Digital Resources

Using technology to full advantage is a theme for this school year’s recommendations for a better home-school connection. An article on the Edutopia site entitled Teacher-Parent Communication Strategies to Start the Year Off Right focuses on strategies for better communication between teachers and parents and suggests several tech tools and techniques to get the process kicked off. While a good resource for teachers, and one you may want to pass on, many of the ideas are useful for parents who want to communicate better with teachers also.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has partnered with Kindergarten teacher Kim VanBrocklin on developing an app that uses games to detect red flags for dyslexia and assess reading readiness in children ages 4 to 8. The app, called Application for Readiness in Schools and Learning Evaluation, or APPRISE, uses an accessible and scalable method that they hope to make available worldwide at no cost. The screener evaluates response time, working memory, processing speed, executive functioning skills, sound-segmentation and alphabetic recognition through child-centered games. As soon as the games are completed, data is sent in real time to statisticians at MIT. Parents receive information about their child’s performance, and data points can be used by educators to tailor interventions or programming initiatives. Parents and educators can get more information about taking part in the study at www.appriseproject.org.

YouTube has added eight new children's shows, with 25 others in development, as part of $100 million fund for family and educational shows. This fund is a contrast to the current strategy of relying on targeted advertising to fund children's programming.  The shows are designed in consultation with child development and literacy education experts with diverse representation, and will be available in several languages. Last year, in alignment with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), YouTube announced that targeted ads would no longer be allowed on kids’ videos, while content aimed at younger users would also lose access to comments and other community features. 

The Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of online information researchers, recently published a comprehensive analysis of the false narrative of the presidential contest and recommended ways to avoid a repeat. The report concludes that while social media companies are not solely to blame for misinformation, the platforms did serve as hubs in which false narratives were incubated, reinforced and cemented. Two of the report’s suggestions for how companies such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter can change to help create a healthier climate of information include holding people with outsized influence (think Trump and Kim Kardashian) to a higher bar, and asking social media companies to be transparent and consistent about their guidelines on misinformation and disinformation.

Google Earth – a free online tool -has been growing and developing for years and as a result, is now more powerful yet easier to use than ever. It also has more tools that work with it so parents and teachers can offer lots of learning experiences beyond geographic exploration alone. From diving into history through real-world sites to creating tours with clue-based gamification, there are lots of way to see the world up close and personal. Here’s how to make use of this resource.

No matter how you look at it, YouTube has become an essential platform for most kids - potentially more important, and more influential, than any other TV channel or network. But YouTube is risky, with content rabbit holes that can take your kids into dangerous, and potentially harmful territory. That’s why YouTube developed YouTube Kids, its dedicated platform for youngsters that runs separate from the main app, and doesn't facilitate links to all YouTube content. However at some point, older kids will be keen to move on, and that can put parents in a challenging position.

To address this, YouTube has developed a new process that will enable parents to monitor their child's YouTube activity via a connected experience, while also giving them more privacy and independence.. Through this new option, parents will be able to choose from three levels of supervision  for their childrens' activity depending on age and maturity. YouTube says that in-app purchases will be disabled within this new experience, as well as creation and comments features, though parents will eventually have variable controls for each element. YouTube also notes that it will continue to evolve the tool over time to improve the options and tools available.

And now for something completely different! Sometimes the digital resources suggested here just have to be FUN! So it is with Iceberger, a simple interface that creates iceberg shapes out of users' doodles and shows how these structures might float in water. Give it a try ... it is pretty cool.

While this debate has gone on for some time, there are some educators and parents who seem to perceive audiobooks as less than worthy. In their minds, it is as if sound media does not provide the same “rigor” that print media does. Some parents have even reported that educators insinuate that listening to an audiobook is akin to cheating, rather than providing a most welcome and necessary path to story and information for kids who have visual impairments, dyslexia diagnoses, or learning disabilities. If you as a parent are facing this kind of prejudice or just looking for some great listens for you and your kids, you might be interested in reading a passing along this article entitled “Yes, Audiobooks Are Real Reading. Here Are the Best Ones for Kids.”

Tubular Labs reports that US residents spent 56% more time watching social videos on YouTube and Facebook in December 2020 than they did in February, an increase that rises to 97% for those over 45 years old. Influencers commanded the most attention, with 121 billion monthly minutes, followed respectively by traditional broadcasters and digital-first publishers. For the parents out there, it’s probably no surprise that within the kids’ category, Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes commanded the top placement with 59 million unique viewers per month, followed by PinkFong! Kids’ Songs and Stories (51.6 million). Sesame Street was a more distant third (30.5 million).

Looking at top media creators by the age and gender demographics of their audiences, there are some notable differences. For the 13-24 year-old male cohort, the top creators by average monthly unique viewers were Movieclips (14.1 million), WorldStar Hip Hop/WSHH (11 million) and WWE (8.3 million). For women in the same age group, Tasty won out (9.4 million), followed by 5-Minute Crafts (8.5 million) and Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes (6.6 million). 

While the article 5 Ways to Remotely Support Students with Dyslexia is written with teachers in mind, it can also be helpful to parents of dyslexic children. Particularly helpful in the article is a section on how to help students who are struggling to speak up – sometimes a very hard thing to do online.