Tag Archives: science

Study: Children subject to four hours background television daily

2 Oct

Moi said this in Play is as important for children as technology:

Let’s make this short and sweet. Park your kid in front of the television and you will probably be raising an overweight idiot. Tara Parker-Pope has a great post at the New York Times blog. In the post, TV For Toddlers Linked With Later Problems Parker-Pope reports:

Toddlers who watch a lot of television were more likely to experience a range of problems by the fourth grade, including lower grades, poorer health and more problems with school bullies, a new study reports.

The study of more than 1,300 Canadian schoolchildren tracked the amount of television children were watching at the ages of about 2 and 5. The researchers then followed up on the children in fourth grade to assess academic performance, social issues and general health.

On average, the schoolchildren were watching about nine hours of television each week as toddlers. The total jumped to about 15 hours as they approached 5 years of age. The average level of television viewing shown in the study falls within recommended guidelines. However, 11 percent of the toddlers were exceeding two hours a day of television viewing.

For those children, each hour of extra TV exposure in early childhood was associated with a range of issues by the fourth grade, according to the report published in the May issue of The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Compared with children who watched less television, those with more TV exposure participated less in class and had lower math grades. They suffered about 10 percent more bullying by classmates and were less likely to be physically active on weekends. They consumed about 10 percent more soft drinks and snacks and had body mass index scores that were about 5 percent higher than their peers.

Well duh, people. You probably already knew this. Guess why you have feet attached to your legs? So, you and the kids can walk around the neighborhood and the park. Better yet, why don’t you encourage your children to play.https://drwilda.com/2012/09/16/play-is-as-important-for-children-as-technology/

Alice Park writes in Time about a new study by Professor Matthew Lapierre, Background TV: Children Exposed to Four Hours a Day:

Matthew Lapierre, an assistant professor of communications studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and his colleagues conducted the first study to quantify how much background TV young children are exposed to on an average day. While many previous studies have focused on the effects of direct TV viewing on children’s behavior and development, Lapierre’s was the first to investigate what might be considered “secondhand” TV exposure, defined as any exposure to television that the child is not actually watching.

To the authors’ surprise, in the survey of 1,454 parents with at least one child between the ages of 8 months and 8 years, the scientists found that children were subjected to nearly four hours of background TV a day. “We were all startled by the scale of the exposure in these homes,” says Lapierre, who conducted the research while at the University of Pennsylvania. “We went into the study expecting the rates to be high, but not at the scale we found.”

The households were recruited by a phone survey group, which enrolled typical American families that represented a broad range of demographic variables, from ethnicity to income and education. Parents answered questionnaires about the activities of one of their children in a 24-hour period, and were asked about whether a television was on during any of these activities. On average, background exposure amounted to 232.3 minutes a day, with exposure being greatest for younger children: infants and toddlers under 24 months logged about 5.5 hours of background TV a day, compared with 2.75 hours a day for the oldest children, aged 6 to 8.

Parental influences played the greatest role in determining how much background TV children experienced. Other factors that increased indirect TV exposure included living in a single-parent family, where children were exposed to more than 5 hours a day, compared with 3.5 hours in multiparent homes; lower household income, with children in the poorest families experiencing 6 hours of background TV a day, compared with 3.5 hours among those whose family income reached above the poverty level; and lower parental education, with children of parents with high school diplomas or less being exposed to more than 5 hours a day, compared with less than 2.5 hours a day for those whose parents had more formal education.

The data were alarming given that children under age 6 already watch about 80 minutes of television a day directly; these findings suggest that indirect TV exposure is greater than direct watching, and could have equally, or potentially more serious effects on children’s development. Studies have linked excessive TV viewing with obesity in children, while violent and sexually inappropriate programming has been correlated with behavioral and cognitive problems in young viewers. (In contrast, educational programming has been associated with learning and cognitive benefits.)

