 Welcome everyone to our webinar, Technology for Family Engagement in Early Learning Settings. I'm Susan Hopebar, the online training producer here at TechSoup, and we are really excited for you to join us today. We are proud to partner with the Early Learning Lab for a series of webinars during this year. We do want this webinar and all of the presentations to be relevant to the important work you do with young children. So in advance, I'd like to thank you for answering our registration questions and also our survey questions at the end of today's event. This helps us better understand your needs. We know that many of you may be new to TechSoup, and we hope that you'll join us for other live events and take advantage of our other online resources. So again, please don't forget to complete our survey at the end of the webinar. I want to talk to you for a few minutes about the platform that you're using. It's called ReadyTalk. In the lower left-hand corner, there's a chat box. And at any time during the presentation, you should feel free to let us know if you have any problems hearing the audio or viewing the slides. We can address those questions through the chat box. The chat box is also for your questions. We will be flagging your questions and queuing them for later review during our Q&A session which comes at the end of the event. So if you are chatting in during the event questions and you're not getting an immediate response, don't worry. We're going to try to address everyone's questions at the end. Also keep in mind, if we don't get to your question, it's okay. We're going to be putting together a question and answer document. All of our expert presenters will be helping us create that document. So you'll receive that after the event when we post the recording to our website. If you registered more than about an hour ago, you can also access the PowerPoint that I'm going to be sharing with you today. 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If you're following along with us on Twitter, you can tweet us at TechSoup or use hashtag TSLEBENARS. It is really a pleasure for me and TechSoup to be able to introduce you to some of our presenters today. We are proud to partner with the Early Learning Lab. And Chetal Singh is the Director of Design and Innovation. And she works to build the capacity for innovation and the use of new technologies for preschools and community-based organizations. And she works primarily with children birth to five. Her work at the lab builds on about 15 years of experience in digital media and technology to solve social problems. Dr. Elena Lopez is an Associate Director at Harvard Family Research Project. Her research focuses on the relationships between families, schools, and communities as they relate to children's development and education. Elena seeks to increase the usability of research in practice and teacher education. She's team taught courses on family school and community educational engagement at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was a governing board member of both the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Parent Services Project. Sandra Gutierrez is the Founder and National Director of Abriendo Puertas, or Opening Doors. Sandra led the development of Abriendo Puertas, the nation's first evidence-based comprehensive training program for Latino parents for children birth to five. Before that, Sandra developed a series of training programs to support children and families involved in the child welfare system for parents' action for children. She has over 40 years of experience. Rebecca Parlekean serves as the Director of Parenting Resources at Zero to Three. She developed resources like apps, web-based resources, DVDs, and more for parents. And she trains parents and early childhood professionals. Rebecca has co-authored three parenting education curricula and has published articles and topics ranging from dual language development to best practices for building relationships with families. However, her most important and satisfying lab work and child development is with her two children, Ella and Dennis. As I mentioned, my name is Susan Hope Bard. I'm the online training producer and also assisting us today in the background is Becky Wiegand, and she is our webinar manager here at TechSoup. So let me talk a bit about our objectives today. Today, we hope to be able to share the latest research on the technology habits of millennial parents. We want to discuss a framework to guide program providers using technology with modern families. And third, we want to highlight lessons learned from families' use of technology with young children. And of course, we do want to answer your questions. I'm going to talk a little bit about TechSoup. We are located in San Francisco, California. And right now, we want to know where you're coming from. So let's practice using the chat box while I talk about TechSoup. Chat to us out here where you're from, the city and state, or if you're from another country. And as you're doing that, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about TechSoup. We're a 501C3 nonprofit like many of you joining us today. We work to empower organizations around the world to help them get the latest tools, skills, and resources. We want to help you achieve your mission. You can see from our map here, let me go back, that we serve almost every country in the world. The need is global and we do have a dedicated website for countries outside of the U.S. at www.techsoup.global. We've helped organizations get more than $5.2 billion in technology products and grants to non-governmental organizations around the world. These technology products and grants come from more than 100 corporate and foundation partners. Wow, I see a lot of folks coming here. Oh, St. Louis, Seattle, California, Rhode Island. Wow, a lot of, oh, Santa Fe, one of my favorite places to go. I've got folks from all around the country here today. Thank you so much for joining us. And now I do want to take our first live poll. So this will be an opportunity for you to tell us, is this your first TechSoup webinar? You can actually click in yes or no. And if you're not sure, or if you can't click in, you can simply answer in the chat box. And we've got some super fast fingers. And we have about 500 folks on the conference call and webinar right now. So I'll give everyone about five more seconds. Five, four, three, two, one. All right, I'm going to close the poll. But it does look like the majority of you, this is your first time to a TechSoup webinar. So I would like to extend a very special and appreciative thank you to coming to this webinar. We hope you'll come to many more. And I would like to transition this to Chetal from the Early Learning Lab and she'll be able to introduce you and talk a little bit about the Early Learning Lab. