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AAP releases new screen-time recommendations

Amidst your scrambles to get home and get kids into costumes or get ready for an onslaught of ringing doorbells, I hope you can find a little time to check out the American Academy of Pediatrics new recommendations on screen time if you haven’t already.  The full original policy statement is here and a thoughtful article by CNN is here. 

There are those who think the new guidelines are still a bit unrealistic and not particularly in line with all of the available research.  Regardless, the change is at least somewhat better based on how a lot of parents currently govern screen time.  Screen time is nearly unavoidable given the extent to which screens are now a fixture in nearly all aspects of our daily lives.

My personal recommendations to parents have little to do with total time and more to do with what you give them and how you give it to them.  I would make sure whatever you give them is high quality, actually based in research, and developed with the help of child experts.  Especially with young children, try to watch or play along with them.  And interact with your child where you can, just as you might if you were reading a book together before bed.  Finally, don’t feel too guilty about periodically putting a screen in front of your child to get the laundry done or cook a meal... you definitely aren’t alone and feeling guilty doesn’t do anyone any good. 

My biggest advice is actually less about screen time for kids and more about parents logging themselves out of their own devices.  Don’t check that Facebook alert or respond to your text messages when you’re playing.  Try not to always have your device out.  Whatever activities you choose to do, try to be in the moment with your child.  I am sure they will get more out of it and I suspect that you’ll also enjoy it more!

Have a happy Halloween!

Dr. Brian

SmartyPal Director of Learning Sciences

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Does “Brain-Training” Work?

The short answer is it depends.  It depends on how you are training and what you are expecting to learn.  The scientific debate is covered in a recent Psychological Science in the Public Interest article.

The authors of that paper conclude there is extensive evidence that brain-training improves performance on the trained tasks, less evidence that they improve performance on closely related tasks, and little evidence that training improves everyday cognitive performance.

In education we call the ability of new skills to be applied in new situations “transfer.”  For example, if you learn to add using cereal pieces but you can’t add when you don’t have cereal to count, then you aren’t transferring your knowledge.  If learning doesn’t transfer it usually isn’t very helpful in real life.

The bad news is that a lot of lessons show poor transfer.  And this isn’t just a problem for brain-training games or technology.  This is a problem for all kinds of lessons.  The good news is that we have learned some things that can help promote transfer.

One problem with most "brain-training" games is that they are often very simple, repetitive, and divorced from everyday context.  Expecting to improve a variety of real-world skills from these kinds of activities would not be that different from expecting to be better at all kinds of math after doggedly memorizing times tables from flash cards.  While there can be a place for intensive training on a focused skill, we know that embedding lessons in real-world examples helps learners use skills in new and different situations.  We know that varying how information is presented and weaving it into a story can help learners build knowledge that they can apply more broadly.  That’s why, as we’ve developed SmartyPal’s technology, we have kept a focus on allowing our interactive elements and games to be embedded in rich narratives.  Our games allow skills to be practiced in problem-solving contexts that make it easier to see how to apply those skills in other situations.

Have a happy Monday!

Dr. Brian

SmartyPal Director of Learning Sciences

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The Learning Style Myth

Happy October!

The idea that different people learn best from different types of educational materials is a common belief.  For example, that someone can be a “visual learner” vs. someone who would prefer reading text.  The problem is, there’s relatively little evidence for the idea and some pretty exhaustive scientific searches would argue against learning styles.  

This idea is likely so hard to let go of because it just feels right!  Someone slogging through a boring textbook and then getting their “a-ha moment” from a diagram might reasonably think they learn best from visual images.  Someone who would rather take naps during lectures might believe they learn best from hands on activities because they enjoy them more.

However, there probably is something that is right about these feelings.  Certain topics are easier to learn from certain materials and most topics are best taught through mixed materials.  By tailoring the situation to the topic and by using different methods that might allow people to think about things in different ways, learners are more likely to create deep knowledge.  They are more likely to have a lesson to “stick.”  

So, even if learning styles are not “a thing” it is still important to think about how we teach topics and to try to approach teaching them using varied methods.   One advantage to technology is that it can easily present info many different ways (e.g., text, images, video, animations, web links, etc.) and guide students through different approaches if they don’t learn it from the first.

All the best,

Dr. Brian

SmartyPal Director of Learning Sciences

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Benefits of Playing Video Games

Happy Monday!

I recently joined SmartyPal because I believe in the power of video games for teaching and learning.  In general, people seem wary of the idea that playing is learning (yet evidence increasingly supports that it is).  

The idea that playing with video games could be beneficial faces the same wariness along with a certain fear about how technology influences children.  Yet there is ample evidence that playing video games can have many of the benefits of non-electronic play (e.g., this article outlining the research).  Most importantly, as technology improves and people come up with novel ways to use that technology, many concerns can be designed around.  For example, games like Pokémon GO have shown some possibilities in creating apps that get kids to be more active while playing.

The bottom line is that video games are just like foods.  There are some that are good for you to eat, some that are really bad for you to eat, and some that are ok for you to eat occasionally.  If someone said “food is bad for you” it would not make a lot of sense.  Similar blanket statements about video games also miss the mark.

