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Digital game use for educational purposes is becoming increasingly popular in k-8 classrooms. 

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Digital game use for educational purposes is becoming increasingly popular in k-8 classrooms. 

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“Nearly three-quarters (74%) of K-8 teachers report using digital games for instruction. Four out of five of these teachers say their students play at least monthly, and 55% say they do so at least weekly” (pg 5).

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Digital games create an ideal environment to help children learn.

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Digital games create an ideal environment to help children learn.

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“Offer complex worlds in which individuals can playfully explore and experiment, repeatedly fail, and ultimately succeed” (pg 7) and “the drive to level up can drive deep learning, and build collaboration, communication, and creativity skills that will equip students for life beyond school” (pg 7).

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Teachers need training on how to implement games into teaching

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Teachers need training on how to implement games into teaching

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“simply handing teachers new tools without the necessary contextual supports and graining is an invitation for wasted time at best and widespread disenchantment with the tool at worst” (pg 7)

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There are many barriers to implementing games into the classrooms

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There are many barriers to implementing games into the classrooms

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more than 40% of teachers say insufficient time and cost are the largest two barriers to implementing games in the classroom. (pg 53)

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·       I didn’t know that so many teachers used digital games in the classroom! It is great that they are using it to “deliver content mandated by local (43%) and state/national curriculum standards (41%), and to assess students on supplemental (33%) and core knowledge (29%)” (pg 5). I think that since kids are becoming to dependent on technology and since it provides so much instant gratification, it is a great idea to implement it and use it to our advantage and the advantage of the students.

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·       I wonder why students learn more about math than science from digital games. It says that “nearly three quarters (71%) of digital game-using teachers report that games have been effective in improving their students’ mathematics learning. However, only 42% report the same about their students’ science learning” (pg 5). I don’t disagree with this because it is clearly data and fact, and I am just curious as to why it is not as effective.

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This article shows examples of how digital and traditional media had been used by children and their families to support learning and emphasized the role of both children and parent interests as contributors to the media practice that emerge. (page 18)

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This article shows examples of how digital and traditional media had been used by children and their families to support learning and emphasized the role of both children and parent interests as contributors to the media practice that emerge. (page 18)

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“Curating” or intentionally selecting media content for their children. Most parents believed that media could be used for learning, however parents varied in their tendency to actively research, select, organize, present choices to their children to maximize learning. (Page 22)

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•	Interest driven search and linked activities

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•	Interest driven search and linked activities

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·       Brandon Orozco a 6-year-old had a keen interest in people in history, and developed a practice with his father where the two searched for videos on YouTube about Martin Luther King, Jr., George Washington and other famous leaders Brandon had heard of in school and wanted to know more about it. (Page 26)

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Media-inspiring conversations could also bring up deeper lessons. Elisa, age 6, and her family enjoy hiking. On a nighttime hike to do some stargazing. Elisa was having trouble recognizing the Orion constellation as her parents were pointing it out in the sky, so they used one of their smartphones to look up an image of the constellation and help Elisa to identify it. (Page 26)

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Some families engaged in producing video and/or watching themselves onscreen as recorded by others. Naomi, aged 8, was interested in media production, and used her iPod Touch to create her own “talk show” along with her 6-year-old brother Eduardo, Jr. Naomi’s father was a media production aficionado himself, and encouraged the children to create. (Page 28)

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I thought that from young age children spend too much time looking into a screen. However, after the reading I could see how important it is that parents intentionally select how and what children interact with technology. Instead of me thinking of the time they spend looking at the screen I should be focusing on what a student could gain from it.

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I wonder why the author never addressed when parents are busy and don’t have time or energy to “curate” the media for their children or when parents use digital media just to keep the children busy or entertained.

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·       The information and resources available on the Internet are now an integral part of daily life for those living in the United States. As such, digital tools, like the internet, computers, tablets, and even smartphones, have become important components in the education of children. Furthermore, when using technology, family members become resources for each other; parents, guardians, children and their siblings, support each other’s capabilities and/or compensate for each other limitations.

