2021 International Day of Families on “Families and New Technologies”
Okay, so we are live so I'll play the video. Thank you. Happy International Day of families to you you all, I the participants from all over the world to this annual United Nations of Servants of the International Day of Families, You know technology gives us an opportunity to broadcast to the world and keep close "Socially despite our physical distance and as you may know this year we have officially started the preparation for the thirtieth anniversary of the international year of the family to be celebrated in the year. 2024 so far. Preparations we will be exploring the impact of megatrends on families and what megatrends are. well We
are going to tell you what we mean by that and what the trends we have the biggest impact on families. It's another thing that we will be approaching during this meeting and you know after some consideration and taking into account the United Nations priorities in general and the Department of. Economic and social affairs, in particular we choose to follow themes that for the upcoming years will be leading to the thirtieth anniversary of the International year of the family in the year, 2024. What are these well new technologies this year organization and migration next year demographic changes in the year 2023 and climate change in the year 2024 when we. Do is to conduct and
organize advocacy and awareness raising events to assess the impact of these trends on families and also recommend policies and programs to harness their benefits and protect families from their negative consequences and this year we're starting with new technologies and not a moment too soon as you due to the COVID-19 pandemic and we became. sometimes overwhelmingly so. Dependent on reliable internet access and digital technology tools to communicate work and learn from home and friendly if not for new technologies, the world's economies would greet to a halt yet. not all are included in this new digital world and not all families have access to the internet and new technologies either because of knowledge or because of financial means or because there is no broadband in fact, half of the world.
Population An estimated 3.7000000000 people is still offline and families without the access to internet The more challenges to provide for their children and Moreover, digital and financial exclusions threatens their livelihoods and access to services and I believe we learned a lot from the COVID-19 crisis. We realized that we have a critical opportunity to build more effective Inclusive and resilient systems to protect. About families and individuals, especially those living in extreme poverty We know for sure that if we are to build an inclusive society, the digital divide Cannot continue and there is no doubt that access to the internet must be considered a universal right and has to be put at the heart of the global and national agendas and new technologies help families organize their lives in more efficient ways in many areas, including communication work education, health and finances, just to name a few and importantly digital. Technologies can be
used for Eff delivery of services for families and of course the access to the internet is a source of information full of useful content and tools helping parents with their parenting responsibilities and ensuring healthy development of their children. The potential for the use of new technologies is immense and it should be harnessed to benefit families. worldwide. let's commit to making digital Technologies" useful reliable. Accessible to
all families and let's invest in digital skills for all family members irrespective of gender age economic social status or abilities. So happy International day of families to you all. thank you. Thank you very much Daniela. Indeed, we are sharing very much your your hope and we are sure that the future for family is brighter. welcome to the United Nation of Servants of the International Day of families to all of you who are following us on Facebook live or UN web TV. today we have a
relevant topic on our discussion. We'll focus. New technologies in particular digital technologies and the impact on families primarily we look at the digital technologies and parenting education. It's a really timely to focus on this topic in light of the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic. parenting education
is the bread and butter of our organization. The one that I'm the president of which is the International Federation for Family. I am from. and the president of ID. founded in 1978, IYF D is a non governmental independent and nonprofit organization for more than 240 family enrichment centers, and we operate in seventy countries and our actions benefits more than thirty. 30 thousand people annually through our parenting courses, which is based. The
myth of the study. IYF FD was grunting in 2011 the classification as general consultants at the unit, Economic and Social Council eso and IYF advocates at International Organization for parenting education and is engaged with government's academia and the private sector for family friendly policies and today. In this event the division for Inclusive social development of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs is launching a very important document a comprehensive background paper entitled Technologies" use and families. implication for work family balance and parenting education Our keynote speaker is the author of this bag paper professor. Worker, who is the associate professor Family social science and former director of parents and family education at the University of Minnesota the emphasis of our teaching and research is on technology integration in family education early childhood with parenting and child care policy and parent learning through social interactions. Professor Walker I am over the floor to you to introduce that. Do your
documents? Thank you very much. Thank you very much Let me pull up my side here. we go I am absolutely. honored and thrilled to be here today and especially to be on this esteemed panel of speakers and I hope to be able to provide a framework that I believe will be a way for all of us collectively to work together to strengthen families in this critical area. It's critical, I believe when we're looking at how quickly technology has come into our lives personal computing and the internet and the radical changes that have come to play for us to make our plan by reflecting on the past while we also consider what's going to happen in the future to share a bit of a personal story, how my own work pivoted somewhat to focus on families and technology. My daughter was thirteen, we had moved from Washington DC to Minnesota. and
you know when I was thirteen my family had also moved across the country and back then if I wanted to connect with my friends back where I lived, I would write a letter. Yes, we did have phones. but back then if you wanted to if you wanted to make a phone call, it was long distance and it was very expensive. So. My daughter's thirteen I come home and I see her connecting with her friends, but she's got one on the video conferencing. She's
got another kid on speaker phone. She's connecting with several other kids through instant messaging and pretty sure composing an email and I was just astounded that she was not only using all of these devices and technologies at the same time, but she was using them together so comfortably and I thought in my world. Parenting education If we're not aware of the importance of these technologies in this 13 year old's life when she becomes a 23 year old or a thirty-three-year-old parent in our program, we're going to completely miss the boat. they're going to be having so many expectations about the way that information is shared and exchanged that it's it's critical that we understand what they're what their interests are. so reflecting on. Past I think it's very
important for us to understand the magnitude of what technologies have meant and without romanticizing the past too much. I think it will also inform us on what we can hold on to and that is precious so then looking to the future There are groups such as the Pew, American Internet and American Life project that have interviewed experts about what we can anticipate our future to look like with technology. they use words like unthinkable scale and massive disruption when they look ahead, they also will look. At the positives about what technology is brought to our lives, but also recognize some of the challenges so on one hand of course, technology means greater convenience and efficiencies so the future looks tele everything right smart devices of all kinds and our dependence on artificial intelligence. we'll have greater opportunities for creative expression and and work as we've seen through COVID will become far more flexible will be less dependent on. Place to get work done. on
