Kid apps explode on smartphones and tablets. But are they good for your children?

How young is too young to use a smartphone? In a growing number of families across the country, infants and toddlers are deftly swiping and tapping away even as they wobble toward their first steps.The swift adoption of tablets and smartphones has sparked an unprecedented explosion of software games, videos and educational programs aimed at the very youngest minds, dramatically increasing the amount of time these children are spending in front of electronic media. Experts estimate that tens of thousands of kid apps are offered on Apple and Google Android devices, with titles such as BabyPlayFace and Elmo’s Birthday.

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 Gun-toting zombie killers, lewd language and busty protagonists are finding their way into mobile apps aimed at children.

That worries some educators and child-development experts who view the flood of baby and toddler apps with trepidation. They warn that children already spend too much time in front of TVs, DVD players and computers.For children 2 or younger, all those screens can have a negative effect on development, according to a recent statement by the American Academy of Pediatrics. If you really want to help boost brain power, the best solutions can be found with unstructured play, the academy said.“Kids need laps, not apps,” said Frederick Zimmerman, an expert on media and child health and the chairman of the Department of Health Service at UCLA.Some harried parents say they rely on the devices to prevent their child from melting down in a restaurant or an airplane or a long line at the grocery. One in five parents uses a smartphone or tablet to keep children distracted while running errands, according to Common Sense Media, a child safety advocacy group.

For Paula Mansour of Falls Church, allowing her 2-year-old, Maggie, to play a few rounds of Angry Birds as she prepares dinner helps her keep the household running smoothly and stress-free.

She monitors Maggie’s smartphone time — and that of her 6-year-old sister, Kayla — and does not see the harm in short sessions on her Samsung Galaxy a few times a day.

Aside from Angry Birds, Maggie plays with Kids Doodle and ABC Views — apps that promise to help children get an early start with preschool skills. “She’s learning and having fun,” Mansour said. “I don’t see any harm in that.”

Kid-app explosion

Just about every category of learning is covered in Apple’s and Google’s app stores. Get your toddlers to trace letters with their fingers on one of dozens of apps aimed at budding writers. Baby Sign Language teaches infants the signs for cow, foods and other objects. Math Ninja offers drills on multiplication and division.

Want to read “Humpty Dumpty” to your newborn? The Nursery Rhyme app will do that for you. BabyPlayFace has been featured in Apple’s iTunes store, with 250,000 downloads. It teaches infants first words in different languages through animated baby faces.

Apple and Google tout their mobile devices as revolutionary tools for learning and fun — and helpful distractions for the modern parent. They promote Angry Birds and Cut the Rope as children’s games that consistently rank among the most popular apps.

“Every parent could use a hand. Keep up with your kids or just keep them busy with family-friendly iPhone apps,” Apple pitches to users on its iTunes store. Apple rates apps with a minimum age of 4. Apps on Google’s Android system do not have an age minimum.

There has been no definitive study that shows whether apps on mobile devices are harmful for youths. And although lawmakers and regulators have been seeking to strengthen federal rules that protect the privacy of children online, few have examined the rapid growth of mobile content getting in front of very young eyes.Some educators are dubious of the educational promises espoused by app developers.

Zimmerman co-authored a report in 2007 that debunked marketing by Disney’s “Baby Einstein” DVD series touting early developmental benefits. He said it is too early to say that apps are any more effective at getting children ahead. The American Academy of Pediatrics agreed and warned against developers that advertise their products as “educational.”More than a quarter of all U.S. parents have downloaded an app specifically geared for their child, according to a survey released this month by Common Sense Media. Children 8 and younger spend about 2¹ / ₂ hours a day in front of a TV, computer or mobile device and about 30 minutes with books, according to the survey. That’s almost one hour more than the daily screen time for young children in 2005, the group said.Interactive learningNot every child-development expert is skeptical of mobile devices. Some note that smartphones and tablets offer children a far more interactive experience than parking them in front of the television. “The wrong way to think about this is not whether to turn it off or turn it on but about taking responsibility for what content gets in front of our children,” said Liz Perle, co-founder of Common Sense Media.

Sherri Richardson Burgan of Portage, Pa., is convinced that her iPad is making her toddler smarter. Two-year-old Colton won’t sit still to draw with crayons and wriggles out of his mother’s lap during story time. But on the tablet, Colton enthusiastically points to shapes, letters and colors and identifies them by name.

“A circle! I did it!” he cheers.

