Smartphone Free & Blended Part 2 - The Opportunity of Purpose-Driven Tech for Children

In my last post, Smartphone Free & Blended, I shared a case for creating smartphone-free schools that use school-managed devices for balanced blended learning. I want to dive a little deeper into the opportunities which can emerge from this structure, starting with purpose.

Learning to do something involves much more than simply figuring out how to do it. Think about the a time you learned to do something meaningful to you. You may not recall something from early childhood, but whatever the moment you conjure, it likely has the following context beyond what it was and how you did it:

• Place or Setting - Where you learned likely established a sort of pin in your memory; perhaps it was the first thing you recalled about the learning experience.
• Community - Who you were with gives depth that only connection can bring to the experience. If it was a positive connection, it's likely you have a positive association with the learning experience because of that.
• Purpose - When you learn something with clear purpose of your own volition, it sticks at a much deeper level because the WHY of learning is there within the memory of it.
• Feeling - What emotion you associate with the learning experience is probably the most meaningful component of your ability to recall it and the likelihood that what you learned became part of who you are and what you did in an ongoing manner.

Now think about the way most children in tech-ubiquitous communities are exposed to tech via handheld devices. So many of the aforementioned components of learning simply don't exist on a conscious level. In using smartphones and other handheld devices, young children experience the dopamine hit from interacting with media, but they aren't consciously learning about technology from a purposeful use of it. Thus by default, they enter their use of technology as passive consumers of it.

Now imagine if that weren't the case. What could come of the opportunity where the first interactions with technology took place in the context of schools, where there is a supportive community to guide conscious media literacy, and there is clear purpose to the way we use technology for learning?

During a trip with Imagine Worldwide , I visited several schools which were doing just that...introducing children to tech for the first time in a learning context. The communities Imagine's programs serve are rich in commitment but severely challenged in resources. They don't have power, certainly not broadband, and if there is a mobile device in the family, it is unlikely to be used by children for entertainment. Though the program focuses on building foundational literacy and numeracy, what I saw immediately was this less obvious mindset "leapfrog". While the more resourced world is now grappling with childhood mental illness and mass distraction, these children were learning the value of technology to learn and advance their opportunities during their first encounter with it.

Because technology is so ubiquitous in our culture, we have a massive ship to turn if we were to take up the challenge of shifting the pervasive media consumption mindset and habits into which we currently indoctrinate children. But it is a worthy cause to create healthier and more purposeful media interactions. It may be wildly idealistic to think we could eliminate childhood use of smartphones and social media entirely, but if we earnestly "shoot for the moon" on this pursuit, maybe we could make childhood media harm an exception rather than the norm.