Lapierre says that his study also hints at difficulties with executive function and self-regulation among kids who are exposed to more background TV, but those findings are still preliminary and will be explored in more detail in additional studies. While his study did not explore the consequences of indirect TV exposure, previous trials suggest that it can affect children’s concentration and behavior in relationships. In one such study, conducted at the University of Massachusetts, scientists observed parents and their toddlers as one group interacted in the presence of a television and the other group interacted without a TV. In the television group, despite the fact that the parents and children were not watching the programmining, their interactions were less frequent and the children’s play episodes were shorter. http://healthland.time.com/2012/10/02/background-tv-children-exposed-to-four-hours-a-day/#ixzz28DN53J3K

Citation:

Background Television in the Homes of US Children

  1. Matthew A. Lapierre, MAa,
  2. Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, PhDb, and
  3. Deborah L. Linebarger, PhDc

+ Author Affiliations

  1. aCommunication Studies, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina;
  2. bThe Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Department of Communication Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and
  3. cDepartment of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
    Abstract

OBJECTIVE: US parents were surveyed to determine the amount of background television that their children are exposed to as well as to isolate demographic factors associated with increased exposure to background television. After this, we ask how certain home media practices are linked to children’s background television exposure.

METHODS: US parents/caregivers (N = 1454) with 1 child between the ages of 8 months and 8 years participated in this study. A nationally representative telephone survey was conducted. Parents were asked to report on their child’s exposure to background television via a 24-hour time diary. Parents were also asked to report relevant home media behaviors related to their child: bedroom television ownership, number of televisions in the home, and how often a television was on in the home.

RESULTS: The average US child was exposed to 232.2 minutes of background television on a typical day. With the use of multiple regression analysis, we found that younger children and African American children were exposed to more background television. Leaving the television on while no one is viewing and children’s bedroom television ownership were associated with increased background television exposure.

CONCLUSIONS: Although recent research has shown the negative consequences associated with background television, this study provides the first nationally representative estimates of that exposure. The amount of exposure for the average child is startling. This study offers practitioners potential pathways to reduce exposure.

See, U.S. kids exposed to 4 hours of background TV daily http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/01/background-tv-viewing-pediatrics/1599995/

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American writer
1803–1882

Resources:

The Importance of Play in Early Childhood Development                http://msuextension.org/publications/HomeHealthandFamily/MT201003HR.pdf

Why Play Is Important For Child Development? http://www.mychildhealth.net/why-play-is-important-for-child-development.html

Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills                    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds

  1. Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd,

  2. and the Committee on Communications,

  3. and the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health

Next Section

Abstract

Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children. This report addresses a variety of factors that have reduced play, including a hurried lifestyle, changes in family structure, and increased attention to academics and enrichment activities at the expense of recess or free child-centered play. This report offers guidelines on how pediatricians can advocate for children by helping families, school systems, and communities consider how best to ensure that play is protected as they seek the balance in children’s lives to create the optimal developmental milieu. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182.full

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What is “EDU STAR”: Harnessing Technology to Improve K-12 Education

28 Sep

As everything in society becomes more closely tied to technology, key questions are whether technology is useful in a given circumstance and how to evaluate the usefulness of a particular technology application. In a 2004 policy report, Evaluating The Effectiveness of Technology in Our Schools, ACT had some interesting questions about the use of technology in schools:

Specifically, this report:

Focuses on issues that need to be considered as we assess the impact of technology and develop evidence-based strategies for technology integration that contribute to high achievement for all students.  Provides useful information and specific recommendations about evaluating the effectiveness of technological applications implemented to enhance teaching, learning, and achievement. Technology should be a tool to help educators meet the educational needs of all children. As such, technologies cannot function as solutions in isolation but must be thought of as key ingredients in making it possible for schools to address core educational challenges1. Technology can serve as an enabler in teaching and learning to:

 Help organize and provide structure for material to students.

 Help students, teachers, and parents interact, anytime and anywhere.

 Facilitate and assist in the authentication and prioritization of Internet material.

 Simulate, visualize, and interact with scientific structures, processes, and models.

 Help in learning history and depicting future trends.

 Serve as an extension and enhancer for handicapped populations.

 Provide automated translators for multilingual populations2.

However, technology and equity are not inevitable partners. Simply providing access does not ensure that technology will effectively enhance teaching and learning and result in improved achievement. Nor does providing access imply that all teachers and students will make optimal use of the technology. Technology may mean little without appropriate objectives and goals for its use, structures for its application, trained and skillful deliverers, and clearly envisioned plans for evaluating its effectiveness.

Two yardsticks we can use to measure the strides technology has made are accessibility by students (and teachers) to technology resources and how technology is actually utilized by schools and teachers in different settings and for different students. http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/school_tech.pdf

Two researchers are proposing a systematic method for evaluating technology for schools.