the other hand, they also are predicting a growing racial and social inequality. We're sitting problems with security and privacy and furthering misinformation people's mental health will continue to be challenged and families will be facing job insecurities due to the employment shifts around automation and and on demand types of jobs. this picture from the New York Times back in February, they ran a series called the Primal Scream was focusing on. Challenges that families were facing during COVID specifically working mothers and here we can see both the affords of technology that enabled this mom to continue working from home at the same time, the challenges that she may have faced with being able to attend to the needs of her child. I do believe that as we look forward, one of our responsibilities as educators is going to be to support parents in boundary management so as we look forward, it's very important. I think for us to not only focus on the technological changes that are afoot, but also for us to understand the way that technology is being used because I believe that that is going to be a real key to family well being when we can do. At and create a future for
families. and as well as prepare families for the future we'll be doing what Jonah so has has asked us to do which is that the most important question we ask ourselves is are we being good ancestors? I'm going to frame my policy recommendations around using Brown from brenner's bio ecological perspective of human development. This may be familiar to many of you in this model, the unique characteristics of the individual. Are. Then influenced by interactions with a variety of settings over time the influence from the most proximal settings are those that we interact with on a regular basis our family, our neighborhoods, our work our school things like that from a micro or macro system perspective factors such as culture that trickle down and influence our norms and our beliefs or government policies. At this macro level and then at the este, this is a level that we generally we don't have a direct interaction with but still has an influence on our development so, for instance, if my husband's workplace changed their own policies about working from home and that affects his presence and his behavior at home, that's going to affect me, which will eventually affect my development. so with this model. In mind, let's first
focus on the macro view and we absolutely talk about families use of technology without talking about access as as previously noted, one of our biggest challenges is that not everyone around the world has access to the internet and access to devices We see images like this or we hear reports about the majority of people around the world have access to the internet yet we need to look. At by country to country to see where these inequities lie largely our access to the internet will correlate with countries that are more economically advantaged We can also see them what this might mean for material deprivation when children don't have access to technology in this in this figure, it represents countries in Europe with the darker countries representing households with children six to sixteen who have. Access to the internet and to computers what we've seen through COVID, especially is this increasing digital divide so the children who did not have access to technology were once were not able to participate in school with some school teachers. reporting that there were a good 10% of their classes who never logged in at all. so first and foremost, it is critical that we address inequities in Internet access and regard internet access as a human right and if we're providing. Access to this environment, it is also critical that we view these online spaces as being safe and secure and spaces that will protect human rights. I would
see that if we can accomplish this, we are we are well on our way to achieving many of the targeted goal areas in sustainable development goals So then if we focus on the family. without a doubt. Concerns by families is is a tremendous concern. folks like the Pew Research Center that's have done surveys with parents where they'll say that. you know parenting now is harder than it was 20 years ago and the number one reason that they'll point to is their children's use of of technology they'll see sensational headlines about the the consequences to their children's. And these headlines will be backed by research that seem to point to just about every aspect of children's growth through sleep through. obesity and body weight from brain development and learning and social development and impacts on children's mental health. So with these concerns
they are very happy when there are government bodies around the. In their individual countries through pediatric associations that will offer guidelines on on screen time, I will note that after COVID many parents are also feeling guilty because those screen time limits have been violated. It's critical, I believe though for parents to also get the counter message about the positive benefits of using technologies in children's lives there there is a growing body of research about the value of connected learning. of opportunities. For using digital devices that enhance specific learning abilities creativity collaboration having a platform for stronger identity development and personal expression, and we also cannot ignore the fact that these technologies are offering children the exact same kind of digital skills that will benefit them as they move to the the future. And yet it's
critical that we come back away from this. focus on technology to remember. that even without technology in parent's lives parenting is really really hard. I know you know. and and so while we are focused on technology as a current area of interest and concern by parents, we always have to. Back to the basic job of parenting that is ongoing as parents are addressing additional concerns and so it is with that that my second policy recommendation is that we regard parenting education and family support. as as an
important critical strategy that we add to our investment portfolio for families. we are providing tremendous resources to families and and these are critical education health care. Drinking water access to food and these are important because of course having these will help to reduce the stresses that so often can lead to child abuse and neglect. but we can't ignore the challenge of being a parent and especially in today's society, nor can we assume that every parent comes into the job feeling fully prepared. There are parents who
come to the job of parenting who still need to repair from the damage done from their. Childhood and that will influence their parenting we have decades and decades of research about the value of parenting education to strengthen the relationship between parents and children to give parents the knowledge the skills the behaviors that that help them feel even more able and competent as parents so my advocacy is not that we replace the other resources, but the parenting education is seen as an additional asset in our port. Julio This graphic is from a Unicef report from a few years ago and I like it because it represents the complexity of parenting education Parenting education is not a one size fits all kind of program it is easily adapted to meet the needs of individual families by culture by context, depending on outcomes whether we're focused on shorter term outcomes or longer term outcomes outcomes related to the child. Using different teaching strategies different platforms different contexts and influenced by driving factors, including the involvement of the international organizations this chart on the the left indicates the outcome areas and with this, you can see child parent child family relations community and both short term long term outcomes, so you can see the rich array of outcome. Parenting education can focus on for the well being of children and families This also gives us a strong idea of the rich array of content. that parenting education draws from.