So, like scores of parents, Burgan has been on a frenzy downloading games, educational programs and videos for her youngest. Colton is usually on Burgan’s lap or at least nearby when he is on the iPad, so she does not put any limits on his time using the tablet.

The apps will “let him reach his full potential,” said Burgan, a stay-at-home parent with three older sons. “He got it right away. He knows how to turn on the iPad, find his favorite apps and get started.”

Kid apps are among the fastest growing in Apple’s store. BabyPlayFace founder Jacob Slevin said Apple sent a team to New York to meet him last week to help improve the app, which he hopes to expand into various baby body parts. Parents have sent him video testimonials from around the world, saying how much they love the app.

Slevin does not have children. He is not an educator. But he did help his younger sister with speech therapy exercises, and he is a tech enthusiast who sees no limit to the potential of apps.

“My pediatrician is now a consultant for us and is replacing all the silly toys in his waiting room with iPads,” he said.

But before one tosses out toys for tablets, parents should remember that nothing beats real-life learning, said Howard Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

And parents are modeling their own smartphone addictions to a whole generation of children growing up with apps, he said.

Gardner’s advice for those parents who want to get their kids ahead: walks in the woods, visits to museums and building with tinker toys. “You can’t replace the human imagination,” he said. “There’s no app for that.”

Great Interview with Ray Kurzweil…..when computers and humans merge

I found this to be a great interview with one of the people I admire. He pushes the envelope on technology, human behavior and evolution. Click on the title to see interview with Ray Kurzweil.

by Jeff Piontek

Then you have the other side of the idea, where corporations are controlling the afterlife and a transitional state….funny

The Journal about “7 Habits of Highly Effective Tech-leading Principals” | by Jeff Piontek

Google Search….try it | Informational Literacy Task for common core by Jeff Piontek

My favorite Google search (this week) is: “digital citizenship” site:k12.*.us filetype:pdf. What’s yours?

I break down this search a little later. But first, some perspective.

The new survival is not drowning in information

And we all want to survive. In fact, many of the online resources that have been developed in the last decade have been life rafts that help us keep our heads just above the water line of the digital deluge. Ironically, in the process, each one of them adds to the problem by making more credible information more desirable and accessible. The saying “no free lunch” comes to mind, as do McLuhan’s Laws of Media (enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval, reversal) which basically say there’s “no free lunch” when it comes to innovation.

In this case, we are interested in the law of reversal—specifically, the ability of the new ways we now have to package, distribute, and share information to actually make it harder to process the information that is made available to us. We are now overwhelmed with shared, highly recommended, relevant information. And when there is too much good information, we have to wonder if we are better off than when there was too little.

Twitter approached managing info overload by reducing news to headlines. Now I get a gazillion tweets, some of which entice me to look at the broader story beneath the headlines, which requires time I don’t have because I have too many tweets to read. I wouldn’t want to miss something.

Facebook (and social media in general) approached info overwhelment by allowing us to band together and to share what we know, so we could pick and choose among the information in our lives based on recommendations from friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, we all have a gazillion Facebook friends, all of whom have a lot of ideas about how you should spend your time, energy, and money. These Facebook friends also need to realize it is a social network site NOT their diary!!!

Better living through better searching

But then there is better searching. It is a bit of a bright star in the world of overwhelment because being a good Google searcher can do things like reduce the number of hits in a search from millions to hundreds. I have been a passable Google searcher for some time, and it amazes me how many people aren’t. If I ask a group to search, for example, for recent reports being used in K12 on the topic of digital citizenship, many will use a search like, “recent reports about digital citizenship in K12 in the United States.” That just returned 219,000 hits.

I used: site:k12.*.us “digital citizenship” filetype:pdf. In addition, I limited my search to one year. That produced 257 hits. Let’s look at the components of that search command.

• site: says “only return results from servers with the domains of this form”—in this case, school districts
• k12.*.us takes advantage of the fact that many school district domains are in the form of k12.twoLetterStateAbbreviation.us. So districts in Oregon tend to have domains that end in “k12.or.us.” The use of the wildcard (*) says “accept anything in this spot,” which would be any two-letter state abbreviation. Please note that some districts don’t use this domain format, but many do.
• “digital citizenship” is in quotes because I only want the search to return results with the phrase, rather than finding these words individually, anywhere on the site
• filetype:pdf says “only return PDF files”. I do this because I find organizations commit information to PDF when they are serious about distribution. If I remove this, my results jump to 2,120, which is still rather manageable in the world of Google searches.

