December Picks
How many articles do you read in a month? I think I hit my personal record with more than 250.
The goal of the monthly series is to feature colleagues’ articles that harmonize with this blog’s discussion on child learning and EdTech – writing what I just couldn’t have written better myself. I picked these four masterpieces that, in my opinion, together provide a wider perspective on children’s learning experience.
:) Enjoy!
Featured articles for December 2021
How to design for children by BBC GEL - A well-written how-to article that shares the 7 research-based principles that create great digital experiences for children at BBC. To me, every valuable piece of content on the subject is priceless.
If you are looking for other resources, check Rubens Cantuni’s book “Design for kids: Digital Products For Playing And Learning”
How can children exercise their agency? by Natalia Kucirkova - Children's agency is their freedom to make well-founded, thoughtful choices. This ability is threatened by technology and the negative behavioral changes it encourages.
I closely follow Natalia Kucirkova because of her unique ability to provide a broad picture and proactively suggest smart solutions — backed by research, experience and examples.
Safe, Secure & Smart – a guide for choosing tech for young preschoolers by Fairplay - Fairplay is a non-profit organization committed to helping children thrive in an increasingly commercialized, screen-obsessed culture, and the only organization dedicated to ending harmful marketing to children.
This guide is unique and especially close to my heart, as my approach to tech and children is so similar to Fairplay’s. Tech is here to stay, so we must learn how to choose wisely and integrate it into our lives in a way that aligns with child development and creates healthy tech habits for our children. It is a hard task with a high risk for failure at a high price – so such initiatives are precious and inspiring for both parents and designers.
Learn, Unlearn, Relearn by Learnlife - I love the discussion about the fluidity of the learning cycle in this piece. Generally, I think recognizing cognitive aspects of learning, questioning what we know, and consciously relearning metastrategies and tactics ultimately improve our personal learning abilities.
Why should you care and how it is related to developing EdTech for kids? Obviously, practicing how to learn, unlearn and relearn is crucial for our personal and professional development and is especially important to model for our children. Moreover, as learning designers for children, we can discover so many ways to promote the joy of learning – from creating apps that train the “learning muscle” to implementing fluidity learning principles in every product we work on.
Did you find any of these helpful or interesting? Let me know. What kind of information would you like to see in the next “monthly picks” post?
Yours,
Polina