Lisa Guernsey: All Related Content

Decades ago, as researchers began to study what young children might learn from educational TV, they often found that "co-viewing" -- the act of parents and children watching together -- was strongly associated with children learning from what they watched.  Today, although TV is still the number-one type of media used by young children, new forms of media are begging new questions.

As digital media and new technologies start to capture the attention of early educators, it’s important to ask: Do we know whether any of these gadgets and gaming programs actually help children learn? 

Teacher wars are raging across the nation. One side blasts the "bad" teachers, waving around student test-score data and demanding accountability. On the other side are teachers: Defensive, closing the doors to their classrooms — and to the promise of improving their practice.

How do we halt the teacher-bashing, as President Obama urged in his State of the Union address, and still improve the quality of teaching? The answer is to radically change the evaluation conversation. A focus on watching teachers work — on how they actually interact with students — is long overdue.

Each January, Early Ed Watch predicts the hot spots for the coming year -- issues that will dominate discussions in early education policy and trigger halleluiahs or handwringing from advocates of better investments in early learning, birth through third grade.

This week’s guest, author Lisa Guernsey, joins Marti & Erin for a realistic discussion of the effects of media on young children, guidelines for deciding what you will permit and practical tips for turning occasional media viewing into a positive learning experience for your child.

Original article

For scores of agencies serving children around the country, the letter they feared has finally arrived:  A notice went out this week alerting 132 organizations, city agencies and school districts that they are not measuring up to the Office of Head Start’s standards for quality.  Large agencies in Los Angeles and New York were among them.

As 2011 comes to a close, we took a few minutes to review the progress – and pitfalls – of early childhood education news over the year. So before we jump into another year of news and analysis, here’s a look at some of the major stories featured on Early Ed Watch this year. Happy New Year!

Pennsylvania, long regarded as a leader in coordinating its early learning services, didn’t win. Neither did Oklahoma, famous for its state-funded pre-K program.  Instead, the winners included North Carolina, a state suffering big cuts in early childhood funding this year, as well as California, which doesn’t yet have a fully functional quality rating system for child care and pre-kindergarten programs.

Among early learning advocates, the fate of play continues to be hotly debated. In the past few months, several articles have stoked the conversation, including an article in Scientific American MInd questioning whether preschool includes enough playtime and a piece in The Washington Post about the District of Columbia Public Schools adopting a play-based curriculum called "Tools of the Mind" for its 3, 4 and 5 year olds.  The first piece seems to reinforce the misconception that preschool will replace play.  The latter article describes a program that envisions classrooms in which playful learning and intentional teaching co-exist.

To learn more about the relationship between play and learning, we invited Annie Murphy Paul -- journalist, author and mother of young children -- to talk with us about what she has uncovered in the reporting of her forthcoming book, Brilliant: The New Science of Smart.

Let’s admit it, education policy can be a bit dry. But when the holidays roll around, discussions about what’s best for children shift to the glittering spectacle of toyland, with animated discussions about whether to actually give our tots what they’ve asked for.

On November 15, 2011, Lisa Guernsey gave a webinar presentation as part of an Early Childhood Research series. Her presentation was a preview of new research gathered for the second edition of her book, renamed Screen Time: How Electronic Media -- From Baby Videos to Educational Software -- Affects Your Young Child, which will be released in paperback in March 2012.

When technology is part of pre-K or early elementary classrooms, what does it look like? Are most teachers holding "computer time" in the corner, with kids putting on headphones to play games or click through books by themselves? Are children having chances to take photos or capture video of their marine field trips or block towers? Is someone helping them to scan books and conduct online searches for more information on whales or skyscapers?