I have a representation here of the facets that I look at parenting education to include so just like other education areas there's a content area and there's pedagogy or the teaching methods that are used to to breach learning. But a unique characteristic of parenting education, which I'll talk about are the relationships. so focusing again on content we can see from this list that there is just tremendous content that parenting education can touch on from a standpoint of pedagogy parenting educators will deploy efforts one to one with families maybe through home visits they'll work in small groups they may work online preparing materials for.
Large number of people there will be tailoring curricula to specific outcomes as I mentioned and again a very strong focus on relationships and then finally relationships. as James Comer has said no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship and I absolutely love this because it gets to the heart of what parenting education really does too, which is to strengthen. That relationship between the parent and the child and in that relationship is the emotional context in which parents teach their children. Parents are their first and continuous learner across a child's so that warm nurturing relationship is so key because it also enables the parent to be attuned to that child's individual needs so parenting education focuses so greatly on relationships it also focus on relationships. Parents and between the parenting educator and the parents so that some of my own research with social learning and parenting education has determined the value of these connections to in a trusted environment for parents to gain a sense of connections of resources that continue to support them throughout their lives. What I
found is actually mirrored some of the research from Australia on their playgrounds where they have determined that the social capital developed from parents interactions together can be very very beneficial. Empowering parents so relationships. so my second policy recommendation is that we start seeing parenting education more as a support strategy that we can add to our portfolio and again, I believe that when we can do this and we see the connections that parenting makes to children's outcomes that we will be farther in achieving the sustainable development outcomes now let's get. To
technology so once we have this this system in place with strong parenting education and it is offered worldwide. we we we have a perfect place, then to help parents learn more about technology interactions with their children. media scholars already have identified the value of the parent-child relationship. for
learning around media management. The general. By the UN Committee for the rights of the child. has noted that. parental mediation is is more effective if it mutual empathy and respect over prohibition and control. This is precisely
what we teach in parenting education. So again with parents multiple concerns over the types of devices that children are are using and they're exposure to to online threats. Parenting education is a way for them to not learn about technology and and creating digital citizens as a one off topic, something that a special speaker comes in for and and addresses a group of parents but is infiltrated within the. Of child wearing from the beginning so that his parents are guiding and nurturing their children around Social development technology can be a part of that when they're teaching their children. How to drive right technology is a part of it. It
just gets folded into the everyday practice of what parents do and when we can do that it will be more lasting. The other wonderful thing is that there are so many fabulous materials that have been around media literacy in just about every country of the world there is an agency. We have our own fabulous common sense media here in the United States we also in in other countries there are ministries that have provided media education and these agencies then have perfect partners with parenting education to to deliver the content so it supports the parenting educator and having the content. it also helps to get. Messages across and again
embedded within parenting education. The other key is not just technology as a content area, but also technology and the delivery of education. If you remember my 13 year old who will be 23 years old and 33 years old and come to parenting education with an expectation for how knowledge is shared and and delivered this is the key in terms of the delivery of programming using applications using devices mobile devices that parents are more familiar with and tailoring what we do to what parents need I have. A picture here here of the platform that I developed with ECFE with the early childhood family education program in Minnesota This is a long term low dose type of parenting education that starts from birth and parents come can any parent can join they come when their children are our babies and and stay through when their children are five and meet on a weekly basis with other parents and licensed parenting educator. And early childhood
teachers, it's a fabulous program and so I in my partnership with ECE we design technology apparent the parent Tapia platform because parents wanted a space to make we make connections in between weekly meetings to strengthen their relationships and also to have access to information about the program. So the great thing is we can not only have technology as a content area, but also in our ways that we deliver practice many. Evidence-based programs that we have with such rigorous research and Mary's presentation will get it into some of that depth of that research have also adapted their programming now for being both online and being thoughtful about the use of these devices. So this is
great, However, there's trouble in paradise because when we now take a wider view and we we understand the field of parenting. Sadly, even though it exists around the world, it is highly fragmented and is not at all centralized. many of those who are offering parenting education, maybe have been trained to a specific curriculum or model. they're even in our in the United States, the national Parent Education Network has looked at state by state by state with different guidelines for preparation. On being a paraprofessional, a professional with a college degree or a teaching license, so there is great variation in how parenting educators are prepared. and then when you
