Digital Smarts - How Television Can Make Kids Better Readers

Tap, Click, Read is a new book that offers ideas for teachers and parents about how to use media to encourage literacy and critical thinking in young children. With an alarming number of children in the US never becoming good readers, the authors promote the idea of "joint media engagement" (where adults and children learn from media together) in their discussion of media literacy. Research has shown that there is less "intentional viewing" of educational media today than in the past when, for example, parents and kids would watch Sesame Street together and then use what they watched in the real world to count objects or point out letters on a sign. Today parents and kids are more likely to be watching less educational programming together. For more information on this new book, read an interview with the authors on the PBS site.