All the best,

Dr. Brian

SmartyPal Director of Learning Sciences

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Why are Video Games Good for Math Learning?

Hi everyone!  I wanted to shoot around a link to this interesting infographic about why video games are good for math learning.  Because I was someone who never liked math classes very much myself, one point really hits home for me.  

In video games people expect to fail a few times before they figure out how to “beat” a challenge.  Not only is the failure expected, but in most cases it is part of the fun of the game.  Failure makes the taste of victory even sweeter!  Many in the education world try to get students to take the perspective that it is ok (and expected) to get questions wrong, as long as they do not give up on learning.  “I’m not good at math” is a common mantra even among adults, but you probably were not good at reading the first time you saw letters either!  

Games provide a safe place to fail, and in doing so, they promote a mindset that failure is the beginning of a learning journey and not the end.

So help the kids in your life have fun failing!

All the best,

Dr. Brian

SmartyPal Director of Learning Sciences

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Our newest team member!

We want to introduce Dr. Brian Verdine, the newest member of the SmartyPal team! Brian received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Vanderbilt University and just finished a research position in the School of Education at the University of Delaware. We are very happy to have him as our Director of Learning Sciences!

He has had a long-standing interest in using play to enrich children’s lives. His research has been focused around children's learning from television, video games, and other toys. He is author of a number of major scientific papers investigating the role of play and play materials in the early learning of STEM-related skills. Through his education and research he figured out a lot of ways to make technology more effective for learning. Now he wants to actually use that knowledge helping us.

Though it is his job to make sure your kids learn the most they can from everything we do, he promises us he won’t ruin the FUN in the process!

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SmartyPal & The 6Cs

In their new book, Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children, our educational advisors Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek discuss what it takes to raise children to “become the thinkers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow”. Their answer, a science-based framework they call: the 6Cs!

Here are the 6Cs as they define them and how SmartyPal encompasses each of them into our educational content:

1. Collaboration

The ability to work together and emphasize with others. Learning how to collaborate doesn’t only help children in a classroom setting, but will also benefit them when they’re ready to join the work-force and work with a team.

That’s why we’ve designed “Our Space Adventure!” for two children (or an adult and child) to play together on the same screen. Games require players to collaborate with one another, make decisions that change the course of the story, and work together to solve a problem, such as repairing the International Space Station.

2. Communication

The ability to express oneself through speaking and writing. This skill goes hand-in-hand with Collaboration. To work together, you must be able to communicate and listen.

 “What did you do on your last vacation?” “Where do you think the sun goes when it sets?” “Why do you think that character did that?” “How do you think this character felt?” In many of our games, we stop and ask the child open-ended and story-comprehension questions and ask them to record their answers using the mic to develop these speaking and listening skills and simulate conversations.

3. Content

Good quality content to provide context for the lessons being taught.

SmartyPal content consists of award-winning children’s books, folktales, and videos that provides context for the lessons. Stories have a knack at explaining the world around us and children feel a certain closeness to the characters in them. This formula helps boost the child’s engagement and creates a deeper learning experience.

4. Critical Thinking

The intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Throughout the story, the child is asked to solve different problems the characters may face. These problems can vary from finding the right tool for the job, making a decision that will have consequences, or introducing them to the logic of programming to reach a goal.

5. Creativity

The use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

We also work on creativity by getting children to draw out solutions or just draw for fun! In this example, we ask the child to draw the bird in the photograph. When they play the game again, it asks them to draw a bird from your imagination. This back-and-forth iterative drawing process is valuable for young artists to develop their “visual vocabulary”.

6. Confidence

 The feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities.

SmartyPal’s approach is to use self-paced and adaptive learning to build a child’s confidence in their own abilities. Take this game from Limon and Oli: Going to School. We teach the child to make the number in Oli’s thought bubble by using different denominations of numbers. If they master the current level, the next time they play the story, the game will change in difficulty and slowly remove support. If it proves too hard for them, the next time, it’ll bump them down a level so that the difficulty always feel “just right”.

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Happy #National Book Lovers Day! Here are a few of our favorite children’s books:

1. The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

Why we love it: We love the creativity and the surprising twists and turns in this one!

2. You Wouldn't want to be Skyscraper Builder by John Malam

Why we love it: Gives the historic context on how skyscrapers like the Empire State Building came about during the Great Depression. It also gives us a glimpse of what it took to be a builder of skyscrapers in this era.

3. Mr. Wuffles! by David Weisner

Why we love it: It’s a nearly wordless masterpiece about a cat who wants would rather play with a tiny space ship full of aliens than his cat toys, what’s not to love?

4. BFG by Roald Dahl

Why we love it: Who DOESN’T love it? It’s a classic! Plus we’re excited for the movie to come out!

5. The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

Why we love it: Love the message about caring for the environment and being mindful of the impact people have on the ecosystem.

6. Stellaluna by Janell Cannon

Why we love it: First of all, the art is GORGEOUS, second it has a great lesson about accepting each others differences, and three this book got me to eat mangoes as a kid. Thanks Stellaluna!