If I specifically don’t want information about elementary programs, I might add “-elementary”, so my search becomes: site:k12.*.us “digital citizenship” filetype:pdf -elementary, which yielded 129 hits. I might also look to see what the government has published about this in the past year, and use site:gov. That yielded 90 hits. Or perhaps universities, by using site:edu. That yielded 216 hits.

While Google’s Advanced Search features are helpful, you have to be able to think like Google. And the way it thinks isn’t all that sophisticated. And of course there is always Google Scholar.

Community Colleges see an INCREASE in students entering with Academic Needs | In Hawaii 70% need remediation | WHY? asks Jeff Piontek

This is nothing new to anyone with a heartbeat or a pulse in education, who work in the Pre K-20 or P-12/P-16 continuum. The fact that so many students drop out of high school in 9th grade, take the GED route instead of attending classes (and some pass) and then go on to CC, and of course those who eventually graduate in 5/6 years just shows that the high school system is fatally flawed and needs to be revamped NOW.

If you want to know more about my views on this topic watch the presentation I did in 2007, yes 2007 to the entire STEM, Political and Education committees in Hawaii which showcases our data, it is disturbing.

But, you know what is even more disturbing is the fact that under our current administration, our current superintendent and our current BOE nothing has changed!!!!

This year though during the election or re-election campaigns they will though promise to do it AGAIN, promise to make things better AGAIN and unfortunately we will see in another 2/4/6 years at the end of their term what has actually been done. There are people like Linda Lingle who as Governor did more for education that her prior three Governor’s and unfortunately in a wildly Democratic State like Hawaii did not receive the credit for her attempts to move Hawaii into the national spotlight with Robotics, STEM education and partnerships with organizations like the National Governor’s Association.

Maybe someday Hawaii will have a strong, healthy, diverse economy, but not if the “Good Old Boys” network keeps on doing what they are doing, NOTHING to change it, because it benefits them.

Presentation Link: http://www.slideshare.net/jeff.piontek/an-inconvenient-reality-oct-2007-2780003

Community colleges should tailor remedial curriculum for students who are unprepared for introductory English and math courses, and in some cases, developmental classes “hinder” student progress, according to a report released by the Education Department (ED) during an April 27 virtual symposium.

ED Secretary Arne Duncan and Second Lady Jill Biden spoke to educators and students at a symposium broadcast on the internet from Montgomery College in Silver Spring, Md., a two-year school with more than 60,000 students on three campuses.

ED officials and educators who led sessions at the symposium outlined “bridge programs” for adult learners who want to return to college after many years in the workforce, and customizing those remedial classes that come with high costs to colleges, students, and taxpayers.

ED released the report to coincide with the symposium that said as much as 60 percent of incoming community college students enroll “in at least one developmental education course to bring their reading, writing, and mathematics skills up to college level.”

Developmental classes that help new community college students catch up with their peers can be critical to earning a degree, according to the ED report, but remedial education “may not improve students’ persistence or completion rates and, in some cases, may actually hinder their progress toward educational goals.”

A more flexible slate of remedial class options on two-year campuses would have educators pinpoint precisely where a student needs improvement, said Shanna Smith Jaggars, a senior research associate at the Community College Research Center in New York.

Targeting specific academic vulnerabilities, Smith Jaggars said, would allow a student to move through remedial classes quickly without redundant lessons that lead to high drop-out rates among remedial students.

“We need a system that diagnoses student weaknesses and determines which areas require quick redress [that] gives students less opportunity to get disheartened and a chance to drop out,” she said.

Early intervention was stressed by several speakers who addressed remedial classes in community colleges. College officials and policy analysts said summer bridge programs would help high school students prepare for college without having to enroll in non-credit-bearing remedial courses.

Duncan and Biden, as they have since President Obama entered the White House in 2009, said continued help – including federal funds – for two-year colleges would help unemployed Americans find jobs and prove to be a centerpiece in the country’s economic recovery.

ED introduced the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grants Program on Jan. 20, inviting community colleges—and other two-year degree-granting institutions—to apply for up to $5 million per institution, or up to $20 million to applicants who apply for funds in a consortium of schools.

ED will dole out about $500 million in 2011, and $2 billion will be distributed in the next four years overall, according to the announcement.

“These funds will support programs that use proven or innovative strategies to prepare students for high-demand careers,” Biden said.

The Obama administration in October invited more than 100 community college decision makers to the White House’s first-ever Summit on Community Colleges, where top federal officials lauded two-year colleges as a bridge to jobs and four-year universities, and a way to lead the world in college graduates by 2020.