take a new area like technology integration, which is so critical to the delivery as well as the content then there's no standard base for parenting educators to place that new content. in other professions such as social worker, teachers or therapists they have standards. Now have embedded technology in a in a very significant way in my research with family educators in the United States. The majority of them will say that the way that they they learn about technology is on their own. The other challenges that parenting educators will face is at the workplace My research has also found a direct connection between workplace encouragement and workplace infrastructure The resources provided and parenting educators technology attitudes and their acceptance and use in practice the the quotes that I have here are from a survey that we did with parenting educators and ACE last spring when they had to adapt their. Programming to an online delivery. it was so sudden that
they felt lost they, they felt unprepared The grieved for the loss of the relationships with families and they acknowledged that many families would not be able to connect because of lack of access. the picture that I have featured here is of my friend. Elizabeth's parenting education class. This is not all that old and as you can see she was gift. With an old television and what's on that cart is an old vcr. so these are the workplace conditions that parenting educators are facing as well. so in
conclusion what I do believe is that we create a policy ecology that recognizes the needs at a very proximal level and offers parenting education as a study practice that parents have access to universal access and through that parenting education that that that content around technology is. Delivered and we integrate technology in the delivery of parenting education. at a macro level. We're we we address the fact that many families don't have access to technology and that we ensure that access to the internet and access to devices is a human right and we make the make sure that those spaces are safe and secure and protect digital rights and then I implore us to start seeing those amazing professionals who are on the front lines and working with parents they're often overlooked. And and
because parenting education today has been so fragmented and decentralized, and we have kind of a lack of standards depending on who's delivering it, It is critical for us to also prepare this profession and their competence generally, but especially in their comfort and their knowledge in using technology and practice so again insured and internet access include parenting education as a family. Support strategy and a great technology in parenting education and provide a system of supports and standards that empower parenting educator ability and confidence. I believe that when we can when we work across the entire system of ecology for families, we are going to be more likely to achieve the sustainable development goals by preparing for families to sustainable infrastructure by doing this as well, it will make. Good ancestors. Thank you.
Thank you very much. indeed, this was quite impressive and I do believe that this paper will be very very useful. to the United Nations to prepare the thirtieth anniversary of the International Day for our families. our next speaker it's
is Zach Sims. The cofounder and CEO of Code Academy an online learning platform for different skills. since it's founding in 2011 academy has helped over 50 million people. in more than one country to access economic opportunity through technology and it's goal is to close the gap and for some people's lives through engaging flexible. and
accessible. Online education before handing over to Sims, I would like to to all our participants on Facebook live that they can start now asking their questions so on Facebook live, you can ask your questions and they will be answered right after all the panels have completed the presentation since deploy is yours. Thank you. Thank you so much. alright. Share my screen with all of you. Alright, So it's Olivia mentioned my name is Zach Sims and I am the cofounder and CEO of Code Academy and at Code Academy. Our mission is to connect millions of people around the world with economic opportunity and we do that today by teaching them modern skills online like programming web development and data science in a way that is engaging accessible and flexible and so today I'm going to talk a little bit more about how we've been able to scale that education to more than 50 million people around the world and what the. Potential
consequences are and kind of from what we've learned about families, new technologies and ways we can use online education tools to keep parents in the workforce and to help families stay together. Right so I want to start by talking about the rise of online education and the impact it's had on families around the world, you know COVID-19 over the past year, obviously has forced a lot of people around the world to be locked down and stay inside their homes and as a result we've seen this really unprecedented boom in online learning. I think you know that this is most pronounced in ktwelve where we tend to see a lot of people that are learning online because schools are no longer allowed or we're no longer allowed to keep. Learning in person, but it's also happening a lot at the adult level for adults that are looking to further develop in their careers. whether it's getting a new job or up leveling in their existing job, and I think what we've learned from this real increase in online learning is just a tremendous advantages to a world in which more people are learning online or more people are learning in a hybrid fashion, both with in person schooling and an online compliment to that. what we've seen over the past. That
there's been four fold increase, according to the World Economic Forum in people that are seeking these online learning opportunities and so we don't expect that to change over the course of the future and if anything that should only increases people realize that you don't have to be in a physical place in order to learn a particular skill, but really, you can learn anywhere And so when we think of kind of what we've learned over the past several years about you know what makes for good online education and what helps people. Advance There's three really core key pillars. The first is engagement so we see that online learning opportunities that are interactive and give people something to sink into as opposed to just kind of watching a video or lean back learning as we refer to it leads to higher retention of knowledge and also faster learning as well. Second key pillar for us is accessibility so for us that that means kind of trying to keep that learning as inexpensive as possible. So you've seen the rise. A lot of