7. A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams

Why we love it: It’s a profound story about a loving family dealing with adversity told in a very simple way through the eyes of a child

8. Number One Sam by Greg Pizzoli

Why we love it: It has an important message about compassion that reinforces that winning is not everything.

9. The Magic Tree House Series by Mary Pope Osborne

Why we love it: It’s a great adventure series that covers all sorts of historical topics from Dinosaurs to Harry Houdini! It’s hard to just pick one from this series!

10. Go to Sleep, Gecko! by Margaret Read McDonald

Why we love it: Really charming and whimsical story about how things in nature are interconnected and how sometimes we must learn to put up with one another

11. The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery by Graeme Base

Why we love it: This book is a “whodunit” mystery with clever clues carefully hidden in the illustrations of every page. You must piece together and decide which guilty animal ate all of the birthday feast!

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SXSWedu 2017 Panel Proposal

Fans of SmartyPal, we need your help! Please vote for our to become a part of the SXSWedu 2017 schedule of events!

Our Panel: Using Stories to Foster 21st Century Skills

Show your support for SmartyPal by signing up and casting your vote here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/66314

For generations stories have been a powerful tool to share knowledge and ideas. You probably remember a bedtime story from your childhood more vividly than your homework worksheets. In this session, we’ll discuss how stories can be used in the classroom to foster SEL and 21st Century Skills like Collaboration, Critical Thinking & Compassion. We’ll share what we’ve learned from our early childhood apps that weave together digital stories and collaborative games through which students influence the story. We’ll invite the audience to share their own ‘stories’. Together we’ll explore ideas and outline a strategy to effectively use stories for teaching 21st Century Skills

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We’re Excited to Announce...

Also, great news for our Android users! You can now download Limon & Oli: Very Very Angry Bird, Go to Sleep Gecko!, and Limon & Oli: Going to School on our Android app for FREE

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Our Space Story

We're excited to launch our brand new Unity-based app for Android (iOS coming soon!) App is free to download and comes with our new choose-your-own adventure story set in space! Game is designed for 2-player collaboration on the same screen!

Download here: http://bit.ly/1WPoF9y

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For Female Founder Month, our founder, Prasanna Krishnan, explains her motivations for starting SmartyPal

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A peek inside Philadelphia's tech scene. This video, created as part of Technical.ly's Tomorrow Tour with Comcast, features startups like Guru, ROAR for Good and SmartyPAL. Mayor Kenney also makes an appearance.

Thanks Technical.ly Philly for coming to visit us in our tiny office! Great to be a part of Philly's ever-expanding tech startup community

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Siblings are a young child’s most influential teacher

“I often have sets of siblings come through my classroom and yet it wasn’t until my daughter gave me three young grandchildren in a row that I truly understood that siblings are the most influential teacher in a young child’s life.”

-Deborah J. Stewart, M.Ed.

Read More

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FETC

We had a great time at FETC talking with teachers, tech coordinators, and fellow tech companies! Thanks to everyone who stopped by our tiny little booth in the Incubator Pavilion and listened to my demo, and thank you NSF for sponsoring us!

A lot of educators were excited about trying out our app, loved the idea of using stories and games to teach STEM concepts and Social-Emotional skills. We also got a chance to speak to some teachers and coordinators that work with children with learning disabilities, so we’re curious to see how we can make SmartyPal more accessible for those types of kids to use.

We’ll be using the feedback we’ve received at the conference to continue to grow and improve SmartyPal!

If you have any thoughts on how we can improve our app email us at [email protected] or review SmartyPal on the Appstore.

Thank you!

-Team SmartyPal

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SPECIAL PROMO!

All stories on SmartyPal are now just 99cents! Offer ends on Sunday December 6th! Hurry and get some great interactive stories to share with your child at our lowest price yet! 

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We’re very excited to announce two new stories on SmartyPal!

Go to Sleep, Gecko! An award-winning Balinese folk-tale from August House with gorgeous painted illustrations. This story teaches the concept of cause and effect and how all things in nature are interconnected. Really great story that kids from around the world love! Just check out this video of the Prime Minister of Singapore reading it to some little ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBQ2D4t0ANw

Gecko complains to Elephant, the village boss that the fireflies are keeping him up at night with his lights, which sets off a comical chain of problems for everyone in the village!

Help Gecko get some sleep!

Limon & Oli: Very Very Angry Bird is from the popular animated series from Turkey that was just picked up by Disney Jr. and set to air in 111 countries worldwide! In this interactive video story, kids will be exposed to the basics of programming through a fun and addictive game!

For her school project on ‘Motherhood in Nature’, Limon needs a photo of a bird as inspiration for her painting. Good news is there’s a mother bird in a nest in her yard... the bad news is she’s way up high in a tree and out of reach. So, she enlists Oli to help her reach the nest and take the shot. Hilarity ensues when they both realize that this mother bird has a REALLY bad temper and will do anything to keep them away from her nest!

Try them both out now on the SmartyPal App!