 The Drum Beat – 657 – Early Childhood Development Initiatives, Impact |
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| This Drum Beat issue is inspired by The CI’s partnership with Sesame Workshop, a non-profit organisation that partners with local writers, artists, researchers, and educators in 150 countries around the world to create entertaining yet educational programmes with characters, sets, and content specifically designed for young children. In addition to highlighting Sesame-specific initiatives, evaluations, and resources, the issue points to other organisations using tools such as television, radio, film, video, books, magazines, and community outreach to engage and enrich children around the world. |
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| BOLSTERING LITERACY AMONGST BILINGUAL CHILDREN |
| 1. Every Day Is a Reading and Writing Day |
| Using the entertainment-education strategy to foster communication between parents and young children, this multimedia, bilingual (English/Spanish) set of digital resources was launched in October 2013 in the United States (US) to support children’s early literacy development, drawing on the appeal of the Sesame Street friends to motivate young children and families to make the most of everyday opportunities to talk, read, and write together. Developed in response to the wide gap in literacy rates prevailing between children of high- and low-income families, it includes: video segments, materials volunteers can use to plan fun-filled literacy-based experiences for children and families, a parent/caregiver guide with information and activities to encourage literacy development for children, and a mobile site with videos, games, and activities. [Sesame Workshop and the community-development-focused! Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation (IICF)] |
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2. Aprendiendo Juntos (Learning Together): Synthesis of a Cross-Sectorial Convening on Hispanic-Latino Families and Digital Technologies
by Sarah E. Vaala, PhD |
| This report provides an overview of a meeting in June 2012 that brought together scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in Washington, DC, United States (US) in an effort to better understand and facilitate the use of digital technologies to promote learning among Hispanic-Latino families in that country. It contextualises the conversations that took place about the need to redefine literacy to include digital media and the possibilities that emerge when scholars incorporate innovative methodologies into their research. «Forum speakers and attendees were in agreement that digital technology has profound educational potential for Hispanic-Latino families, though current practices often fall short of that potential. They discussed in particular the myriad benefits of and barriers to incorporating media education more thoroughly into children’s formal education. Particularly lauded were the opportunities media technologies present for more personalized learning, especially for students who are Spanish-dominant or bilingual…» [June 2013] |
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| 3. Sesame Square |
| In 2013, Sesame Workshop received support to expand Sesame Square (the Nigerian version of the children’s television series Sesame Street) by adapting and dubbing three seasons of television into Hausa. Several components of the literacy outreach kits will be translated into Hausa as well. The content will be prepared, reviewed, and approved by a Hausa advisory group and will aim to increase the reach and relevance of the programme for millions of children and families who live in northern Nigeria. The new television and outreach components are expected to launch in spring 2014. |
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| FOSTERING FAMILY RESILIENCY IN CHALLENGING SITUATIONS |
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| 4. Let’s Get Ready! Planning Together for Emergencies |
| This is an initiative to help families in China prepare for emergencies together. It uses a 3G mobile website, a mobile application, and videos and other entertaining yet educational content that is designed to create an interactive and engaging learning experience for children ages 3-6 and their caregivers. «Let’s Get Ready!» distributed materials on emergency response and preparedness to over 120,000 children in 15 provinces. The content was made available on mobile devices, and researchers found that it had a positive effect: 68% of families who used the mobile content had taken action (i.e., assembled an emergency kit) in preparing for an emergency. [Sesame Workshop, Qualcomm Wireless Reach™, China Telecom Corporation Limited, Guizhou Branch, and China Youth Development Foundation] |
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| 5. Military Children and Families |
| This issue of The Future of Children seeks to: integrate existing knowledge about the children and families of today’s US military; identify what we know (and don’t know) about their strengths and the challenges they face; specify directions for future research; and illuminate the evidence (or lack thereof) behind current and future policies and programmes that serve these children and families. Specific communication lessons are included in various components of these contributions. For example, the authors of «Military Children from Birth to Five Years» suggest that, to prepare preschoolers for deployment, parents should, amongst other things, work with children to develop a plan to stay connected to the deployed parent. «In addition to social networking, Internet and phone communication, children and deployed parents can exchange meaningful objects – the child might give a treasured stuffed animal, the service member might share a rank insignia or patch – and then share pictures electronically or through the mail of those objects in each other’s daily lives.» [Fall 2013] |
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| 6. Three Evaluations of Talk, Listen, Connect (TLC) |
TLC is a multiphase educational outreach initiative designed to help support American military families with young children experiencing deployments and homecomings, combat-related injuries, and the death of a parent.