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. So I am Chetal Singh. I'm the Director of Design and Innovation at the Early Learning Lab. I'm going to tell you a little bit about our organization and about this webinar series that we put together for the Early Childhood Education Field in partnership with TechSoup, the Harvard Family Research Project, the Joan Gantz CUNY Center, Frontiers of Innovation at the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard, New America, and New Process. So about the lab first, we're a fairly new organization and we're small. We're a nonprofit based in Oakland, California. And our mission is to support the Early Childhood Education Field by identifying, developing, and catalyzing the use of innovative tools, program design, and technologies to foster great caregiving and teaching of children from birth to five. All of our work is informed by a set of practices that early childhood researchers have identified as being the most important practices for the adults and the lives of children to do. Now our goal is to identify program design elements that foster these practices and build an evidence base for what works, ultimately informing policy so we can really scale what works throughout the country. And as I mentioned technology, we do believe that technology plays an important role in fostering innovation for the early childhood field. And that accelerating the use of innovative technology really does require working at three levels. Now often people talk about supply and demand. We also think that capacity building is a very important element and it's really the base of the pyramid here. This webinar series that we're producing is one of our capacity building efforts for the field to help to guide the field in understanding how to meaningfully integrate technology into their programs. We sent out a survey in January and February of this year. And in the survey which was really a technology needs assessment, we asked members of the field where they see the most promise for technology in their work, what they're struggling with in terms of technology, and what they want to learn about. Now the answers from that survey are currently being analyzed. We're going to be releasing a report next month which we'll be sharing with the field widely, but preliminary analysis of the results really led us to decide to produce this webinar series. So there were four topics that really bubbled to the surface. Technology for family engagement was one of them and that's why we, with our partners and our content partners, have put this webinar together for you today. But there were additional topics that surfaced and these include teaching young children with technology, the use of data to inform professional development for teachers, and the use of data for program evaluation. So those three remaining topics we will be presenting in the webinar training over the course of 2016. And we plan to work with TechSoup and our other partners to produce about one webinar per quarter. So we sincerely hope that you'll come back to join us for those webinars as well. But in addition to the capacity building, we are also working at both the supply and the demand side. On the demand side we are really working to help program implementers and families understand the range of tools available and help them make smart decisions about which tool to use and how to use them. And then on the supply side, we are in the process of working with technologists to ensure that products that are being developed are research-based and they're really meeting the needs of the field. And as I said, they're really fostering those practices that we think are so important for adults in the lives of children to do. And part of this work involves defining and testing what we call high value technology design elements. So I'm going to jump ahead to those design elements. And just to give you a sense of the type of work that we're doing, based on a preliminary survey of how technology is currently being used in the early learning field and which products and programs seem to be the most successful, we've proposed a list of preliminary design elements that we think are important when it comes to developing new technologies to really make sure that we're embedding these elements for successful technologies. And some of these include building the self-efficacy of the user, whether it's a parent or a teacher or an administrator, building social capital for the user, putting data in the hands of users, and using data to inspire improvement. And the data can range from student information to the number of conversational terms or words that a child is hearing over the course of the day. It really varies, but we think that people should know what they're aiming for. And then your personalization is obviously leading to greater self-efficacy of technologies. And then we definitely believe that technology should accommodate and promote diversity. So, having said that and giving you a little sense of what we're up to at the Early Learning Lab, I have to say that I'm thrilled that we have been able to work with Zero to Three, Harvard Family Research Project in Op-Driental Quartet, and of course TechSoup, to put this very first webinar together. And with that, I am going to hand it over to Rebecca from Zero to Three to share with us some of the research they've been doing on Millennial Parents. Hi, everyone. This is Rebecca. And I'm really excited to share with you the recent project that we endeavored to take the lead on when it came to getting to know Millennial Parents. And so, we got really interested in the idea of how millennials are approaching parenting because they have been in the news an awful lot the last few years. And frequently, those headlines are not so positive when it comes to millennials. And so, we really began to ask, is the millennial experience of parenting all that different? And are millennials looking for parenting and child-during information and messaging in different ways than parents of other generations? So, just to add so that we share a definition of millennials, they are adults who were born between 1977 and 1998, roughly. There's about 75 million of them. And millennials account for about 80% of the births that are happening today. So, they are the majority of today's parents of children under the age of five. So, what we did is we did both a series of focus groups with parents. And these focus groups were incredibly diverse when it came to ethnicity. We also did focus groups, some in English, some in Spanish. And we did some focus groups with dads and some with moms. And then we paired that qualitative