Huffington Post has an interesting article about a proposed system to evaluate education technology. In the article, Education Technology: Hamilton Project Report Calls For EDU STAR To Evaluate Tech In Schools, the technology is described:

In a new paper for The Hamilton Project, Duke University’s Aaron Chatterji and Northwestern’s Benjamin Jones propose establishing a third-party ratings organization dubbed “EDU STAR” that would evaluate education technologies.

The proposal aims to encourage innovation in the education sector — which has seen relatively little new technologies compared to other industries — and provide new methods to help students learn.

While instructional software can offer personalized learning for students and potentially complement a teacher’s skillset, little is known about the effectiveness of learning technologies. According to the report, schools often have no way of knowing if a product works, and collecting such information or running their own tests requires investing both time and money.

In their paper, Chatterji and Jones write that their proposed nonprofit organization would bridge the information gap between market suppliers and schools, test software-based learning tools, and disseminate ratings and other measures of effectiveness online — similar to the publication Consumer Reports.

EDU STAR would begin by focusing on instructional content, which it would evaluate based on one or more of the Common Core State Standards. The organization would also collaborate with entrepreneurs, screening their products before they go into schools.

According to the report, EDU STAR plans to partner with a group of schools or school districts to test new technologies. The idea is that every school would set aside time for students to engage in digital learning, during which they would log into the EDU STAR system and work with the products that are being evaluated.

Chatterji and Jones estimate that one large school district would be enough to provide comprehensive results. In the event that there is not sufficient interest from schools, EDU STAR may offer incentives like discounts on software or compensation.

When it comes to disseminating results, the organization would be responsible for creating easily accessible reports detailing the effectiveness of various products and publishing these reports online. EDU STAR would rate each technology on a scale of one to five stars, and would also include supplemental information like how many students have used the software, how it was tested, user ratings from both students and teachers, and how effective the product is for different types of students. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/hamilton-project-report-c_n_1917166.html?utm_hp_ref=education

“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is most important.”                                Bill Gates

Citation:

Abstract

Technological progress has consistently driven remarkable advances in the U.S. economy, yet K–12 education sees little technological change compared to other sectors, even as U.S. K–12 students increasingly lag behind students in other nations. This proposal considers how we can take a signature American strength—innovation—and apply it to K–12 education. We argue that the advent of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and broadband Internet create promising opportunities for developing new learning technologies but that a fundamental obstacle remains: the effectiveness of learning technologies is rarely known. Not surprisingly, when no one knows what works, schools are unlikely to buy, and innovators are unlikely to create. Our proposed EDU STAR system will solve this problem by (a) undertaking rapid, rigorous, and low-cost evaluations of learning tools and (b) reporting results to the public. Coupling Internet-based real-time evaluation systems (demonstrated daily by many leading companies) with trusted reporting (modeled by Consumer Reports and others), the proposed EDU STAR platform will help schools make informed learning technology decisions and substantially reduce entry barriers for innovators. EDU STAR will bring together K–12 schools, teachers, and innovators and continually improve this critical foundation for economic prosperity.

Downloads

  • Aaron Chatterji

    Associate Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

  • Benjamin Jones

    Associate Professor, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Resources:

What Forty Years of Research Says About the Impact of Technology on Learning

A Second-Order Meta-Analysis and Validation Study

  1. Rana M. Tamim
  1. Hamdan Bin Mohammed e-University
  1. Robert M. Bernard
  2. Eugene Borokhovski
  3. Philip C. Abrami
  4. Richard F. Schmid
  1. Concordia University
    Abstract
    This research study employs a second-order meta-analysis procedure to summarize 40 years of research activity addressing the question, does computer technology use affect student achievement in formal face-to-face classrooms as compared to classrooms that do not use technology? A study-level meta-analytic validation was also conducted for purposes of comparison. An extensive literature search and a systematic review process resulted in the inclusion of 25 meta-analyses with minimal overlap in primary literature, encompassing 1,055 primary studies. The random effects mean effect size of 0.35 was significantly different from zero. The distribution was heterogeneous under the fixed effects model. To validate the second-order meta-analysis, 574 individual independent effect sizes were extracted from 13 out of the 25 meta-analyses. The mean effect size was 0.33 under the random effects model, and the distribution was heterogeneous. Insights about the state of the field, implications for technology use, and prospects for future research are discussed.