premium models over the course of the past several years where people are allowing you know the majority of their learning to be available for free online and in in many cases, if there is a paid component, it's you know ten to $20 a month in some countries with an effort to keep it much more affordable than the you know. Classic $50000 a year secondary education or college experience that many people are used to as well. What the internet does is allow for online education to provide a much more scalable. Learning experience for people so you know using technology to help our teachers, maybe might not necessarily be able to and lastly we see that flexibility is a major pillar of online learning as well, which I think is particularly relevant for our conversation as well today where you know people are starting to integrate that online learning and self development into their own schedules, which is particularly pertinent for parents and caregivers. So as we look at a couple of the major transit Technologies" is enabling, I think. The first is
keeping parents in the workforce through technology, so what we've seen, especially over the course of the past year, is that you know online skills based education allows parents around the world to invest in and advance their careers in a way way that fits with schedules. whether that's parenting working or responsibilities elsewhere and we've seen this trend at academy kind of in a particularly pronounced fashion from the beginning of the company, but more so over the course of the past year as well. Quick examples Kate's the Academy learner's a stay-at-home mom for 15 years, he decided to pick up programming online and after teaching herself became kind of a full-time software engineer for a security company and during the pandemic. Unfortunately, her husband ended up losing his job and so she ended up becoming the sole provider for their family so kind of the ability to perform traditional you know to kind of balance work and a personal life. I think because of technology. Is even more
pronounced today our second learner Michael decided to get serious about learning to code in 2019 and Lummi academy for every day over the course of a year, And while he was a stay-at-home parent, she has two kids and since then, he's also started a new job and started to teach their own kids How to program as well. And so I think what we're seeing is that you know online learning to that point again really allows working parents to both learn and up level themselves at the same time as their parent. And so you know online education we've noticed while it enables more people around the world to start learning remote work and flexible work experiences also help parents as they start to juggle personal and professional responsibilities so being able to do everything in the same place tends to be beneficial as well. So as we also look at improving digital Technologies" for working parents, I think there are a couple of different ways to improve you know improve parenting through technology. I think the
biggest. That we've seen is again online education and remote worker are here to stay and so we think these trends are demonstrably, you know important for the future and and we'll keep parents in the workforce going forward, but I think kind of the biggest thing getting in the way of you know, keeping more parents in the workforce and having technology have a positive effect on that are access and public perception. and so we've seen there there are ways for public private partnerships to have kind of a very unique opportunity to have an impact on these digital. Technology trends for parents as well as we look at some of these, I think you know online education tends to be really easily scalable and so the ability for. educational organizations
like to partner with folks like we have over the course of the past year, for example, with the city of New York with the state of New York to provide good educational access to people that are at home and learning and parenting at the same time is critical. and I think what we've seen is that they're policy makers that can truly influence. Public perceptions about online education as well and hopefully you know encouraging people to realize that learning online shouldn't carry a stigma and can be just as important as learning offline as well. So I think as we look at the future and and kind of how technology can help enable families around the world, this combination of what we've seen from remote work, but also people up leveling themselves and learning remotely over the course of the past year. I think our trends will be here to stay and hopefully we'll enable people to balance those.
And professional obligations over time as well so with that, thank you so much for having me. Thank you very much. Zach indeed engagement accessibility and accessibility. key points
to enable parents to embrace learning and from what you have just told us, we are hoping that there's no limit of age when it comes to learning and this will be as well useful for our parents into learning how to better do the parenting. Next speaker is azula she represents common sense media and where she is the director of equity policing She works on privacy expanded access to technology and digital well being. Faa. Can you tell us more? The floor is yours? Driving deeper into building broadband and supporting telecommunications in their countries. is because first and foremost it also promotes resilience within the family within the community that the family lives in and within the country overall when you have access to these types of technologies, "Families can be better prepared and more nimble shift to address the crisis. Again in all the various ways that our colleagues have just been talking about, then also the governments that. provide
essential services that are working with their most vulnerable citizens have many more options on the table to delivering those essential services. to their citizens so in the time of crisis. those types of alternative pathways to deliver something so, for example, whether it's health care through telemedicine. Shifting more folks to go into telemedicine first to help save on. pressure within an actual
in person inpatient setting or to save or from PPP. where you may have limited supplies that type of resilience alternative option is really important to just be healthy delivery of these essential services that the government will provide including. Education to resilient shift to be able to provide distance learning. including workforce so being able to resilient to be able to do remote work and the delivery of additional government services. So if you do have a
population that's experiencing. some kind of economic loss and suddenly everybody needs to apply for unemployment insurance or rental assistance having. Lines is very difficult in the midst of the pandemic.