For this reason, the authors find the focus of the study to be of extreme relevance in understanding the ways in which students and families interact and understand technology, and the potential impact that might play in the education of a child. The authors highlight the following:

“[b]ecause digital devices and the Internet have become so essential, digital inequality can exacerbate educational and economic inequality as well…Therefore it is critical that we understand how low- and moderate-income families in the U.S are engaging digital technologies and how they perceive opportunities- and potential risks-that these innovations present for their children” (Rideout & Katz, 2016, p. 4).

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·       We should view and comprehend children helping parents and parents helping children navigate technology use as a “powerful learning opportunity, because family members can fluidly exchange expert and learner roles to facilitate mutual skill-and confidence-building”  using technology as a means to learn and interact with the daily world (Rideout & Katz, 2016, p. 27)

“How family members help each other learn with technology-both within and across generation- is of great importance, especially for families with limited access to technology. The new technology skills acquired by one member benefit the family collective” (Rideout & Katz, 2016, p.27).

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•	Parents Helping Children Learn & Children Helping Parents Learn:

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•	Parents Helping Children Learn & Children Helping Parents Learn:

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According to Rideout & Katz (2016), parents with higher education attainment are more likely to help their children evaluate, navigate, and interpret online content than those who are recently arrived, speak a language other than English, and have lower formal academic attainment. For these reasons, one can reasonably presume that parents/guardians with lower SES rely and lean more on their children to facilitate interactions with various digital technologies.

Consider the following, for example:

Half (53%) of all low- and moderate-income parents who use the Internet say that their child helps them, including 63% of those whose child is between 10 and 13 years old. Parents with lower educational attainment are more likely to turn to their children for help: 62% of those who did not graduate from high school do so, compared with 45% of those with a college degree. Hispanic parents are the most likely to say that their child has helped them use Internet connected devices (63%).  Among the 53% of parents who say that their child helps them with computers or mobile devices, 21% say this “often” happens. Parents who have less confidence in their own Internet skills are more likely to report getting help from their children (Rideout & Katz, 2016 p. 29-30).

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“Children depend on each other more often when parents have less ability to guide their technology engagement” (Rideout & Katz, 2016, p. 28).

[T]hese activities are most observable among siblings in the lowest income group and those whose parents have less education. [B]ecause they might be the only source of knowledge, siblings from lower income homes rely on each other much more than those who have better access.

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According to Rideout & Katz (2016):

Hispanic parents are much more likely to worry that classroom technology use results in teachers knowing less about their child's individual needs-59% agree with that statement. This fear is especially strong among immigrant Hispanics: 75% of foreign-born Hispanics worry that teachers know less about their child's individual needs due to the time spent using technology in class, as compared with 26% of U.S- born Hispanics.

The parents with the most serious misgivings about technology's consequences in the classroom are among those whose children should benefit most from self-paced or personalized instruction: that is, children who begin formal schooling speaking a language other than English.

I don't agree with the presumptions arrived at by this statistic. It fails to acknowledge that folks from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds (not just folks from Spanish speaking countries) have differing styles that are conducive to their learning. Unlike dominant western views of learning as an individualistic endeavor, other cultures view learning as a communal and deeply personal, collaborative, interactive process. I would also be concerned if my child is spending 1/3 to 2/3 of their instructional time sitting in front of a computer screen.

Also, as a previous teacher, I understand there are many expectations/presumptions set on teachers and the ways they should use many of the "personalized/paced" computer literacy/math programs. But I challenge the authors with these ideas in mind:

1. Rarely are teachers fully trained to use and implement these programs in their classroom. (If you believe a one day 3-hour PD training is enough)

2. Time constraints on teachers inhibit their ability to look at the daily/weekly data for each child, develop and follow-through with one-on-one teacher-student (or even small group) activities to re-teach or reinforce the skills that students are having difficulty with. I wouldn’t object to the pervasiveness of such programs in low-income schools were this otherwise.

3. In my personal experience from working at public schools, in order for the school/district to keep their funding for said computer program, teachers were EXPECTED to have students complete a certain # of minutes per week; taking valuable time from learning that is critical and relevant to the academic lives of students. We must acknowledge that the curriculum used by many of these programs is NOT the most culturally and critically relevant or engaging.

4. The format of these curriculum driven digital programs mirrors that of current state and federal standardized test, which reaffirms the idea that our current public education system is structure around teaching to the test; an approach we know fails students of color.