intervention – EDUC 342: Child Development & New Technologies

Week 7

nhardson — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 07:32:10 +0000

I would first like to note that I found the Berkowitz reading to be fascinating. Particularly due to the success of this app and the clear demonstration that interaction with parents around math leads to math achievement. I suppose this is interesting to me because I am the daughter of a math teacher. Thus, my childhood was full of math games. I still remember looking at the Pythagorean Triangle drawn on my garage wall as a child wondering what it meant. My sister was a math major and I highly considered being one before settling on Symbolic Systems. It is clear to me that the engagement I had with my mom around math at home was a very significant component in my math achievement. I suppose I wonder how can we expand apps like this so that young children who do not have parents who are comfortable with math can gain the necessary engagement to improve their math skills. Particularly I wonder how do we change the mindset around math in the home to be more like that of stories in the home- a necessary part of a child’s home experience. And how can we support parents so that they may better engage with their children in the home? Is their a way to provide a math app that has a component solely for parents to become more comfortable with the math, in addition to a component that allows them to engage in the material with their children?

Week 7: Role of technology in simple interventions

mjiang2 — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 04:49:15 +0000

What I got out of the readings is that interventions can be really simple and don’t have to involve high technology. Interventions like talking kids through math problems and solutions, and supervising on which websites to go to, can make a huge difference. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a professor, who told me that simply asking kids to predict how much everything in the shopping cart costs would greatly foster math learning.

Since these interventions are so easy to do but usually ignored, how can technologies play a role transforming them into habit? I am thinking of using text messages daily or weekly to give parents guidance on what to do. It’d be helpful for the content of the messages to be determined by the location parents are in.

Week 6: Adults’ role in guiding storytelling

mjiang2 — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 07:10:32 +0000

Both articles mentioned the importance of peers in storytelling, both as co-creators and as audience. I was wondering what’s the role of adults, including parents and teachers, in guiding and teaching storytelling. It seems to me that storytelling happens so naturally that kids don’t need much guidance – but how might we design interventions can help them get more out of their storytelling process?

For example, by having kids and adults create stories together, they may have much fun and form a stronger bond with each other. In the storytelling class I’m currently taking, we have an organizing question, fun activities, and a design challenge for each class. I also think having some kind of structure that’s external to the storytelling process its might be helpful.