The Children’s Book Review
Published: August 24, 2013
Nicole Fonovich, co-author and co-creator of the “Luca Lashes” series of interactive apps and eBook, is a tech-savvy mom blazing a new trail in children’s publishing. Young readers are at the dawn of a new era where eBooks meet interactive apps, and discovery takes many shapes. That’s where Nicole, both a children’s eBook author and app developer, is becoming a pioneer. In one year, she expanded a seedling book idea into a multilingual line of 36 eBooks and corresponding apps.
Through examining both the negative and positive effects technology has on our children, Fonoovich provides us with advice on how to partner with our children and the technology they use to enhance their educational experiences.
As a parent, you try to do what is best for your child. This includes optimizing their educational experience. In today’s day and age, the education of children has become married to technology, and there exist positive and negative aspects to this. Let us examine some of the effects technology has on your child’s learning.
Negative Effects:
- Screen time
Excessive screen time has never been good for children. Because learning is also experiential and active, it is important to teach your children limits with regards to screen time. For every hour of screen time, I would recommend a few hours of exercise or sports. Getting all that physical energy out can help make children more attentive as well.
- Deteriorating writing skills
Using technology too much can cause a significant decline in a child’s writing skills, which involve spelling, grammar and general literacy. To counteract the effect that using technology, which is easy and fast, can have, parents should try and spend time with their children reading and writing each day.
Positive Effects:
- Making learning multi-modal
Children do not all learn in the same way, they are unique. They are also more visual than adults, and get more out of experiential learning. Using tablets, apps and the Internet can help children to experience many facets of a subject without leaving the classroom. The more sensory the experience, the more they are apt to remember it. Using tablets involves using sight, sound and touch.
- Staying on the cutting edge
Incorporating the most modern methods of education involve using technology in the classroom and at home. These can include DVDs, tablets, mobile phones, computers, laptops, and other children’s technology. When you have a goal for your child to learn and achieve, use every available avenue, and they will remain competitive in a global marketplace for ideas and future employment.
The overall goal is to give your child the best education possible. From when they are young, you can start to do this by incorporating technology into how you teach them to learn. Children are sponges with so many aspects of learning; so introducing proper amounts of technology time within their daily habit will drastically help them throughout their educational lifetimes!
To learn more about Nicole Fonovich and her “Luca Lashes” series, visit: lucalashes.com