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[TITLE: Jeannie Crowley on Children and Technology - Bank Street Stories]
>> JEANNIE CROWLEY: My name is Jeannie Crowley. I work at Bank Street with faculty to integrate
technology into practice in a meaningful way
that maintains the integrity of a learner-centered environment.
And
technology and
the use of technology with children is very important to me because I have a young child,
she's nineteen months old.
And both my husband and I have lots of technology
you know we have the computer at home, we have the iPad, we have multiple smart phones.
One thing my daughter Maggie loves to do is
to
go outside. She's an outside fanatic.
And we spend the vast majority of the day doing outside activities.
And while she's doing those activities occasionally we'll stop and take a picture of what we're
doing.
And then on the commute home, we'll look at the, we'll pull out the phone, and we'll flip
through the phone together, and say,
"Oh, do you remember doing this? We just did this. Do you remember seeing the ducks?" And
she'll maybe make a little sign for ducks.
And she just really enjoys seeing herself and having us talk about her day,
and then we go home and maybe her dad wasn't with us for that activity,
and then we do it again and say, "oh, dad, look, Maggie and I went and saw ducks." So
it's a great way not only to give Maggie the language for what we did for the day, but
to also bring the other parent into an experience they may not have been part of at that time.
When people ask me "How much time does your daughter spend with a smart phone, you know
I'm not talking about three or four hours, I'm talking about five or ten minutes a day.
And that five or ten minutes is broken up over the course of a minute-and-a-half interaction
here and a minute-and-a-half interaction there.
And it's also really important to emphasize that it's the quality of the interaction that's
the most important. So it's not five or ten minutes of Maggie with the phone by herself.
It's five or ten minutes of Maggie and I having a discussion about something she's done: we're
building her language skills, we're talking about her day, we're bonding emotionally.
And I think it's both a brief amount of time, it's important to limit the amount of time,
but also making sure that it's an interactive time, and not an alone time with the technology.
So, at Bank Street we really want to engage with the whole child, and, we can talk about
their digital experiences, and
how those digital experiences shape their experiences in the physical world as well,
and the interaction between those and how those can be positive and meaningful experiences
for the child.
And use it as an opportunity to expand the reach of the child, and it's just a piece
of the whole.
And that's what we really want to make sure is that we get the whole.
[END TITLE: Bank Street College of Education]