research with a quantitative component where we did a survey of parents as well. And one of the, we asked a variety of questions, but one of the questions we asked was, you know, how parents access child-daring and parenting information. And millennial parents more than any others because there were some Gen Xers in our survey as well. Millennials overwhelmingly reported turning to technology more than other parenting groups. And that included texting for many, many of the parents. But the number one place that parents turned were Google searches. And for those of us who were in the field of early childhood, that's maybe a little scary to contemplate because the first three hits on Google are not always maybe the best resources. So, we want to be sure that what parents are accessing when they turn to Google or turn to any of these technology-based resources, they're getting really the highest quality information they can. And that kind of led to our next, oh, I'm sorry, and I forgot that we are doing some interactivity here to ask you how you like to communicate with families. So, for this portion, you can click any of these modalities that you use to communicate and then just click Submit. So, it looks like we have about 175 responses. And now we're up to almost 300. And I guess I'll close the survey in about five seconds. Four, three, two, one. Answer now or forever hold your peace. So, email by far the most common modality. And social media for many of us and texting is a really important modality for parents. And we're going to touch very briefly today on why that is and what came out in our survey regarding texting. Information in general from millennial parents was a double-edged sword. Parents overwhelmingly said that they were overwhelmed. There was so much information about child rearing and parenting that they really weren't sure who to trust and which source was the right one. And at the same time, parents also said that they didn't just take the word of experts at face value, that they felt like what experts were saying was important, but that unless someone really knew their particular family and their particular child, that the information to a certain extent had limited relevance. So those were some of the challenges that bubbled up with regard to technology. When we asked parents, how do you want to receive your messages? And how do you want those messages framed? There were three themes that came through. And one was that parents said a lot of times the messaging they received feels really simplistic and sometimes condescending. And they were looking for messages that truly validated how tough parenting is. They find parenting joyful, but it's really hard work and it's really complicated and complex. And they wanted messages that acknowledge that. Secondly, parents really had a strong desire to have their voices heard and to contribute their voices to help other parents. So they wanted to be treated as equal partners in messaging and in creating an approach that really worked for their family. And then finally, parents wanted information when they wanted it and how they wanted to access it just in time, like just at the time that they need it. And that kind of led to their feeling that texting and other technology-based solutions worked really well for them because it was at their fingertips, literally. And on that note, we wanted you to stay tuned and keep us at your fingertips at 0-3.org because the quantitative results of our survey of 2,200 parents of children under the age of 5 will be released in partnership with ROOM and the Bezos Family Foundation and our media partner, PDF, in early May for a Mother's Day launch. And in that release, we'll be covering all of our major findings, including how parents are using technology to access information about child rearing. So that's it for me. Thank you so much. And I'll look forward to answering any of your questions. Thank you, Rebecca. And everyone, just as a quick reminder, you can chat in your questions into the chat box at any time during this presentation. We're queuing them up so that about 10 of the hour we'll be taking those queued questions and we'll be asking our panel of experts. So feel free to do that throughout the time we have today. I'm going to next introduce our next speaker, which is Dr. Elena Lopez. Hello, everyone. It's a pleasure to share with you this afternoon a framework on using technology and digital media in family engagement. Next slide, please. Rebecca just shared with us that parents want to be respected partners and that they really want providers, whether you're early childhood educators or librarians, to understand the complexity and reality of parenting. So let's take a look at how one early childhood program uses digital media for and with parents and families. Comienza and CASA is an early childhood project of a nonprofit organization serving rural Mexican migrant workers in Maine. The code of Comienza is provide opportunities for parents to support their children's learning and in their home language so that children are prepared for school. The project has five different components, but the key one being the intentional use of a iPad as an educational tool so that parents can use it with their children at times that are convenient for them. There is a training for families to learn how to use the iPad and also to share the curriculum and its learning objectives. There are monthly evening meetings that engage children and families in fun and learning activities and in between this monthly meeting there are home visits where a home visitor checks on a child's progress but also listens to parent observations and parent suggestions. So the whole program then is meant to enable families to be agents in their children's success that is to use the iPad, not just to read and do math, but also to be able to document, create and explore projects with children. Next slide please. Great, and before I show the slide, Elena, you may want to just adjust your mic a little tiny bit so that you're a little tiny bit louder for the folks. And I'm ready to advance the next slide. One kindergarten kid who went through the Comienza project and after a kindergarten class trip to Blueberry Farm came home and told his mom I need to make a book about blueberries. So he made drawings about how blueberries grow and photographed them using the camera on his iPad and added his voice using a digital storytelling app. So let's look at his creation video clip. Susan, can you start the video clip? Berries go. It's read by Jayden Rodriguez-Baston. The first thing you need a seed. Then you need a hot sun. Then you water the seed. Then the seed grows more bigger and is ready to eat. Okay, could everyone, was everyone was okay to hear