Michael Ettinger

Comm 1500
Kanehara
Educational Media and Technology
When using the word education, it brings to mind a group of other terms and
concepts that are so similarly defined that they are only mildly discernible such as:
learning, training, teaching, schooling, coaching, and even the modernly
disgraced tuition. Thats just using the word as a noun. Depending on the basic form
and part of speech usage, the same terms can also be so disparate and singularized that
many people choose to overlook the respective processes comprising and likewise
distinguishing their definitions altogether. Similar to the inaccurate yet intuitive
psychological opinions clung to by laymen searching for meaning, fallacies and
misconceptions towards education are similarly damaging. On a national scale, both our
countrys mental health and education systems are constantly critiqued for being deficient
when considering all ages and demographics given our technological resources.
The word technology, when used as a noun, is a similarly broad yet separate
topic. It represents a wide range of tools, techniques, and methods often in the form of
physical products that help us achieve specific goals.
The similarity between these two nouns (for the purpose of this paper) exists in
the reality that both terms are so wide-ranging that its hard to pin down exactly what is
being referred to. In any dialogue (such as this one) involving either concept, deliberation
is needed to focus and narrow down specifically which intended area of discussion may
be. Educational technology is can be a very influential form of mass media. It determines
how and with what effectiveness youth in our society learn intended lessons. I aim to
introduce the overall idea of educational technology and clarify its uses and goals,
along with touching on devices involved in current efforts. I will introduce articles on

interconnected fields in the topic that are active and relevant. I intend to compare,
contrast, interpret, and evaluate the effectiveness and relationships between the articles.
When considering the concepts within the realm of educational technology, it
brings to mind a particularly outstanding tool: the computer. However, calculators,
graphing programs, word processors, and graphic design platforms are no longer the
trailblazing academic tools they once were. Slowly but surely, technology is advancing to
meet more needs and wants of the educational system. There has been an enormous
amount of literature generated in the past decade addressing countless theories, studies
and inferences regarding the use of modern technology with students in order to improve
and supplement cognitive and noncognitive skills. The cumulative knowledge base of the
scientific community is ever expanding, but there are noticeable groups of related topics
that can be compared and contrasted to provide a picture of the overall body of
knowledge accumulated.
With the use of technology in educational settings, its important to grasp the
digital era we live in. There are smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart-watches, and all
manner of devices providing digital media content to people of all ages. These devices
are shaping the way we live and children are being brought into a world that is infested
with digital media content. It is important to know how these digital technology forces
can result in significant and measurable positive developments both cognitive and
emotional realms.
I discovered articles maintaining evidence in a range of forms from case studies
and testimonials to qualitative observations and theoretical rationales. There are also
studies using statistical analysis, hard data, and economic equations to support claims. In

this research paper, its necessary to sort relevant efforts showing significant outcomes
into categories based on the qualitative and qualitative criteria utilized in defining skill
and ability acquisitions.
Flavio Cunha and James Heckman of the University of Chicago developed a
model of skill formation in their 2007 piece published in the American Economic
Review. They use technology innovatively in the form of a complex economic model to
evaluate investments in educational interventions for disadvantaged children and young
adults in terms of their outputs. They also use statistical analysis, graphs, studies and test
scores of cognitive abilities to support their argument. They determine the terms skills
and abilities to be synonymous, but make a distinction between pure cognitive
abilities (e.g., IQ) and noncognitive abilities (patience, self control, temperament, risk
aversion, and time preference) (Cunha and Heckman, 2007). They state these abilities to
be useful in various areas during different stages in life, especially for social means. They
believe measurable abilities are subject to both genetic and environmental impacts; that
abilities are created and environmental circumstance guides gene expression, so it is
impossible to separate completely the two influences. Their economic model attempts to
collectively evaluate the two effects. According to their six central facts derived from
their research, First, ability gaps between individuals and across socioeconomic groups
open up at early ages, for both cognitive and noncognitive skills (Cunha and Heckman,
2007). It is shown that school quality and school resources have little effect on test
scores by age across children from different socioeconomic groups (Cunha and
Heckman, 2007). Its asserted experimental interventions with long-term follow-up
confirm that changing the resources available to disadvantaged children improves their