It's important to try to shift people to apply for those benefits. online the value for government is is just as valuable as it is to the individual family and the impact on government of having to navigate the digital divide because of what it means for the delivery of these essential services is also valuable cost rise when you have no virtual app. When you don't have the underlying infrastructure in place, so what do governments and private? what can they do to cover these gaps? We know that prioritizing. funding for
the deployment of infrastructure is really important and keeping in mind the goals of what you'd like to do with that infrastructure. I think is also really critical when you're deploying that infrastructure so a common sense we have done some research on you know what are the technology specifications to be able to do? One essential service right. online learning so distance learning and what we found was to do really robust distance learning you wanted to have about 210 Mvps That's relatively high, depending on where you live in terms of what that means for the underlying infrastructure you have in place, but that's really important to know because any internet doesn't just promise great discerning certain technical specifications are required to do all of the sort of synchronous sort of. Tutoring
that you want to do or to be able to take advantage of the sort of full breath of innovations that are available so it's important for government and for industry to have in mind. what are the use cases that society is seeking out right now and what are those technical specifications so that when they are actually deploying infrastructure, they're building infrastructure that meets today's needs. as the the second piece of that is that we don't often build infrastructure. and so. When you do have the opportunity to put government funds or private funds into deploying infrastructure, it's really important that you're building with an eye towards the future. You want to make sure that you're putting in the ground.
the most robust technology possible so that you are not coming back to it every two 510 years. you want to have that investment last as long as possible and we don't yet know all of the different innovations that will come down the road that we'll want to take. Advantage of and the other piece of that is it also allows governments and government providers again of essential services to plan to understand. okay. These are the technologies that are available they reach all of my communities. Here are the technological innovations that I can use in the educational space in the health care space and in upskill and remote work.
Once you have a sense of what's actually available to you in the underlying infrastructure and how long it will last you you can start. This really effective programs you can train teachers, but if you don't have that underlying infrastructure, you have some patch work. and that sort of stuttered stop start to taking advantage of innovations and I'll give you just one example of that. the start of the pandemic many schools in the United States. you know understood that they would need to quickly shift to distance learning but they quickly learned many of their students didn't have access. High quality access to broadband at home and what that meant was that schools many schools shut down completely when they realized that they couldn't offer equitable access to education that some of the students in their classroom would be able to do distance learning online and then others would be left with paper packets and that inequality led to schools just closing down completely and then having to spend time not working on their curriculum but doing digital needs assessments to figure out what. What and what providers
are available to them, then schools to the herculean task of actually. providing. access so doing gigantic school sponsored contracts where they're paying for a student's home internet access and brokering these deals with various ISPs, many times multiple ISPs because not every school district is covered by just one. This is a lot of pre work that is placed on an institution that is not typically managing this type of work. It's slowed down. Progress of their distance learning curriculum, It's slowed down the roll out of distance learning and in some cases it completely transformed what would be eventually available as as education to a community. So it's really
important that when we're thinking through the investments we want to make in technology that we meet the needs on the ground today and that we also build so that we don't have to rebuild in a short span of time now, the second piece of that is that technology is not just in the ground. It's not just the only piece of closing the digital divide and ensuring that communities have access you also need to make sure that you meet their digital inclusion needs for folks who have. Persistently in the digital divide there are a whole host of barriers that they've experienced that have put them there in part poverty is one piece of it and cost overcoming cost can be very helpful to getting people online. but poverty is not the only piece and cost is not the only piece it's important to have information that's available in training. It's important that there's access to both devices and consistent cost support and then. All of these pieces
together through a trusted institution is also really important. not every provider is well received within their community. Many folks who are in the digital divide are very skeptical of signing up for contracts with telecommunications providers even if they ultimately have no cost to themselves, they might be worried about giving up their information they might be concerned. About their privacy and so it takes trusted institutions to help thaw some of those concerns and overcome them to make sure that people actually take advantage of the cost supports that might be in place and then also have the information and the training and the guidance to actually best utilize technology and it's important that especially in the context of families if we're talking about supporting ktwelve. Education for children with these types of online support that you consider the caregivers that will be supporting these children as well. so when you're rolling
out a program. where you are working with children, that can be a really effective way of helping close the digital divide trusted institution like a school you have a really important resonating use case like education. However, if you don't work with the families as well as the students to make sure that all those digital inclusion supports are available, then you'll be leaving. A really big support out of the puzzle so it's really important that we consider the whole family the whole household when we're thinking through our digital inclusion supports the government and providers work together to keep these essential uses in mind these textbooks in mind and that the community as a whole, then I think you can build towards developing a very equitable and fair broadband future for your community and taking advantage of the resilience that these technologies are thank you. Thank you very much. Indeed, you have open our hearts and our heads with hope. We know
that now there is hope. if only governments in addition of designing the appropriate environment suitable for parenting they do as well the same with the money and funds by inventing by investing them wisely and. To the purpose of everyone, thank you very much for this insights. our next speaker. it's. who is a
professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Delaware for over the last 25 years, she has studied the development of a young children in foster care along with a graduate, students and research team. she has. An intervention attachments and be a catch up the targets specific issues that have been identified as problematic for young children. She will now elaborate more on this point and professor do here. The bike is yours. Thank you. And also she's you have to mute yourself. My bad so let me.