- Talk, Listen, Connect: Deployments, Homecomings, Changes – Supporting Military Families with Young Children, by Rona Schwarz, Dan Nyaronga, German Posada, and Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth – This kit was «widely used, had high appeal, and was perceived as extremely relevant. Participants from Army families in the test group gave it higher ratings overall, and, along with participants from Active Component families, judged it more relevant than participants in the comparison group.» [May 2009]
- Talk, Listen, Connect: Changes – Supporting Military Families with Young Children, by Dave Topp, Rona Schwarz, Ursula Saqui, Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, and German Posada – «With its easy to understand format and overall appeal, the kit materials engaged families in its use and provided the foundation for discussion.» [Dec 2009]
- Talk, Listen, Connect: When Families Grieve™: Talk, Listen, Connect (TLC III) Kit Evaluation Findings – «Results of the evaluation indicate that TLC III was a highly appealing and easy-to-use set of materials that effectively met its goals of providing useful tools to families with young children and helping them better cope with the death of a parent. The kit was highly rated in the areas of utilization, satisfaction, and impact.»
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| IMPACT EXAMPLES: SESAME IN TWO SOUTH ASIAN COUNTRIES |
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| 7. An Impact Assessment of Baghch-e-Simsim: A Report on Findings from a Pilot Experimental Study |
| This small-scale, quasi-experimental study indicates that children learn important skills and knowledge by watching Baghch-e-Simsim, which is a locally developed Afghan version of Sesame Workshop’s edutainment initiative Sesame Street. Designed for children aged 3 to 7, the television programme aims to help prepare young children for formal schooling and help older children foster basic educational skills. During the 8-week period, children who watched the series regularly (3 times a week) demonstrated greater gains in basic skills (phonemic awareness and counting) than those who did not watch. They also were more able to recognise and describe emotions. Furthermore, they showed improvements in gender equity attitudes and were more likely to indicate that both boys and girls could be good at different tasks and have the same career possibilities. [Glevum Associates and Sesame Workshop, May 2013]
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| 8. An Impact Assessment of an Educational Pilot Project with Sisimpur and the Bangladesh Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MOPME) |
| This is an evaluation of Sisimpur, an adaptation co-production of Sesame Street, the educational television series broadcast in the United States (US), localised by Bangladeshi producers to meet the needs of children in Bangladesh. Sisimpur is based on a Statement of Educational Objectives developed in consultation with Bangladeshi educational experts from a range of fields, including early child development, literacy, mathematics, science, and culture. In short, the project had a positive impact on some areas of children’s knowledge, including school-readiness. This primarily occurred among those who were exposed to print materials only. [Feb 2013]
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| TECH-ENHANCED EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION |
9. Learning at Home: Families: Educational Media Use in America
by Victoria Rideout |
| A nationally representative online survey of more than 1,500 parents of children age 2 to 10 in the United States (US) found that, although children’s media use soars as they approach school age, the amount of time that they spend with educational media plummets. Children spend far more time with educational TV than they do with educational content on other platforms such as mobile devices, computers, or video games. Among parents of weekly educational media users: More than half (57%) say their child has learned «a lot» about one or more subject areas (e.g., reading/vocabulary, math, or cognitive skills) from educational media. While time spent with screen media increases with age, time spent on educational media content declines with age and drops off sharply after about 4 years old. [Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Jan 2014] |
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| 10. Best Practices: Designing Touch Tablet Experiences for Preschoolers |
| «Children expect immediate feedback from their touch. Sound effects are an effective way to communicate input registration.» This is one of many tips included in this paper, which offers key findings from more than 50 studies and strategies for designing and developing apps and ebooks for preschoolers. [Sesame Workshop, Dec 2012] |
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11. Games for a Digital Age: K-12 Market Map and Investment Analysis
by John Richards, Ph.D., Leslie Stebbins, M.Ed., and Kurt Moellering, Ph.D. |
| This report includes a sector analysis and market map of game-based learning initiatives with an analysis of relevant trends in education and digital technology. By formulating a new framework for understanding the changing dynamics of purchase decisions at the school, extended learning, and consumer levels, the report synthesises findings from market research and a series of 50 interviews with leaders in the developer and publishing industries, as well as from the government, foundation and research sectors. [Games and Learning Publishing Council, Jan 2013] |
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12. A New Face of Education: Bringing Technology into the Classroom in the Developing World