adult outcomes (Cunha and Heckman, 2007). It is also important to recognize that there
are decisive and delicate phases in the development of a child. IQ scores stabilize around
age 10 suggesting a sensitive period for their formation before age 10 (Cunha and
Heckman, 2007). Flavio Cunha found that interventions during adolescence have an
impact on non-cognitive skills. The authors purport that non-cognitive strengths such as
emotional stability in turn nurture security, child exploration and more vigorous learning
of cognitive skills (Cunha and Heckman, 2007). Extrapolating that idea further, they
contend that abilities acquired at one stage increase the productivity of investment at
subsequent stages (Cunha and Heckman, 2007), referring in economic terms to greater
results from additional educational engagements in later years. Reaching and influencing
children at younger ages increases the effect and influence of educational efforts. They
claim that complementarity and self-productivity produce multiplier effects through
which skills beget skills and abilities beget abilities (Cunha and Heckman, 2007). The
authors use of many references in review to reputable studies, their comprehensive
assembling of information reaching many different subtopics, and their use of
quantitative information, statistical, theoretical, and even economic foundations for their
points makes for a compelling piece of literature. They cement the ideas that abilities and
skills should be treated the same in educational environments, that cognitive and
noncognitive abilities supplement and nurture one another, and that it is imperative to
view child development in changing stages of sensitivity. Their work also provides a
great umbrella device under which to review other digital media and educational
technology literature.

However, I could not find any significant studies analyzing the effect that
increased digital media content and screen exposure has on a childs brain, cognitively or
non-cognitively. That is a very important area of research that needs to be expounded
upon.
Cunha and Heckman also claimed that syntax and grammar skills appear to be
better acquired earlier in life, so they are exceedingly more difficult to absorb later in life.
This is an extremely prevalent and active realm for experimental intervention efforts in
using technology to increase literacy skills, specifically with disadvantaged youth. It is
significant because if there is an enormous increase in media content exposure and a
decrease in actual reading time, then the more sensitive learned literacy windows can be
passed over without many children developing adequate skills. It also is important to
know that access to modern technological tools is nowhere near universal, so these
benefits and risks are also not universal.
With the rapid advances in modern technology, educators have growing access to
various systems aimed at instituting, improving, or supplementing literacy skills in a
broad sense. Computers, tablets, and e-readers can all be used to display and manipulate
text. As Biancarosa and Griffith (2012) explain, simple applications of existing ereading technology such as changing font size on-screen, using text-to-speech features to
provide dual input of text, or using the Internet to collaborate on learning activities may
substantially improve the learning of many students (Biancarosa and Griffith, 2012, p.
140). Those features apply to adolescent and college aged students academic processes
as much as young children, but what is more significant with regards to disadvantaged

youth is finding how to assist the initial introductions of young children to reading and
writing processes.
Even though technology holds great potential to help close gaps in literacy
abilities between different socioeconomic groups, new e-technology, however, may
inadvertently widen such gaps (Biancarosa and Griffith, 2012, p. 140) The consumer
behaviors of parents often determine young childrens access to digital reading tools and
media content outside of the classroom. Socioeconomic divides explain how low-income
families might be less likely to provide their child with more modern technological
learning opportunities at home. If thats the case, and if schools in disadvantaged areas
cannot eliminate gaps in access to technology, achievement disparities may continue to
widen unless students are given sufficient opportunities to learn how to use the
technology to accomplish a wide range of goals (Biancarosa and Griffith, 2012, p. 140141).
When given access to appropriate modern technological methods, teachers have
great power to expand the realm of experience and achievement found by their students.
Unsurprisingly, despite the prevalence of modern digital technology and its use to
improve basic literacy skills, it seems to no longer be a focus of inquiry in recent
literature into new educational methods. In addition to the distinction and relationship
between cognitive and noncognitive abilities, efforts to stimulate them together in new
and more practical situations have gained steam and given rise to countless new lessons
and teaching methods. Many of these new methods endeavor to include digital media
content to engage students.

