Education Week - September 30, 2015 - 8

DIGITAL DIRECTIONS > Tracking news and ideas in educational technology
www.digitaldirections.org

How Tech Can Improve
Youngsters' Reading Skills
New book examines 'quiet' reading crisis
Even as the market for digital devices and apps aimed at young children explodes, parents and
educators alike remain wary of technology's growing role in early-childhood education. They point
to the harmful effects of excessive screen time, worry about the privacy of children's sensitive
information, and fear that more traditional forms of learning and play are being
replaced too quickly.
Early-learning experts LISA GUERNSEY and MICHAEL H. LEVINE last month waded into
that debate with a new book, Tap, Click, Read: Growing Readers in a World of
Screens. The pair argues that the current debate should focus less on whether
With early-learning experts
LISA GUERNSEY and
technology makes sense for young children and more on how it can be used most
MICHAEL LEVINE
effectively, especially to build fundamental literacy skills. They recommend a
"third way" approach, in which devices, apps, and software are treated as tools
to foster more and better interactions between children and adults.

Q&A

Guernsey is the director of the Learning Technologies Project and the Early Education Initiative at the
New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. Levine is the executive director of the Joan
Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, a New York City-based research center.

Getty

The authors talked with Education Week in a joint telephone interview about their new book and the
challenges of helping children learn to read in the digital age. The transcript of the conversation has
been edited for length and clarity.

Why did you feel it was important to
examine how technology can promote
literacy?
GUERNSEY: We wanted to take a modern
approach to using technology with young
kids. There's a lot of hyperbole out there.
There's a lot of misinformation. Our aim
was to take what we've termed a "third
way" approach: to thinking about where
technology fits in young children's lives;
to recognize that it's going to take a
combination of parents, educators, and
high-quality media to really help children
learn; and to elevate literacy and enable
children-especially those in underserved
circumstances and low-income families-to
really gain a foothold in the 21st century.
LEVINE: We've been working on this reading
crisis, which we describe as the "quiet"
crisis. Honestly, we felt that the field was
stuck, that we weren't making very much
progress, that there was a knowledge base
that wasn't being implemented widely in
schools and in preschools and homes. With
the potential of technology to be both a
positive and a negative disruption on the
early-reading enterprise, we wanted to
take a look at what the evidence was and
sort through a new, third way: Since we're
kind of stuck, is there some way we can get
unstuck here?
GUERNSEY: There's a statistic that certainly
alarmed me when I first started reading
about it, and it really has animated our
work: More than two-thirds of American
4th graders are not reading at grade level
in this country. That's not two-thirds of lowincome 4th graders, that's not two-thirds of
children in very poor communities. That is
two-thirds of American 4th graders, period.
So we really have to get activated on this.

LEVINE: There's so much evidence that
reading is a powerful predictor for all that
follows, both academically and in terms of
success in the job market.

Is there a balance between limiting
children's time spent with technology
and promoting reading with digital
tools?
GUERNSEY: It can be a really fun and
creative and exciting enterprise for families
once they have a little bit of guidance on
how to use media in healthy ways. The book
is absolutely grounded in the science of how
children learn, and it's grounded in really
important findings over the past decades
that children need social interactions to
learn, especially in their earliest years. The
way they develop language, the words that
they know-that leads to better reading
and literacy skills. But that is something
that doesn't only happen when children are
reading a print book; those kinds of social
interactions can happen around media of
all kinds. So one of our big messages is to
promote the idea of learning together, using
media for both parents and children to
engage together around ideas and stories.
LEVINE: I think this is very important
because for many years, those working in
early-learning programs have been skeptical
and sort of worried about the use of too
much technology and, in some cases, any
technology in early learning. Again, the
worries about limiting interactions, and
kids getting isolated from each other, and
all those worries about technologies have
been important ones for the early-learning
field. But over the last five years or so, we're
seeing a bit of a change in this regard. We try
to navigate the evolving landscape in terms
of professional guidance in this area, as well.

8 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 30, 2015 | www.edweek.org

Are certain types of digital resources
more promising than others?
LEVINE: You've got tens of thousands of
apps labeled as "educational" for preschool
and primary-grade kids. We've been
tracking [the marketplace] for several
years now, and unfortunately the skills
that kids need, particularly struggling
readers, and the kinds of apps that are
being developed are mismatched. In other
words, most of the apps don't accelerate
and advance the kinds of 21st-century
literacy skills that kids need. There's a lot
of hype and, dare I say, false marketing
claims based on products that don't have
the curriculum or the research base that
they ought to. And there are plenty of
apps that are actually pretty good, but
the curation tools and the ways in which
families are able to find the really good
stuff are lacking. We need quite a bit more
public education and public engagement
around these third-party review sites, and
the expertise that's necessary to sort out
the good stuff.
GUERNSEY: One of the things that we're
really trying to do with this book is to
recognize that yes, there's a lot of work
that needs to be done on tools and on
making sure that they're high quality.
But we cannot put all of the weight on
tools and the technology products. In fact,
we are seeing when things are working
best, it's in conjunction with an earlylearning program, a library program, a
home-visiting initiative in the community.
When there are people-professionals and
caregivers-who are the ones working
with the families first, and then using
technology as an assistant, that's when
we're seeing some real bright spots.
-SARA GILGORE

LISA GUERNSEY
says more than two-thirds
of American 4th graders
are not reading at grade
level.

MICHAEL H. LEVINE
says the skepticism
among early-learning
experts about the value of
technology is changing as
they see the benefits of a
balanced approach.

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Education Week - September 30, 2015

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