by Rebecca Winthrop and Marshall S. Smith |
| The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance to non-specialists interested in pursuing technology for educational improvement in the developing world. It explores questions about what technology is available to support education, what its possible benefits are, and how it can be used effectively – looking closely at the different enabling conditions that frequently shape the success or failure of technology interventions in education and deriving a set of 7 basic principles for effective technology use. One example provided is that of the Education Development Center’s Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI) project in Indonesia, which was designed to support early childhood development, particularly in meeting school readiness requirements. It resulted in increased scores in language and cognitive development categories between pre- and post-tests, where interactive radio instruction (IRI) learner scores increased by 21 points, while control learner scores increased by 13 points. [Jan 2012] |
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13. Mobile Learning and Numeracy: Filling Gaps and Expanding Opportunities for Early Grade Learning
by Carmen Strigel and Sarah Pouezevara |
| This study examines how mobile learning (m-learning) could influence and improve numeracy education at early grade levels (ages 4-10), especially in low-income countries. To cite one example, South Africa’s Nokia MoMaths uses feature phones to provide free access to more than 10,000 math exercises covering all aspects of the national math curriculum using the MxIT chat platform. Learners can access a quiz bank or quizzes sent by the teacher and participate in competitions. An evaluation of the project in 2010 revealed a 14% increase in mathematics competency, with 82% of learners using the MoMath application outside of school hours, during holidays and weekends. It is now being adapted and implemented to improve teacher competency in Senegal. [Dec 2012] |
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| 14. Further websites on Early Childhood Educational Technology |
- Little Discoverers: Big Fun with Science, Math and More – A digital destination featuring videos, games, and activities to inspire preschoolers and the adults in their lives to incorporate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) concepts and skills into their everyday lives. [Sesame Workshop]
- Technology for a Global Early Childhood Education – A resource for educators working with children ages 2-8 who would like to learn more about using technology to create «global learning experiences» in their classrooms.
- Graphite – An online database of product reviews that provides ratings of educational apps, games, and websites around the world. [Common Sense]
- Scratch – An online creative learning community enabling people around the world to programme their own interactive stories, games, and animations and then share these creations with others.
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| LOOKING AHEAD: CALL FOR FURTHER EVALUATION |
| 15. Toward Universal Learning: Recommendations from the Learning Metrics Task Force |
| This report presents recommendations of the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF), a multi-stakeholder group of 30 organisations. One suggestion: «All education actors can begin incorporating measurement of learning in the areas for global tracking into their existing programming and evaluation efforts. Everyone interested in improving learning outcomes must advocate for accessible, transparent systems for the measurement of learning….Assessments alone will not improve the quality of instruction or learning environments, but reliable data on student achievement can enable policymakers and educators to develop strategies for improving learning while taking into consideration contextual factors. Transparency in assessment methods and outcomes also empowers citizens and the international community to hold leaders accountable for progress.» [United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics and the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, Sep 2013] |
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| WHERE TO GO FOR MORE |
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| This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Kier Olsen DeVries. |
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| The Drum Beat is the email and web network of The Communication Initiative Partnership – Partners: ANDI, BBC Media Action, Bernard van Leer Foundation, Breakthrough, Calandria, DFID, FAO, Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), Inter-American Development Bank, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Communication Programs, MISA, Oxfam Novib, PAHO, The Panos Institute, Puntos de Encuentro, The Rockefeller Foundation, SAfAIDS, Sesame Workshop, Soul City, STEPS International, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNICEF, USAID, The Wellcome Trust, World Health Organization (WHO), W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
Chair of the Partners Group: Garth Japhet, Founder, Soul City garth@heartlines.org.za
Executive Director: Warren Feek wfeek@comminit.com |
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| The Editor of The Drum Beat is Kier Olsen DeVries. |
| Please send additional project, evaluation, strategic thinking, and materials information on communication for development at any time. Send to drumbeat@comminit.com
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners. |
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