Discussions

Your Name and Title:

Nicole Dreiske

Executive Director

School or Organization Name:

International Children’s Media Center

Co-Presenter Name(s): None

Area of the World from Which You Will Present:

United States

Language in Which You Will Present:

English

Target Audience(s):

Teachers of children ages 2-7

Short Session Description (one line):

Taming media and turning on your students’ minds to higher order thinking skills.

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):

Taming Media and Turning On Your Children’s Minds 

Children begin watching TV and other media as early as six months old and are ardent viewers by the age of two. Numerous studies tell us that such elevated exposure to media poses serious problems to early childhood development.

But we can’t confront the real dangers media poses to children until we have a solution in sight -- a solution that’s fast, user-friendly and part of normal family or classroom interaction.

These vital strategies will teach you how to talk to preschoolers about TV, movies and computers. You’ll learn to control media's influence on children by helping them “digest” what they watch.

Over time, by giving parents and pre-school teachers the tools and strategies to talk to children about what they’re watching, we can fundamentally change the way our entire culture uses, views and engages media.

"Must-have" tools for every early childhood teacher!

Essential Learning Outcomes:

(1)Young children are uniquely vulnerable to the messages of audiovisual media because they tend to imitate what they see and form emotional bonds with media content before understanding its influence. In this workshop, parents, teachers, pediatricians, and childcare providers will gain an understanding of the way young children experience media and why media's influence on them is so powerful.

(2)Participants will acquire vital scripts for engaging young children in dialogue about the feelings, fears and questions that the media provoke. They will learn why initiating this dialogue is perhaps the most critical step towards effecting a decisive, meaningful intervention between children and screens that surround them.

(3)Conferees will gain the knowledge base and resources necessary for selecting and sourcing age and developmentally-appropriate media for their children/students; they will learn how to effectively set up parameters and limitations on children’s viewing habits and how to empower children to turn OFF media screens.

(4)Engaged correctly, the media have the potential to be resources for growth and enrichment. This workshop will give young children, their parents and teachers an orientation to the best and most productive ways to use, view and engage media.

Professional knowledge base supporting the session’s content:

The session content was developed over twenty-five years of work by Nicole Dreiske with Facets Multi-Media and more than 360,000 children. Twenty years ago the submitter began to curate special programs of films for young children, ages 2-5. Carefully monitored, mediated and evaluated, these screenings led to the development of methodologies for “positive viewing practices.” In 2000, at the request of the Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the submitter developed strategies and scripts to assist pediatricians and parents in mediating children’s exposure to audio-visual media. Over the last ten years, the submitter established core media competencies for children ages 2-8 together with a methodology and curricula to support those skills.

After participating in the workshop, conferees will:

a) Use scripts and strategies for helping children to think through and verbalize their feelings about the onslaught of media-messages they encounter;

b) Act as mentors for young viewers and effectively mediate children’s viewing experiences, both positive and negative;

c) Make “turning on” any screen a conscious, intentional and focused process for their children and students;

d) Help children understand that viewing audiovisual media at home is a “treat,” not a “right”;

e) Put all media viewing into the category of planned, limited activities.

f) Proactively prepare children for disturbing images and for material that may contradict things they have learned from their parents;

g) Provide children with creative learning activities that may follow positive viewing.

Engaging participants as adult learners:

a)Adults will participate in exercises that give them insight into the ways that children experience media. Conferees will learn and practice vocabulary with which to discuss media with their students.

b)The workshop material is presented as it would be to children. Adults are engaged to reason and respond to it as young children would. This role-play technique is central to the submitter’s methodology because it provides adults with scripts for engaging children in dialogue about their responses to media.

c)Participants will view 2 short age-appropriate films and will engage in pre and post-screening discussions.  Conferees will gain first-hand experience using an enquiry-based approach that validates the importance of the child’s voice and viewpoint. Using this Socratic approach, the session is interactive rather than didactic.

d) Conferees will receive a workbook for retaining the workshop's data, vocabulary and strategies.

