Teaching Tiny Techies
It’s Summer. Put The Cell Phone Down And Back Away Slowly
By Amy Maes
Wait! Did you hear that, the lure of that signal … telling you that someone in your life is sending you a message, a message that might heed a reply, a lure too tempting to ignore…
This is a too-familiar scene for me. I have woven responding to a text into my life as though it’s as important as making lunch for my children. Another temptation that our ready-made entertainment tech presents is that easy quick-fix when we put a tablet or iPhone into our toddler’s hands in order to entertain them so that we can complete a task at hand.
When I’m not an at-home mom in the summer, I’m a full time elementary school teacher and have been teaching, passionately, for the past 19 years right here in Park Hill. I have been thinking a lot lately about the lure of all of our tech gadgets and how the *magic* of these might have affected our children’s learning styles. Attention spans of my students seem to have shrunk considerably since the explosion of tech conveniences.
Studies have proven that too much screen time for young children can wire their brains in such a way that actually works against the process of learning to read.
According to Jim Taylor a Ph. D and specialist in the psychology of parenting, too much screen time and not enough time reading, playing games (not the online kind) and good old-fashioned imaginary play may result in your children having their brains wired in such a way that can work against them while focus and attention in school is their ticket to learning.
While our schools are striving to bring the best teaching technology into your children’s learning experiences, the importance of engaging in learning and the focus on fundamentals of reading is not all done on a screen. Students must have the capacity to focus on the teachers’ instruction and be able to connect to the written page without the distraction of on-line pop-ups.
The next time you take your little one for a walk around the block or over to Turtle Park, consider leaving those techy tools at home and just go for some old fashioned give-and-take. Thanks for listening!
Amy Maes teaches 1st grade at Park Hill Elementary School.