For my inquiry project, I have chosen to take a deep dive into the digital tools available for children. I am curious about how educational programs, games, and access to the Internet are introduced to young children in healthy ways. There is information available for parents regarding children’s physical health and “screen time” but not so much is available for helping parents to introduce digital tools effectively and safely. As a parent of a six-year-old, I have avoided giving my child a tablet or iPad up until now. My child has access to TV shows on Netflix and asks me to “look up this on your phone” when she is curious to know an answer to her many random questions such as “Do bees have black blood?”. Digital tools are in her home environment but I have not given her free access. At school, she has access to an iPad to take photos of her work so I can see it through an app on my phone. She also has tasks such as using a record mode with a microphone to record an oral story which I can see in the app. It did not occur to me that my child in Kindergarten (and Grade 1) would need a digital literacy framework as part of her education. I will be part home schooling her for the next academic year and will have to introduce either a tablet or iPad for learning apps so I would like to understand how to introduce these tools to her in a good way.
In class, Valerie shared BC’s Digital Literacy Framework for K-12 which was an eye-opening read. I noticed that many of the competencies that were listed from K required a child to have the ability to read or write. For example under Information Literacy it states “understands that keyword searching is an effective way to locate information on the Internet and knows how to select keywords to produce the best search results. (Gr. K-2)”. This competency may be unreachable for my child, particularly since she has difficulties reading and spelling. There is a section on Internet Safety and I wondered if her teachers at school had/or will explain any boundaries to keep her safe when exploring online or if this is considered a parent thing to teach. Reading this framework raised many questions for me and I am unsure where to seek the answers.
One resource that I found informative was the Common Sense Education Digital Citizenship Curriculum. This website has information for parents such as reviews for games and apps, reviews, and age recommendations for TV shows and films. For teachers, there are lesson plans for a wide range of digital literacy curriculum. What caught my eye was the introduction videos for children titled “Meet the Arms of the Digital Citizens” where characters with different purposes give children short pieces of information. The “arms” character with long arms talks about balance and how to balance your time with screens and physical health. I will show my child this video to open up a conversation about boundaries when using tablets/iPads and come up with an agreed amount of time to spend on apps and games.