Take a giant step: A blueprint for teaching young children in a digital age Brigid Barron Carol Copple Gabrielle Cayton-Hodges Linda Darling-Hammond Laura Bofferding Michael H. Levine Fall 2011 The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Stanford University © The Joan Ganz Cooney Center 2011. All rights reserved. The mission of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is to foster innovation in children’s learning through digital media. The Cooney Center is an independent research and innovation lab that catalyzes and supports research, development, and investment in digital media technologies to advance children’s learning. The Cooney Center has a deep commitment toward dissemination of useful and timely research. Working closely with its Fellows, national advisors, media scholars, and practitioners, the Center publishes industry, policy, and research briefs examining key issues in the field of digital media and learning. www.joanganzcooneycenter.org A full-text PDF of this report is available for free download from www.joanganzcooneycenter.org. Individual print copies of this publication are available for $20 via check, money order, or purchase order made payable to “The Joan Ganz Cooney Center for Educational Media and Research” and sent to the address below. Bulk-rate prices are available on request. Attn: Publications Department The Joan Ganz Cooney Center Sesame Workshop One Lincoln Plaza New York, NY 10023 p: (212) 595-3456 f: (212) 875-6088 [email protected] Suggested citation: Barron, B., Cayton-Hodges, G., Bofferding, L., Copple, C., Darling-Hammond, L., & Levine, M. (2011). Take a Giant Step: A Blueprint for Teaching Children in a Digital Age. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. contents 2 executive summary 6 the digital age teacher preparation council 8 introduction: take a giant step 9 A time ripe for action 10 Critical learning gaps — new and old 13 Conceptual framework: life-wide and life-long learning 16 technology integration in the early childhood classroom: a review of programs and research 16 Technology and young children 18 Wanted: Effective 21st century teachers 19 Transforming professional development in early childhood education 20 Taking on the challenges of in-service education 22 The role of leadership and communities of practice 22 Building teacher expertise in integrating new technology 26 Understanding the role of technology in teaching and learning 32 imagining and enacting innovation: examples from the field 33 Example 1: Integrating public media assets to support early learning: Success for All and Ready to Learn 34 Example 2: One-to-one computing and sustained professional development: Maine Learning Technology Initiative 35 Example 3: Using netbooks to engage developing writers: The Writer’s Workshop model in Littleton, Colorado 38 recommendations 44 conclusion 46 references 50 appendix 1 executive summary Across the nation and the political spectrum, Americans are calling for dramatic improvement of public education. At the same time, the country is in an era of scarce funding for new initiatives. In this context, this report identifies a timely opportunity and challenge: By integrating emerging digital technologies into education and lifelong learning for all professionals, beginning with teachers of children aged 3 through 8, we can establish a cost-effective and productive pathway for learning in the 21st century. This approach is timely because years of education reform efforts have established a current policy environment where the following key factors are present: • a core of common standards emphasizing 21st century skills and increased curricular depth; • legislatively enforced accountability for student outcomes, which provides the needed leverage for reform; • progress in developing improved assessments to test higher-level skills along with fundamental knowledge; • an increased commitment to learning in early childhood in the nation’s policy and business sectors as a result of new infrastructure and greatly expanded investment; • incentives for states to develop comprehensive plans that include improved teacher preparation and professional development; and • evolving digital technologies and a wealth of public media assets that create new possibilities for transforming teaching and learning. 2 Executive Summary With the first five factors laying the foundation and other media offering video teaching examples, for substantial education improvement, rapidly curriculum plans, and materials. Leadership at developing digital technologies can bring the school, district, state, and national level is momentum and immense new capacity to student essential for capitalizing on opportunities made learning, teacher preparation, and professional possible by technology integration in the classroom. development. The challenge of improving teacher preparation A particularly powerful benefit of these new and ongoing learning led to the creation of technologies is their capacity for deepening and the Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council, personalizing learning. Up until now, teachers established by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at typically have geared most of their instruction Sesame Workshop and the Stanford Educational to meet the needs of the average child and have Leadership Institute, with generous support from been limited in their ability to individualize the Joyce Foundation. Beginning in January 2010, strategies and materials to meet the needs of a group of 22 experts in a range of fields, including all learners. Today, through technology they will teacher education, public service media, literacy, increasingly be able to differentiate instruction, technology, science and mathematics, and devel- and learners themselves will be able to have opmental science, convened to study emerging greater control of the paths and pace of their best practices, policy and program trends, as well own learning. as innovative approaches to enhancing children’s learning and teacher education and support. Given the growing ubiquity of digital media in most children’s lives, thoughtful integration of The Council’s work is the basis for Take a Giant technology in learning environments can benefit Step, which states five key goals for the nation to children as young as ages 3 to 8. Enhanced, meet by 2020, as well as immediate and discrete modernized early learning will improve their step-wise actions to provide significant innovation long-term prospects for school success. Technology in instruction and teacher preparation. is most productive in young children’s lives when it enhances their engagement in the rich activities The first goal emphasizes creating communities of childhood — talking, interacting, manipulating, of practice with a great deal more teacher pretending, reading, constructing, exploring — as collaboration and planning than is currently well as in children’s reflections on their actions and evident. This kind of professional environment experiences. Digital media that can contribute in for teachers — pervasive in high-performing these ways and that also exposes children to new countries — can exist far more widely in the knowledge and enriching vocabulary are emerging, United States, but first, education leaders need as evident in the examples offered in this report. to restructure time and staffing so that teachers Teachers in the early grades and beyond can make can work together and with groups of students use of such strategies to improve learning for in new ways that are supported by technology. young children and better meet individual needs. Beyond restructuring time and staffing in schools, However, in order to be effective, U.S. teachers need we need to give American teachers significantly more robust professional preparation as well as better preparation, professional development, more ongoing support than they currently receive, and supports than they receive today. Enhancing especially with respect to understanding children’s technology infrastructure and capabilities will learning and development, providing learning bring fresh potential for teachers’ preparation and experiences with rich cognitive demands, and professional development at relatively low cost. using new technologies to promote personalized To date, higher education, K-12 schools, and learning and 21st century skills. In the enhancing early learning programs have made only slow of teacher education, digital tools can play and scattered progress in changing their significant roles — for instance in online courses, educational practices. By working together connected learning communities, and in websites they can take a major step forward in providing 3 productive educational support across grades The Council recommends that the federal and settings by adopting shared standards for government partner with states and the private student outcomes — standards that reflect the sector to ensure that a technology infrastructure developmental and learning sciences, national exists in every school and community. At the common core approaches, and the full range highest levels of policy, new priority must be of learning associated with new technologies. accorded to promote better teaching and learning A vision of developmentally connected learning from the start. Government agencies at the from ages 3 to 8 can drive coordinated efforts national and state levels can help ensure that of teachers, families, and the community. This new media technologies are deployed equitably report outlines