My apologies please. so we've we've developed this program called attachment and bio behavioral catch up as was just mentioned all first, I just want to say wonderful talks. I'm delighted to be part of this panel and thank you so much for attending so we've developed this program over the last 25 years called attachment and bio behavioral catch up and it is implemented through ten sessions in the home. What what this focuses on is three parenting behaviors and three parenting behaviors only we help parents provide nurturing when children are distressed help. Parents to follow their young children's lead. and to
avoid frightening behavior at all times. What we know is that these three behaviors are really critical to developing brain connections and then building building sprain circuits and ultimately really the development of the brain. So what we know is that this ten session intervention attachment my behavioral catch up enhances child behavioral and brain development. We see effects on children developing more secure attachments on their production of the hormone cortisol on children's. Being able to to sit still when they need to in school or inhibit control on DNA methylation and on brain development here's a list of a variety of findings across the developmental spectrum. so what you might
wonder is how could this happen? How could a ten session program? Change children's brain and behavior so fundamentally over time? We have developed a very effective way of supporting parents in. in developing these nurturing and following the lead behaviors and in the in particular what we do is make in the moment. comments regarding these behaviors. I want to show you an example here. This is a child who's quite fussy and you can imagine as a parent, It would be tough to stay with nurtured in this example and listen to what the parent coach says. So that sounded like perhaps just a casual conversation that the the parent coaches have, but it's actually doing a variety of things you can imagine first, it's supporting the parent, helping her feel empowered feel feel feel good about the way in which she parents, but it's doing things very specifically to support this nurturing behavior.
describing the behavior specifically, and it's linking it to the intervention target of nurturing and linking it to a child outcome. So we consider in the moment. comments is the active ingredient of the intervention and what we know from our research and a variety of ways is that these in the moment comments lead to parents nurturing following the lead and avoiding harsh and frightening behaviors. And then what we know is that these these behaviors of the parent enhance child outcomes so you can imagine that we're we have in the moment. comments which are. In the home to parents that when COVID hits, you wonder well, what do we do with this intervention and we we've got very vulnerable parents that we're working with so we certainly want to make services available, but we had to pivot very quickly as as has been described by others as well and we what we wondered is would ABC still be effective, would parent coaches still be able to make these comments in the moment and then just how to do this things like will. Have
access to internet, which to our surprise we most parents did or became available partly because of needing it for school access and so forth with parents have phones not many people have laptops or tablets, but nearly all of our parents had telephones that they could video conference with and then we there were certainly lots of tweaks that we made, but one little tweak was just providing parents with a phone stand so that they could they wouldn't have to. Their phone up like this, but rather than they could put their phone at a distance and we could observe I want to show you here, an example that doesn't look all that different from what you saw in person with regard to a comment something but I think that helps a lot is like. us. reached for you need maybe a slightly fussy noise hard to tell and you just picked her up right away. That's perfect when in doubt nurture in a way that's just shocking that on this little phone, the parent coach could both see that make a comment, but the parent could receive that could hear that and. Our comments are very
specific, they're they aren't just we're not just talking about it. We are coding these things as they fit with each of these components and here she she described it and she linked it to the target. and what we want to see in general is that we want to see at least one comment per minute and if you think of that these we're making sixty comments across an hour in these comments really provide parents very specific feedback on their behavior. In ways that are then going to lead to change and what we see when we through 510 sessions and this is national and international is that we see they're above that there, but 1.39 observe comments per
minute and they're including these components. We want to see at least one of the components we don't want to just say wow. That was great that you did that we want to have them describe relate to a target related to an outcome and we see 1.38 which. About what we want to say, so we're delighted with this. we also
see changes in behavior of the parent, which is what we care about at the bottom line and what we see at the pre intervention is parents covering right around the the insensitive. This is a five point scale insensitive to sensitive. for me and we'll see a large effects size from pre to post intervention in terms of their sensitivity and again a decrease in intrusive from pre intervention. Post intervention So we're really delighted with that and to end, I just want to show you a quick video of a mom and a baby at pre intervention where this child is just not engaged with her her world or or her toys or anything else. It's somewhat troubles. So what I'll mention is that mom is living in a motel room with her child and this doesn't change from pre intervention to post intervention. so she's
still living in a crummy motel room, but what I think you'll see is this child's world has fundamentally changed because the mother has changed. I'm just going to show you a little piece of this. Well, I don't love you. more than you tongue can tell that's all. I can.
More than anything else in this world. I don't love you too. So I think that that video is is just really a anecdote of how much an infant's world can change when their parent changes and here's here's our book on our website. So thank you very much.
Thank you very much Mary. It was quite interesting and overwhelming to see how when parents. do change for better they can transform the environment and have a good very good and massive impact on the on the child. Thank you very much for giving us this insights. Our next speaker.
will be Jessica Navarro. She is a PHD candidates in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. a research interests centers on family and technology in particular the impact of technology on. Every
child. is she also served as a reporter. for the focal group on families and technologies. convene in preparation of the thirtieth year anniversary of the International year of the family. She will tell us more about what she has discovered the I hand over to you. Thank you so much. Olivia Yes, I'm
going to share the focus group findings and I just want to say that. So many of the presentations today have discussed what I'm going to be talking about unsurprisingly as these are the megatrends, but hopefully this will serve to sort of summarize and emphasize the key points that were released earlier. so in January. the IFF d. held an
online focus group with participants from all over the world experts in technology and families and again this was an anticipation of the thirtieth anniversary of the international year of the family in 2024 and all participants were given the aid questions ahead of time and ultimately. All sort of centered around the idea of how does technology shape the lives of children and families in the twenty-first century. so the first question should the universal coverage of the internet be considered a human right, and I think we've heard about this already today, but yes, all the participants agreed that it should be a human right that access to the internet is incredibly important for education employment health care global collaboration as COVID-19 has shown and as I on that the telecommunications infrastructure is crucial for that, and, and, in addition to that telecommunications infrastructure, the training is equally important. This is a key part of this. The society
must provide training to increase citizens digital literacy in conjunction with access and that if appropriately implemented as I mean, I discussed as well, This This has the potential to reduce disparities The second question was what are the best indicators to measure households access to new technologies? I know Susan touched on this earlier broadband access in terms of household level the proportion of household of broadband access is one of the most commonly used measures and it's good. It's important but it. Be somewhat misleading and that's because it's really not getting at what's happening in the home. so what equipment is available to access the internet and to participate.