Title:

Taming Media and Turning On Your Children’s Minds

Summary of Content:

Despite urgent warnings from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the average child aged 1-5 still spends around 30 hours per week with television, movies and DVDs. This early overexposure to media has a powerful effect on young children, depriving them of playtime, exposing them to potentially traumatic material, and limiting their development of language, cognition and emotional intelligence.

My First Media gives parents and teachers the vital skills needed to reverse these devastating trends. Conferees first learn the innovative “Don’t Just Press Play” methodology that teaches children ages 2-8 to engage media with focus and intention, thereby laying the crucial foundation for children to process and digest what they watch.

•            Participants discover how the simple strategy of consistently engaging media with focus carries over to enhance core learning activities.

•            Conferees acquire vital scripts for involving children in discussion about the feelings, fears and questions that the media can provoke. Such discussions further help children understand media and process the content they consume.

•            The workshop models “first time media viewing experiences” for children that lay the foundation for a lifetime of positive, not passive interactions with media.

•            Participants learn how to make “turning on” media a conscious process and how to make turning screens OFF an empowering decision. The result: limiting children’s media exposure is achieved through mutual cooperation instead of a daily personality struggle between adult and child.

By positively impacting the way children engage, view and use media these strategies provide invaluable resources for improving early childhood learning.

Suddenly the issue isn’t just what kids what, when they watch and how much they watch, it’s about HOW they watch and how they process what they watch.

Puts the whole experience of engaging media on a new footing

Preparing a child for any experience thwarts the emotional disturbance and negative influence that first-time experiences can embed in a still developing mind. Most adult caretakers prepare children for every new experience they encounter, from their first haircut to their first day of school. Yet they spend almost no time preparing children for their formative experiences with the most far-reaching influence in their lives – media. Taming Media redresses this oversight and fills a disturbing void in the experience of young children, who seldom if ever receive guidance from adults to help them understand and relate to the overwhelming volume of audio-visual media they consume.

By impacting the way children engage media, something they do repeatedly each day, these strategies can improve early childhood education and foster humanism in an increasingly digital world.

My First Media’s innovative methodology requires every media experience to be set-up and debriefed, providing powerful “first time media viewing experiences” for children. This conscious intentional approach to viewing can lay the foundation for a lifetime of positive, not passive interactions with media. Both in workshops and screenings, My First Media models scripts and strategies that encourage children to speak out about their experiences with media and help them think through and verbalize their feelings about the onslaught of media-messages they encounter. 

Presenter’s Qualifications

The presenter has over 30 years of experience in media education and is one of the U.S’s leaders in the development of media programs for children. Now the Executive Director of the International Children’ Media Center, the submitter was Artistic Director of the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, the largest children’s film festival in North America for 26 years. During that time, the submitter was responsible for the development of all media education programs and curricula for the CICFF.

From 1975-1993 the presenter conducted an intensive 18-year interdisciplinary study focusing on accelerative learning processes, titled “Matrix and Multiplicity.” During this study, she researched and established techniques for accelerative learning, voice, peak, performance and media literacy. The submitter has presented seminars developed from this research for hundreds of national and international venues, including businesses, universities and convention centers.

Over the past twenty-five years and working with 5,000 children each year, the submitter has conducted a variety of workshops and seminars focusing on media literacy and youth education. Since 1997, her unique methodologies and pedagogies have been presented to the NAEYC (Association for the Education of Young Children) and its local chapter the CAEYC, the Chicago Board of Education, the Illinois Teacher’s Union, the Illinois Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Illinois Public Health and Safety, the Partnership for Media Education and the World Summit on Media for Children.

Currently, the submitter gives keynotes and leads numerous media education seminars and workshops on topics such as “Literacy and Media,” “Media: Improving Skills and Scores”,  “Using Multi-Cultural Media in the Classroom” and “Taming Media.”

The presenter curates the BAMKids International Children’s Film Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and has launched numerous other programs including the Wisconsin International Children’s Film Festival in Milwaukee, the Martha’s Vineyard Cinema Circus program, the Kaleidoscope Program in Cincinnati and Zoom Cymru in Wales.  Ms Dreiske is working on a trilogy of books focused on introducing young children to media:  TV Time at My House; My First Movies and Me and My Computer.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session:

www.icmediacenter.org

www.naeyc.org