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5 Technologies That Will Change Classroom Education

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​​In a world where children are "growing up digital," it's important to help them learn healthy concepts of digital use and citizenship. Parents play an important role in teaching these skills.

Tips from AAP to Help Families Manage the Ever Changing Digital Landscape:

Treat media as you would any other environment in your child's life. The same parenting guidelines apply in both real and virtual environments. Set limits; kids need and expect them. Know your children's friends, both online and off. Know what platforms, software, and apps your children are using, what sites they are visiting on the web, and what they are doing online.

Set limits and encourage playtime. Media use, like all other activities, should have reasonable limits. Unstructured and offline play stimulates creativity. Make unplugged playtime a daily priority, especially for very young children.

Screen time shouldn't always be alone time. Co-view, co-play and co-engage with your children when they are using screens-​it encourages social interactions, bonding, and learning. Play a video game with your kids. It's a good way to demonstrate good sportsmanship and gaming etiquette. Watch a show with them; you will have the opportunity to introduce and share your own life experiences and perspectives-and guidance. Don't just monitor them online-interact with them, so you can understand what they are doing and be a part of it.

Be a good role model. Teach and model kindness and good manners online. Because children are great mimics, limit your own media use. In fact, you'll be more available for and connected with your children if you're interacting, hugging and playing with them rather than simply staring at a screen.

Limit digital media for your youngest family members. Avoid digital media for toddlers younger than 18 to 24 months other than video chatting. For children 18 to 24 months, watch digital media with them because they learn from watching and talking with you. Limit screen use for preschool children, ages 2 to 5, to just 1 hour a day of high-quality programing. Co-viewing is best when possible and for young children. They learn best when they are re-taught in the real world what they just learned through a screen. So, if Ernie just taught the letter D, you can reiterate this later when you are having dinner or spending time with your child. See Healthy Digital Media Use Habits for Babies, Toddlers & Preschoolers.

Don't use technology as an emotional pacifier. Media can be very effective in keeping kids calm and quiet, but it should not be the only way they learn to calm down. Children need to be taught how to identify and handle strong emotions, come up with activities to manage boredom, or calm down through breathing, talking about ways to solve the problem, and finding other strategies for channeling emotions.

Media and digital devices are an integral part of our world today. The benefits of these devices, if used moderately and appropriately, can be great. But, research has shown that face-to-face time with family, friends, and teachers plays a pivotal and even more important role in promoting children's learning and healthy development. Keep the face-to-face up front, and don't let it get lost behind a stream of media and tech.

The tips above were written from two AAP policies, "Media Use in School-Aged Children and Adolescents" and "Media and Young Minds," and the technical report entitled "Children and Adolescents and Digital Media," which were published in the November 2016 edition of Pediatrics. They were also drawn from the proceedings of the AAP Sponsored Growing Up Digital: Media Research Symposium, a gathering of media experts, researchers and pediatricians to address new developments in research and media and their impact on children.

Additional Information from HealthyChildren.org:

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media use~ digital age~ 10 tips for parents~ kids and social~ managing a kid's media use~ ipad~ cell phone~ iphone~ tv in bedroom~ phone in bedroom~ playtime~ video games~ communicating with your teen~ technology as a babysitter~ facetime

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Kids & Tech: Tips for Parents in the Digital Age

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​​In a world where children are "growing up digital," it's important to help them learn healthy concepts of digital use and citizenship. Parents play an important role in teaching these skills. Treat media as you would any other environment in your child's life. The same parenting guidelines apply in both real and virtual environments.

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Technology in the Classroom | Technology Integration Ideas that Work

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Technology has become integrated in the classroom in so many ways, that we often don’t even think about how we are using it.

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Play games with your PBS KIDS favorites like Curious George, Wild Kratts, Daniel Tiger and Peg + Cat!

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10 Reasons Today's Students NEED Technology in the Classroom

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Technology is everywhere--entwined in almost every part of our culture. It affects how we live, work, play, and most importantly learn. With mobile and other wireless devices like the IoT becoming an increasing requirement across every industry today, it only makes sense that our schools are also effectively deploying mobile technology in the classroom.

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Technology has the power to transform how people learn - but walk into some classrooms and you could be forgiven for thinking you were entering a time warp.

There will probably be a whiteboard instead of the traditional blackboard, and the children may be using laptops or tablets, but plenty of textbooks, pens and photocopied sheets are still likely.

And perhaps most strikingly, all desks will face forwards, with the teacher at the front.

The curriculum and theory have changed little since Victorian times, according to the educationalist and author Marc Prensky.

