BY ACTING AS A CATALYST FOR COMMUNICATION, COLLABORATION, AND CREATIVE CHANGE. 3TECHNOLOGY IN THE LIVES OF TEACHERS AND CLASSROOMS:

It is hard to find a national study of children’s use of media in the past 20 years that does not demonstrate that media, and especially television, are a dominant activity of childhood. And young children, from birth to age 8, have incorporated media technologies into their out-of-school lives in unprecedented ways in recent years. Early media use is now the norm, with baby videos and 24/7 cable television for children used by even infants and toddlers. On average, American children under 8 spend about 3 hours a day with television (Rideout & Hamel, 2006). The hearth is clearly an electronic one in the homes of American families. While much has been made of the growing use of media by children at home, far less is known about how media technologies are used in the various early childhood school settings in which young children participate. It is estimated today that more than 60 % of children under age 5 are in out-of-home educational or child care settings (Laughlin, 2010). Furthermore, little is known about how contemporary early childhood educators view the uses of media technologies— television, DVDs, computers, handheld gaming and communication devices, and electronic toys—in their classrooms and as educational platforms. Two recent surveys of in-class technology use have been conducted. Grunwald Associates LLC conducted a survey of pre-K and K-12 teachers in school classroom settings in 2009 on behalf of the Public Broadcasting Service (Grunwal