Digital storytelling has emerged as a very popular activity in classrooms designed

to engage students in areas of self-expression, creativity, and self-reflection. Digital
storytelling integrates technology with communication, language arts, and literacy
skills (Hathorn 2005, p. 32). Sometimes, in discovering innovative methods of achieving
educational objectives, qualitative information is key. Pauline Pearson Hathorn, an Ed.D.
Candidate at The University of California, Berkeley and middle school teacher of 31
years in Southern California feels that digital storytelling allows learners to construct
their own learning, thus engaging students in inquiry and active learning processes
(Hathorn 2005, p. 32). Hathorn (2005) observed and partook in an inner city after school
program in Oakland, California using digital storytelling to motivate middle school,
inner city youth to tell their stories through literacy, language arts, and technology. The
students were taken out into the surrounding neighborhoods and encouraged to capture
film of the area with provided digital cameras. Hathorn (2005) also states that although
the students did not initially show much interest or enthusiasm for the project, they
became active and engaged once the objectives were set outside and once they became
involved in capturing digital footage. Students made notes about the areas affect on their
different senses, and one student remarked, When our tutors and teachers took the
project to the streets, to our community, I saw my neighborhood in ways that I had not
considered before (Hathorn, 2005). Students used narratives, short stories, and/or poetry
to write about their neighborhoods, used word processors to revise them, recorded audio
files to use with the digital footage captured, and created multimedia presentations with
images, sound, video, and written words. This program succeeds in its aim to increase
reading and writing through the use of technology (Hathorn, 2005). In equipping and

guiding the students to create narrations of themselves and their environment, the
program promotes the application and expression of both critical thinking and
communication practices. This program is an example of utilizing modern digital media
technology to engage students in creative ways using observable qualitative parameters.
Hathorn describes her experience and the effectiveness of digital storytelling by use of
observations, testimonials, and her first hand account of working with these students.
Another relevant example of an effort to use digital technology with students is
when researchers in Australia had teachers and children view YouTube videos together.
The verbal and nonverbal reactions of the teachers to audio/visual events in the video, the
verbal and nonverbal actions of the students, and similar actions of their peers
demonstrate the power of multimodal resources for meaning-making (Davidson,
Danby, Given, and Thorpe, 2014). The video made use of multiple frightening scenarios,
and the teachers nonverbal reactions provided information for the students to interpret.
This study uses ethnomethodology, which seeks to describe people (or members)
methods of sense-making as documented by them during their everyday interactions with
others (Davidson, Danby, Given, and Thorpe, 2014). The researchers treat the viewing
of YouTube videos with others as everyday interactions, which is likely a safe
assumption. The researchers record video of the video viewings and accompanying
interactions between individuals and students. Conversational analysis of interactions
between teacher and student during and after the video shows qualitatively that there is
conclusively a development of shared understandings made available through talk and
shared-experience. This study was intended to circumvent the gross prevalence of how