This Article

  1. Published online before print January 10, 2011, doi: 10.3102/0034654310393361 REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH March 2011 vol. 81 no. 1 4-28
  1. » AbstractFree
  2. Full Text
  3. Full Text (PDF)

    All Versions of this Article:

    1. current version image indicatorVersion of Record – Mar 2, 2011
    2. 0034654310393361v1 – Jan 10, 2011

Researcher Studies Effects of Technology in Schools http://www.komu.com/news/researcher-studies-effects-of-technology-in-schools-29344/

Technology In Schools: Weighing The Pros And Cons http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/22/technology-in-schools-wei_n_772674.html

Related:

Technology report: Ed-Fi, the student info data base                                https://drwilda.com/2012/05/14/technology-report-ed-fi-the-student-info-data-base/

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Detroit schools illustrate the dangers of toxins in schools

27 Sep

Detroit is dealing with a host of problems at this moment in history. The Detroit school system not only faces academic and financial challenges, but it is at the center of a lead crisis which threatens the health of children attending Detroit schools. Jaclyn Zubrzycki writes in the Education Week article, Lead-Exposure Problems Spotlighted in Detroit:

Lead has been linked to negative trends in school performance, especially among poor and African-American students, in Chicago, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Texas, among other places, but there is little research on how schools can help affected children.

A Lead ‘Epicenter’

One of the new studies pulls together public-health and education data to draw attention to the large numbers of Detroit children who have been exposed to lead.

“Detroit is one of the epicenters for lead in the country,” said Jane L. Nickert, the director of the childhood-lead program in the city’s department of health and wellness. “And educators don’t know what they’re dealing with because no one’s told them.”

Ms. Nickert was not part of the new study, which was conducted by researchers from her agency, the Detroit Public Schools, the University of South Florida in Tampa, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and MPRO, a nonprofit health-care group.

It demonstrates a link between blood lead levels and lower performance on the Michigan Assessment of Educational Progress, or MAEP: Students with an early-childhood blood lead level of 10 milligrams per deciliter of blood—about half of what Reginald’s was at age 1—were more than twice as likely to score less than proficient on all three subjects in the state assessment than students with less than 1 milligram per deciliter, after controlling for factors like family income and maternal education.

The research is being reviewed for publication by the American Journal of Public Health.

Researchers connected the health records and the 2008-10 test scores of 21,281 students in grades 3, 5, and 8 in the Detroit school district. They found widespread lead poisoning in the district, including some schools where 54 percent of the population had elevated blood lead levels, said Randall E. Raymond, a geographic information specialist in the district’s office of research, evaluation, assessment, and accountability.

National Challenges

The Detroit research comes as advocates nationwide are calling for more awareness about recognizing and ameliorating lead’s impact on students, and for an increase in funding from the Atlanta-based federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recently set a lower threshold for identifying children as lead-poisoned but cut funding for lead education and surveillance programs from $29 million a year to $2 million a year.

The CDC last spring lowered the level of lead considered dangerous from 10 milligrams of lead per deciliter of blood to 5, responding to years of research showing detrimental impacts from lower levels of exposure.

Related Stories

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/09/24/05lead.h32.html?tkn=RQYFnr3lblaH%2BAOHy7UUzOcaJLVrPNjRzgCE&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

The research is being reviewed for publication in American Journal of Public Health.

Moi wrote about Toxic dangers in schools:

Tim Walker and Cindy Long report in NEA Today:

An estimated 14 million American children attend public schools that are in urgent need of  extensive repair or replacement and have unhealthy environmental conditions, including poor air quality, unsafe drinking water and inadequate safety systems. http://neatoday.org/2012/01/10/cnn-indoor-air-quality/

The Agency for Toxic Effects and Disease Registry (ATEDR) has some good information about the effects of toxins on children.

In Principles of Pediatric Environmental Health: What Are Special Considerations Regarding Toxic Exposures to Young and School-age Children, as Well as Adolescents? ATEDR reports:

Young Child (2 to 6 years old)

With the newly acquired ability to run, climb, ride tricycles, and perform other mobile and exploratory activities, the young child’s environment expands, as does the risk of exposure.

Many of a young child’s toxic exposures may occur from ingestion. If the child’s diet is deficient in iron or calcium, the small intestine avidly absorbs lead….

