales of Tap,
Click, Read (you can order it here on Amazon.com and see other sellers and post reviews on GoodReads.com) are invested back into the education research programs at our
two institutions, New America and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame
Workshop. All materials on the TapClickRead.org website are openly licensed
under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license.