Courtney K. Blackwell

Factors influencing digital technology use in early childhood education

The current study uses path modeling to investigate the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic factors that influence early childhood educators’ digital technology use. Survey data from 1234 early childhood educators indicate that attitudes toward the value of technology to aid children’s learning have the strongest effect on technology use, followed by confidence and support in using technology. Additionally, student SES has the strongest effect on attitudes, while support and technology policy influence teacher confidence, which in turn influences attitudes. In contrast, more experienced teachers have more negative attitudes. Overall, the study provides the first path model investigating early childhood educators’ technology use and provides practical considerations to aid teachers’ use of technology in the classroom.

The Mobile Generation: Youth and Adolescent Ownership and Use of New Media

The relatively recent invention of mobile tablets has changed the way children and adolescents use media technologies. Given that children and adolescents differ developmentally, we use Uses and Gratifications theory to explore ownership of mobile devices by young people and how children and adolescents use newer media technologies, including the Internet and mobile devices. Results from a national study of 909 children and adolescents, 8 to 17 years old, demonstrate that even younger children are avid users of new mobile devices, although ownership and use of mobile phones and tablets increases with age. Further, Internet use varies as a function of age, suggesting that children and adolescents may have different interests in and motivations to use new media technology, which play a role in their media use behavior.

Children and the Internet: Developmental Implications of Web Site Preferences Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Children

The Internet is quickly becoming a favored medium for children, but few studies have investigated the content and types of activities children engage with online. The current study uses data collected from a national sample of 442 8- to 12-year-old children to investigate childrens Internet content preferences during middle childhood. Results indicate that YouTube and Facebook were the two most favored Web sites. Additionally, there were significant differences by age and gender. Overall, results suggest childrens Web site preferences are consistent with emotional, social, and cognitive development encountered in middle childhood.

What kind of adults will our children become? The impact of growing up in a media-saturated world

Abstract This article urges children and media scholars to consider the broader consequences of the ubiquitous media environment in which children live today. We consider, within a broader sociocultural context, the ways in which media and interactive technology serve as more knowledgeable others, scaffolding childrens learning and development. Given this context, it is imperative for researchers to consider the consequences of living in the digital age and how broader developmental trajectories may be influenced. We call upon children and media researchers to contemplate more thoughtful research agendas that begin to assess the larger impact of media on children’s learning and developmental trajectories.

The “New” Technology Environment: The Role of Content and Context on Learning and Development from Mobile Media

The rise of mobile media over recent years has brought promise and potential for children’s learning and development. With new—and often highly interactive—ways for children to engage with digital media and technology, as well as the ability to engage anywhere at anytime, mobile media is providing new and different opportunities unavailable with prior technologies. At the same time, these novel opportunities have led to more questions regarding the developmental appropriateness of digital media and technology, as well as how to best leverage the novel features of mobile media (e.g., touchscreens, anywhere/anytime engagement) to support young children’s learning and development. What has not changed, however, is the foundational importance of understanding not just whether and how children engage with mobile media but the content and context of that engagement. Indeed, emerging technologies afford new types of content (e.g., interactive) and contexts (e.g., mobile media can be taken anywhere), and have shifted traditional notions of screens and screen time. This chapter explores how new content and contexts afforded by mobile media fit into the daily lives of children and their influence on children’s learning and development.

Augmenting children's tablet-based reading experiences with variable friction haptic feedback

This paper explores the integration of tactile feedback into childrens electronic books (e-books) through variable friction surface haptics enabled by the TPaD Tablet technology. Through a user study with 10 pairs of children and their parents, we examine how children and parents conceive of and add haptics to a popular e-book. We report conceptual and practical differences in the ways in which children of various ages (3-8 years old) and adults envision haptic feedback within an e-book and conclude with a discussion of design considerations for creating haptic e-books.

Advancing the Science of Children's Positive Health in the National Institutes of Health Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Research Program

L aunched by the National Institutes of Health in 2016, the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program is a 7-year initiative designed to advance knowledge of environmental exposure effects on the health of the nation’s children (for more information, see www.echochildren.org). ECHO includes 84 individual cohort studies, with an anticipated combined sample of more than 50 000 children. These studies will contribute existing and newly collected data on a broad array of environmental exposures, which are measured from before birth to 5 years of age, and outcome data in four domains assessed from birth through adolescence: airways (eg, asthma); obesity; pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes (eg, low birth weight, small for gestational age); and, neurodevelopment (eg, autism, cognition). During the program launch, ECHO leadership added a fifth outcome area that is universally applicable to all children (and thus relevant to all cohorts) and that provides high value to science and children themselves. Stemming from ECHO’s goal of understanding the developmental origins of child health, ECHO calls this new area positive health, which also complements the other outcome areas that focus on risk, disorder, and illness.