Education analysts said last year that the expansion of online classes at two-year colleges would be key in increasing community college enrollment.

Distance-learning enrollment in American community colleges jumped by 22 percent during the 2008-09 academic year, an increase fueled in part by an influx of nontraditional students who require the flexibility of online courses, according to a survey conducted by the Instructional Technology Council (ITC).

The ITC, which is affiliated with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), collected 226 responses from community colleges in its annual survey, “Trends in eLearning: Tracking the Impact of eLearning at Community Colleges,” which revealed the 2008-09 increase in online enrollment. Last year’s ITC survey reported an 11-percent uptick in web-based class enrollment at community colleges.

“We flat lined and stagnated [while] other countries have passed us by and I think we are paying a price for that,” Duncan said. “So [as we] try to educate our way to a better economy, community colleges are absolutely going to help lead us where we need to go. … Community colleges have been the unrecognized, unpolished gem on the education continuum. I believe we have come a long way to ending that.”

Biden, a longtime educator and adjunct English professor at Northern Virginia Community College, lauded the Obama administration’s $2 billion community college funding add-on to the health care reform bill passed last year.

Will this actually change anything? What are your comments I would love to know……

Pennsylvania: Cyber charter schools aren’t working | so let’s expand them K12? asks Jeff Piontek

There’s an interesting and worthwhile debate over whether we should be expanding alternative, public-funded charter schools; some, like the Kipp Academiies, are clearly successful, although we can argue about the extent of that success. Others have been flat-out scams. Then we have the case of cyber charter schools, which receive public tax dollars to educate children over the Internet, and which seem to be especially popular in Pennsylvania.

What could possibly go wrong with poorly supervised, taxpayer-funded online learning, right? Especially in such an on-the-ball state as this one.

Well, just like with some bricks-and-mortar charter schools, some cyber charters are deeply flawed. My Daily News colleague, David Gambacorta, has reported extensively this year on problems at a Philadelphia based cyber-school called the Frontier Virtual Charter High School. It was just forced to surrender its charter, actually. Why?

Frontier didn’t supply students with promised laptops, printers and Internet reimbursements, the state said. The school’s administrators didn’t properly monitor attendance, truancy and grades, according to investigators. A “significant” amount of money was spent on nonschool expenses, the state said, including trips to restaurants and cash purchases that weren’t backed with the receipts. The school failed to provide many of the classes it had offered students.

An extreme case? For sure. But what if I told you that, generally, a wide swatch of students at these cyber charters are underperforming their peers at other traditional public or charter schools? That seems to be exactly what has been happening here in the Keystone State (PDF):

“In an April 2011 study (PDF), the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University reviewed the academic performance in Pennsylvania’s charter schools.  Virtual-school operators have been aggressively expanding in the state for more than a decade, making it a good place for a study; around 18,700 of the state’s 61,770 charter school students were enrolled in online schools. The results weren’t promising.

The virtual-school students started out with higher test scores than their counterparts in regular charters. But according to the study, they ended up with learning gains that were “significantly worse” than kids in traditional charters and public schools. Says CREDO research manager Devora Davis, “What we can say right now is that whatever they’re doing in Pennsylvania is definitely not working and should not be replicated.”

So, given this body of research from one of America’s top universities, guess what the state of Pennsylvania is doing?

It’s replicating them!

Specifically, the state has greenlighted four new cyber-charter schools — all of them run out of Philadelphia. Education guru Diane Ravitch wrote yesterday: “This is unbelievable,” and it’s hard not to agree. At a very cursory glance, the folks running these new ventures seem to be qualified and well-meaning. But that’s not the issue. The issue is the growing evidence that cyber charters are not helping — and possibly harming — the kids who are educated there. Until these issues are resolved, Pennsylvania should not be approving new cyber charters.

The Revolution:Top Ten Disruptors of Education | by Jeff Piontek

New online learning models are bursting from startups and top universities, bridging the educational divide.

We are in the midst of a revolution that will bring high-quality education to hundreds of millions of people who have never had access to this level of learning before.

These tools will reach those in developing cities and countries but also foment a revolution in the U.S. classroom as they change our perception of what learning can be.

Here are the leading new platfoms disupting the education world:

1.Udacity

Sebastian Thurn and his colleagues hit on wild success with their Stanford computer science courses when they opened them up to the online public.The team has left Stanford to start Udacity with venture backing and a new slate of courses. They have hit 150,000+ students in each course, signaling the demand for great online education. Thurn admits that there is no firm business model as yet, but will use the next year to experiment with different approaches.