"The world needs a new curriculum," he said at the recent Bett show, a conference dedicated to technology in education. "We have to rethink the 19th Century curriculum."

Most of the education products on the market are just aids to teach the existing curriculum, he says, based on the false assumption "we need to teach better what we teach today".

He feels a whole new core of subjects is needed, focusing on the skills that will equip today's learners for tomorrow's world of work. These include problem-solving, creative thinking and collaboration.

'Flipped' classrooms

One of the biggest problems with radically changing centuries-old pedagogical methods is that no generation of parents wants their children to be the guinea pigs.

Mr Prensky he thinks we have little choice, however: "We are living in an age of accelerating change. We have to experiment and figure out what works."

"We are at the ground floor of a new world full of imagination, creativity, innovation and digital wisdom. We are going to have to create the education of the future because it doesn't exist anywhere today."

He might be wrong there. Change is already afoot to disrupt the traditional classroom.

The "flipped" classroom - the idea of inverting traditional teaching methods by delivering instructions online outside of the classroom and using the time in school as the place to do homework - has gained in popularity in US schools.

The teacher's role becomes one of a guide, while students watch lectures at home at their own pace, communicating with classmates and teachers online.

Salman Khan is one of the leading advocates of "flipped" classrooms, having first posted tutorials in maths for his young cousins on YouTube in 2004.

Their huge popularity led to the creation of the not-for-profit Khan Academy, offering educational videos with complete curricula in maths and other subjects.

The project has caught the eye of the US Department of Education, which is currently running a $3m (£1.9m) trial to gauge the effectiveness of the method. Now the idea has reached the UK.

Teachers 'surprised'

Mohammed Telbany heads the IT department at Sudbury Primary School in Suffolk. He has been experimenting with the "flipped" classroom and recently expanded it to other lessons.

"The teachers facilitate, rather than standing in front of the children telling them what to do, and the children just come in and get on with what they are doing," he says.

"It has surprised the teachers that the kids can excel on their own, with minimal teaching intervention."

In the developing world where, according to some estimates, up to 57 million children are unable to attend primary school, the idea of children learning without much adult intervention is a necessity not a luxury.

Prof Sugata Mitra, from Newcastle University, has been experimenting with self-learning since his famous hole-in-the-wall computer experiments in the slums of Delhi in 1999.

He was amazed at how quickly the children learned how to use the machines with no adult supervision or advice.

From that was born the idea of " cloud grannies" - retired professionals from the UK, mentoring groups of children in India via Skype.

He won the $1m Ted prize in 2013 to build a series of self-organising learning environments in both the UK and India.

In January he completed the last of seven such units - a striking solar-powered glass building amid the lush vegetation of the village of Gocharan in West Bengal.

There will be no teachers and up to 40 children can participate when it suits them. They will have the internet at their disposal and will work in small groups. E-mediators will mentor the children via Skype.

Dr Suneeta Kulkarni, research director of the School in the Cloud project, said children would "engage in a variety of activities that are driven by their interest and curiosity", with games typically tried first.

The children will also be asked "big questions" that they can answer online.

"At yet other times these questions emerge from what the children 'wonder' about. It is also where the grannies or e-mediators are expected to play a significant role," she said.

Classroom games

When Canadian teacher and computer programmer Shawn Young wanted to spruce up his lessons, his first thought was gaming.

It was a platform many of his students were familiar with and something that was proven to engage children.

But it also had a bad reputation in teaching circles - thought to be too violent, addictive and without educational merit.

Some early attempts to integrate educational content within games failed. But what makes Classcraft different is that it is not about content - it is more a behaviour-management and motivation tool.

"The teacher teaches as normal. Teachers can offer pupils points for good behaviour, asking questions, or working well in their teams and it gives them access to real life powers," Mr Young says.

Those powers are decided by the teachers and may include handing in homework a day late.

There are also penalties for those not concentrating in class, turning up late or being disruptive.

Children play the game in teams, which means a lost point affects the entire group, and encourages them to work together.

"It is being used in a school in Texas which has a mix of white, Mexican and Afro-Americans. They would never normally speak to each other," said Mr Young.

Teachers using the system - some 100,000 have signed up since it launched in August - have noted not just better interaction between pupils, but better classroom engagement and motivation.

"As in other games there are sometimes random events, which could be something like everyone having to speak like a pirate for the day or the teacher having to sing a song in class. The kids love it."

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Technology has the power to transform how people learn - but walk into some classrooms and you could be forgiven for thinking you were entering a time warp. There will probably be a whiteboard instead of the traditional blackboard, and the children may be using laptops or tablets, but plenty of textbooks, pens and photocopied sheets are still likely.