are there computers are their smartphones? We know that particularly for children accessing classrooms on smartphones is much more difficult, creating a CV or resume on a smartphone is much more difficult than a computer. We also want to look at the number of devices per person in the household One computer for eight people is very different than one to one. Related to that What are the digital needs of the people in the home? Are Are there lots of people who are telecommuting? are there lots of people using it for education to attend classes and then also what are the digital skills and knowledge of the people in the home as I touched on the bandwidth questions incredibly important. Do you
have the bandwidth to be able to do what you need to do and then also from a more global perspective. What are some of the social norms related to access? We know that in some countries women, for example, are not allowed to access internet in the same way that men. how does this impact access? The third question does teleworking contribute to work, family balance, or is it just a way to work more. I'm sure my children are going to barge in here at any moment, but we've talked a lot about the positive and negative affords of teleworking. You know things I've touched on this as well but just the flexibility being able to not spend a lot of time commuting the efficiency of it and also it opens opportunities for people with impairments who might not have been able to access the same employment opportunities. from a negative perspective, we are seeing reduced social interaction.
Parents are juggling multiple roles at the same time and this boundary between work and home becomes you know. More difficult to discern people also might have problems logging out and again. Zach talked about this, but just the COVID-19 implications of this and really amplified and showed us what's going on Who is this impacting more So and we're seeing that women are disproportionately burdened women are doing more childcare. They're also working from home but again, you know this is really sort of a class in your centered question for a lot of people in working class, you know telecommuting remote work isn't an option and then that's a. Also true for people in low and middle-income countries we did talk about the importance of the government and organizations really being responsible for setting guidelines for citizens and employees and creating a culture where people are able to log out. Number four can the
remote learning experiences of COVID-19 help to improve education talked about this today? Yes, I mean we have so many lessons to carry forward one of the big themes of this question was really that innovation needs to be driven by Pedagogy. There must be a theoretical framework under which these decisions are made. We talked a lot about a greater emphasis on socio emotional well being in the online classrooms, not just in terms of education related to societal well being, but also teachers being able to check in with students one on one how they are doing really to get a sense of how. Being impacted, we talked a lot about digital inclusion. How can we incorporate everybody in remote learning context? We must consider people who have low connectivity. We have to think about access to the internet and access to digital devices.
All things we've talked about previously today we did say from developmental perspective, we need to think about is this is appropriate for younger learners and for educators and policy makers to really think about training for teachers in terms of creating these online classrooms, but then also the resources to back that up. The fifth question, which specific policies can help to bridge the intergenerational digital divide. This question wasn't quite as prolific as the other questions I think in part because we need more research on this issue, but we did talk about the importance of access and training for older generations and positive outcomes of a number of programs that look at intergenerational programming where younger citizens are working with older adults in community centers to really help not only increase education but also communication across generation. We did talk about how it's incredibly important for education to be around technology to be included for family professionals for people who are working directly with families so that they can help implement that. but then also these intergenerational differences are also amplified by socioeconomic disparities.
The sixth question should coding be introduced as a classroom subject like other languages. We didn't, we agreed that it wasn't a language but that it was a very useful skill, but to be able to use that. You have to have the access and you have to have the devices and we talked about technology is changing very frequently, particularly for young children who might be learning coding that it might become might change and so rather than focusing on a specific language to really focus on learning to learn to code so understanding logic and computational thinking and having this sort of understand perspective rather than know we did talk about the importance of offering these opportunities to a broader audience, which I touched on today and encouraging students and all people really to be. Of content beyond coding, so that they're not just passive participants in the internet, but they're active creators at that again.
We did talk about how this is a very north centered perspective and how for many for many people This literacy itself is important. the seventh question what instruments should be developed to ban child abuse materials online, which will can parents use. Ultimately, we really talked about how parents are the feel safe against this and that strong parent-child relationships isn't very touched on today are crucial and central the parenting. Learning about online contact themselves. I think I'm going to touch on. That's common
sense. Media is a great resource parents discussing the risks and benefits of their children and being sources of advice and support that their child can go to when they have questions when they have concerns and that teachers and educators themselves are sources of this as well. It's not just parents and ultimately we need to really push industry and policy makers to take responsibility and create safe spaces for children and families online. The final question was to sort of an additional topics that people wanted to bring up. We did discuss. A concern that the
internet could further exacerbate existing socioeconomic disparities and that we n
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