CNN highlights Udacity’s new model.

2. Coursera

Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera to bring high-quality university courses to the masses. They are working with Princeton, Michigan, Penn, Stanford and others to fashion online courses which include video, online testing and peer support. In a recent Forbes article, Koller expressed the hope that “maybe the next Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs is living in a remote village in Africa” Bringing top professors to a global audience can certainly change the game in the education divide.

3. EdX — MIT and Harvard

MIT has been a pioneer in online education with its Open Courseware (OCW) program. Now it teams up with Harvard to launch EdX (by the way — have you noticed how many brands use x these days? SpaceX, UberX, X Prize, TEDx — it gives that hint of mystery to a brand.) OCW boasts more than 2,000 online courses, but these are all archived. EdX will specialize in courses that students can take together with supervision and interaction.

4. iTunes U

I still meet people who own iPads, iPhones and every other Apple device and yet do not know about iTunes U. How can this be?!

Want to understand what in the world a Higgs boson is? Download a physics course from U.

5. Khan

Sal Khan hit on education gold when he started making videos for his young cousins on science and math. Now the site offers more than 3,000 videos — all in short form so they are easy to digest. Great for kids to watch at home and do more interactive work at school. Let’s phase out boring class lectures and get kids moving and excited at school.

Many would benefit from watching the video on the Greek crisis:

<iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/xc-TSAQkqJ0?feature=player_embedded” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

6. 2Tor

John Katzman founded Princeton Review and now launched 2Tor. His new company teams up with top universities such as USC to offer fully accredited degrees online.

USC and 2tor offer a full masters in education. This is great for anyone who wants to change careers and still work while they are obtaining the degree necessary to become a teacher. 2tors’s newest degree is from Wash U. and offers foreign lawyers a masters in U.S. Law

7. Altius Ed

Spark Capital, Maveron and others have invested in Altius Ed. Altius partners with universities to offer a two-year bridge program for those students who wish to attend a four-year college but may not have the requisite coursework.
8. Latimer Education

Latimer works with historically black colleges to extend their reach online. Investors include Maveron.

9.Capella University

Rather than partner with other universities, Capella itself is an accredited university offering its courses online. Capella counts Maveron and others as investors and offers bachelors, masters and doctoral programs. The jury is still out on how these pure play degrees will be accepted in the marketplace.

10. Minverva Project

This is an ambitious attempt to start a new university from whole cloth. Students will live in dorm buildings placed around the world and the professors will pipe in via video conferencing to each of the buildings. Ben Nelson, the former CEO of Snapfish, raised $25 million from Benchmark Capital for this new venture. We will have to wait to see on this one as it has yet to be launched.

11. (yes, we could not fit all the new platforms into a list of 10) Straighterline.com

This site offers online courses which earn real credits that can be transferred to many college degree programs. Straighterline aims to make college courses more affordable with both a la carte and subscription plans.

Bonus Disruptor:

Add to the pot the new University Venture Fund.

This new venture capital fund will invest in the kind of revolutionary startups that we described here. Bertelsmann and the University of Texas are two of the largest investors.

—–

All in all, these disrupters will bring high-quality learning to millions of people in the U.S. and around the world who never had access to this material. Now the questions are:

a. Will it scale?

b. Will these models turn out to be sustainable?

c. How do we measure the intangibles of in-person learning and how can we replicate those online?

d. Who will disrupt these disupters?

Stay tuned.

Facebook, Twitter, YoutTube Videos by Jeff Piontek

Thinking about starting a business by Jeff Piontek

http://www.crl3c.org/fr_fundingoptions.cfm

investedin – a platform built to help anyone raise money for anything, utilizing their existing social network presence

Kickstarter – a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors and is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

Teacher Planet – complete online resource for information related to K-12 grants.

DonorsChoose.org – an online charity that makes it easy for anyone to help students in need — public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests.

crowdrise – is about volunteering, raising money for Charity and having the most fun in the world while doing it.

GiveForward – provides free, personalized fundraising pages to raise money quickly and easily online.

givezooks! – offers social fundraising for nonprofits, connecting individuals and organizations online to increase charitable giving.

Social Wish – makes it easy for individuals and not-for-profits to raise funds through social media, email marketing, and websites.

IndieGoGo – any project or idea (creative, cause or entrepreneurial) can raise money, offer perks, and keep 100% ownership of their project.

YouTube Is Developing a Secret Weapon Against the Internet’s Worst Commenters by Jeff Piontek