A Is for App: Digital Revolution Is An Education

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There is so much more to the digital revolution than is reflected in daily headlines and cyber chat. Leveling the playing field for elementary education is at the top of the list as a way to improve the quality of life by giving all children the rudimentary reading, writing and math skills they need to thrive.

The relative low cost of manufacturing and distributing mobile teaching devices could raise the educational bar for children everywhere in the world. MIT Media Laboratory co-founder Nicholas Negroponte understood this when he launched the One Laptop Per Child program to provide solar-powered $100 laptops free to children everywhere.

It’s up to parents and educators to keep real-deal books, pencils and paper in the forefront, to cultivate the love of books and writing that so many of us enjoy. But you can hardly deny the overwhelming draw and influence of interactive devices .

Increasingly schools and teachers are finding more effective and cost efficient ways to use mobile tech to their educational advantage with computing  programs such as TeachMate. A new Fast Company article explores scholastic connectedness for the greater good:

Gemma and Eliana belong to a generation that has never known a world without ubiquitous hand held and networked technology. American children now spend 7.5 hours a day absorbing and creating media — as much time as they spend in school. Even more remarkably, they multitask across screens to cram 11 hours of content into those 7.5 hours. More and more of these activities are happening on smartphones equipped with audio, video, SMS, and hundreds of thousands of apps.

The new connectedness isn't just for the rich. Mobile adoption is happening faster worldwide than that of color TV a half-century ago. Mobile-phone subscribers are expected to hit 5 billion during 2010; more than 2 billion of those live in developing countries, with the fastest growth in Africa. Mobile broadband is forecast to top access from desktop computers within five years.

As with television, many people are wondering about the new technology's effect on children. “The TV set was pretty much a damned medium back in the '60s,” says Gary Knell, CEO of Sesame Workshop. But where others railed against the “vast wasteland,” Sesame Street founders Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett saw a new kind of teacher. “They said, Why don't we use it to teach kids letters and numbers and get them ready for school?” Sesame Street, from its 1969 debut, changed the prevailing mind-set about a new technology's potential. With its diverse cast and stoop-side urban setting, the show was aimed especially at giving poor kids a head start on education.

Today, handheld and networked devices are at the same turning point, with an important difference: They are tools for expression and connection, not just passive absorption. “You put a kid in front of a TV, they veg out,” says Andrew Shalit, creator of the First Words app and father of a toddler son. “With an iPhone app, the opposite is true. They're figuring out puzzles, moving things around using fine motor skills. What we try to do with the game is create a very simple universe with simple rules that kids can explore.”

via A Is for App: How Smartphones, Handheld Computers Sparked an Educational Revolution.