School-aged Children (6 to 12 years old)

School-aged children spend increasingly greater amounts of time in outdoor, school, and after-school environments. They may be exposed to outdoor air pollution, including

  • widespread air pollutants,

  • ozone, particulates, and

  • nitrogen and sulfur oxides.

These result primarily from fossil fuel combustion. Although these pollutants concentrate in urban and industrial areas, they are windborne and distribute widely. Local pockets of intense exposure may result from toxic air and soil pollutants emanating from hazardous waste sites, leaking underground storage tanks, or local industry. One example of a localized toxic exposure adverse effect was seen in children exposed to high doses of lead released into the air from a lead smelter in Idaho. When tested 15 to 20 years later, these children showed reduced neurobehavioral and peripheral nerve function [ATSDR 1997b]….

In addition, some school age children engage in activity such as

  • lawn care,

  • yard work, and

  • trash pickup.

These and other work situations may put them at risk for exposures to hazardous substances such as pesticides used to treat lawns.

Adolescents (12 to 18 years old)

But nothing more than just adolescent behavior may result in toxic exposures. Risk-taking behaviors of adolescents may include exploring off-limit industrial waste sites or abandoned buildings. For example, in one reported case, teenagers took elemental mercury from an old industrial facility and played with and spilled the elemental mercury in homes and cars [Nadakavukaren 2000]. Teens may also climb utility towers or experiment with psychoactive substances (inhalant abuse, for example). Cigarette smoking and other tobacco use often begins during adolescence. For more information about adolescent tobacco use see CDC Office of Smoking and Health at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco

Compared with younger children, adolescents are more likely to engage in hobbies and school activities involving exposure to

  • solvents,

  • caustics, or

  • other dangerous chemicals.

Few schools include basic training in industrial hygiene as a foundation for safety at work, at school, or while enjoying hobbies.

Many adolescents may encounter workplace hazards through after-school employment. Working adolescents tend to move in and out of the labor market, changing jobs and work schedules in response to employer needs or their own life circumstances [Committee on the Health and Safety Implications of Child Labor 1998]. In the United States, adolescents work predominately in retail and service sectors. These are frequently at entry-level jobs in

  • exterior painting of homes,

  • fast-food restaurants,

  • gas stations and automotive repair shops,

  • nursing homes,

  • parks and recreation, and

  • retail stores.

Such work may expose adolescents to commercial cleaners, paint thinners, solvents, and corrosives by inhalation or splashes to the skin or eyes. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimated that, on average, 67 workers under age 18 died from work-related injuries each year during 1992-2000 [NIOSH 2003]. In 1998, an estimated 77,000 required treatment in hospital emergency departments [NIOSH 2003]….

Metabolic Vulnerability of Adolescents

Metabolic processes change during adolescence. Changes in cytochrome P450 expression [Nebert and Gonzalez 1987] result in a decrease in the metabolism rate of some xenobiotics dependent on the cytochrome CYP (P450) – for example, the concentration of theophylline increases in blood [Gitterman and Bearer 2001]. The metabolic rate of some xenobiotics is reduced in response to the increased secretion of growth hormone, steroids, or both that occur during the adolescent years [Gitterman and Bearer 2001]. The implications of these changes on the metabolism of environmental contaminants are areas of intense research. By the end of puberty, the metabolism of some xenobiotics achieves adult levels.

Puberty results in the rapid growth, division, and differentiation of many cells; these changes may result in vulnerabilities. Profound scientific and public interest in endocrine disruptors – that is, chemicals with hormonal properties that mimic the actions of naturally occurring hormones – reflects concerns about the effect of chemicals on the developing reproductive system. Even lung development in later childhood and adolescence may be disrupted by chronic exposure to air pollutants, including

  • acid vapors,

  • elemental carbon,

  • nitrogen dioxide, and

  • particulate matter [Gauderman et al. 2004].

Citation:

Principles of Pediatric Environmental Health
What Are Special Considerations Regarding Toxic Exposures to Young and School-age Children, as Well as Adolescents?

Course: WB2089
CE Original Date: February 15, 2012
CE Expiration Date: February 15, 2014
Download Printer-Friendly version Adobe PDF file [PDF – 819 KB]

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=27&po=10https://drwilda.com/2012/07/08/toxic-dangers-in-schools/

This society will not have healthy children without having healthy home and school environments.

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