studies overwhelmingly continue to focus on how children learn skills rather than more
complex practices (Davidson, Danby, Given, and Thorpe, 2014).
Despite the positive outcomes from digital learning and digital storytelling
activities, there exists an inherent risk in using any digital media related technology.
According to Dr. Carl Marci, the attention spans for millennials, or those who have
grown up in a digital world are 60 percent shorter than previous generations when it
comes to media (Marci, 2015). Dr. Marci notes how humans are designed and equipped
to understand and empathize with one another. For social relationships and mental health
it is crucial to emotionally connect with other humans, but digital media interactions are
chipping away at our interactions with one another. With so many outlets and media tools
at our disposal as adults, do we really want to be promoting and educating young
childrens use of media technologies in school? People are now using media to find those
crucial feelings of connection and compassion. Weve seen how people use multiple
media screens to regulate their emotions never letting themselves get too low or too
high (Marci, 2015). Dr. Marci uses experience from training as an adult psychiatrist and
personal knowledge acquired as a professor and advisor to major advertising companies
to paint a picture of the current role media has for many people today. With so much
content, so many platforms, we always will have multiple digital options to satisfy our
need for emotional engagement (Marci, 2015). The important point relevant to this
review comes when Dr. Marci explains how increased distractions, decreased attention,
and increased competition for attention impacts how stories are told. There is an
abandonment to the common linear unfolding of a story with a beginning, middle and
end (Marci, 2015). Marci focuses the majority of his article on the effects of media

usage on the advertising industry, but his points on the role of digital technology in
modern society put into context what the risks are of increasing educational reliance on
digital media tools. The benefits that increased capabilities and access provide must be
wagered against the inherent risks that have evolved with digital media technologies.
Technology certainly has an important place in the field of education, but how
exactly digital technology and media tools are best used is still being discovered. Cunha
and Heckman (2007) make the important distinction between cognitive and noncognitive
abilities, noting that abilities and skills are equal for all practical intents and purposes,
and that noncognitive skills provide structural framework for the development of
cognitive skills and vice versa. Biancarosa and Griffith (2012) illuminate how digital
technologies abilities to manipulate text, fonts, and incorporate speech and video
exercises along with reading exercises is a great literacy tool, but the literacy of basic
reading skills in young children and disparities in access to technological tools may
actually widen the gap in literacy if policy makers do not adjust. Hathorn (2005) shares
her account of successfully using digital storytelling in a disadvantaged classroom to
build both basic and technological literacy skills. Additionally, those students were
exercising self-expression and creative practices in sharing and reflecting on their
neighborhoods through different media mechanisms. Davidson, Danby, Given, and
Thorpe (2014) explain although studies overwhelmingly continue to focus on how
children learn skills rather than more complex practices; there is also great potential in
multimodal resources to create meaning-making. Shared understandings developed
from viewing YouTube videos allowed teachers and students to have substantial
conversations reviewing them. Finally, Dr. Carl Marci (2015) explains the great risks of

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using digital media and the implications that excessive use may hold. The countless
options for distraction within ever-present digital media content have been starting to
impinge our natural satisfaction of needs for emotional engagement. I feel there is
substantial risk for emotional stunting and decreased empathy in children who become
dependent on digital media and technology devices for stimulation of interests. Such
technology should be a tool for supplementation, not a path for total educational
revolution.
Future areas of research should focus on the patterns of use for young children
who are given access to digital media technology outside of the classroom. It should be
investigated how this access affects social and emotional abilities in young children.
Also, the power of digital technology projects to influence self-expression, self-image,
and cooperation could be examined in studies.

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References

Biancarosa, G., & Griffiths, G. (2012). Technology Tools to Support Reading in the
Digital Age. The Future of Children, 22(2), 139-160. Retrieved April 13, 2015,
from JSTOR.
Cunha, F., & Heckman, J. (2007). The Technology Of Skill Formation. American
Economic Review, 97(2), 31-47. Retrieved April 12, 2015, from JSTOR.
Davidson, L., Danby, C., Given, S., & Thorpe, K. (2014). Talk about a YouTube video in
preschool: The mutual production of shared understanding for learning with
digital technology. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 39(3), 76-83.
Hathorn, P. (2005). Using Digital Storytelling as a Literacy Tool for the Inner City
Middle School Youth. The Charter Schools Resource Journal, 1(1), 32-38.
Retrieved April 6, 2015, from:
http://stu.westga.edu/~jsherwo1/mysite11/Resource/7585_DigitalStory_jsh.pdf
Marci, D. (2015, March 2). Storytelling In The Digital Media Age. Retrieved from
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/02/storytelling-in-the-digital-media-age/

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