that? The kindergarten teacher saw this digital story. She started providing opportunities for children in her class to create similar projects. So I think this is an example of how families can contribute to classroom changes and also it demonstrates how children and families can make that lead from being consumers to producers of their own learning. And in this case everyone is a learner including the kindergarten teacher who found this an inspiring way to share with her entire classroom. The commonsense story is important because it provides a clear link between what the program wants families to learn and do, what the families desire for their children and the use of digital technology to serve this purpose. Next slide please. Today when we have so many apps and games and videos at once disposal we get mesmerized by the technology. And what we want to do is to avoid random access technology and digital media. Early childhood providers need to be intentional about how and why they are using digital media with families. Next slide please. So one important guide is the Head Start parent-family and community engagement framework which lays out program foundations for establishing a technology and digital media initiative. So let's start with the program foundations. Next slide please. So digital technology can be seen as a tool that expands options to support families in their children's learning and literacy development, connect families to one another into community services and resources, and to create pathways for continued family engagement across different learning spaces such as libraries, museums, parks, and making spaces. And so the foundations of leadership, professional development, and assessment and improvement should be geared towards these three aspects of how digital technology and media can be used. To give one example, for professional development it's not just about training early childhood educators, librarians, and others who work with families of young children to use the technology. But it's also about the relationship with families in the use of technology. I think going back to what Rebecca said, trust was important for families in terms of policy. It's about the leadership and the management, giving families a voice and opportunity to co-develop policies, policies, for example, like bringing home tablets or determining what their respective partnerships would look like. Next slide please. So we move to the next slide. I just want to make sure that everyone that is one of our partners speaking today is on mute just because there is some background noise coming through and I want to make sure. Excellent. Thank you. My apologies. So the next aspect of the framework is about what we call program impact areas or what is known as your program services. Next slide please. And there are four components to this. The first one being establishing a program environment that reflects an inviting space with participation via multiple media. That is not just your tablets or your cell phones but also arts and crafts and books and creating an environment which is inviting for an individual's own learning like a parent's own learning or learning with a child or even learning with other families. In terms of teaching and learning, I think Sheetal brought out some important design elements to consider. That is, as parents, as co-creators and partners. And I think it's also important for early childhood educators to understand the environment in which children and families use digital media and that is building on what families already know and what they observe. And it's very possible that even older kids in a family are the ones who help parents who may lack language or technical fluency. So all of these factors have to be considered so that educators can really play their role as media mentors and facilitators. So with the idea of family partnership, it begins with learning and understanding how families use and want to use digital media. Going back to the survey that Rebecca shared with us, we understand that families want to be respected. They want the information to be grounded in the realities and complexities of parenting which are some ideal versions. So I think all of this means that educators should try to build empathy, putting oneself in the place of parents and considering what is desirable and what is possible. And lastly, community partnerships are important and they are developed so that early childhood programs are aligned with the work, with the goals and activities of other agencies and communities. And what you see here in your slide is an interesting collaboration among the Massachusetts Department of Early Learning and Care, the United Way and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. And their common goal was to get parents understanding the importance of brain development and learning happens anywhere and anytime and everything adds like this and providing tips in subway trains and supplementing that with a website with lots of resources for parents as well as for the early childhood providers. Next slide, please. So lastly, we come to the family engagement outcomes and I know that most of us are familiar with outcomes related to families engaging in children's literacy and learning but there's a whole range of outcomes also related to connecting parents and families with each other because research has shown that such connections contribute to family well-being, less depression and even ways to overcome material hardship. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. A slide before that. I think there's a missing slide. Anyway, I just wanted to end with another story from Comienza where we began. And so through this program the parents were introduced to the library and its resources but the parents also felt that there were very few resources for adults in Spanish and the parents didn't organize a fundraising event and the library was able to acquire books and magazines and digital resources in Spanish for the parents. So I think this is a good example again of an outcome of making family connections contributing to the community well-being. And our last slide, please. Some points to remember. Avoid random acts. Be intentional. Create strong foundations in terms of policy, professional development. Know and understand families. Encourage families to be wise consumers but also encourage them to be added creators with their children and finally assess, improve and innovate. So thank you so much for this opportunity to share a framework with you about the use of family, of technology and family engagement. Thank you. And I think the next slide just points to a couple of resources that you can access from our website. Thank you so much, Elena. And I want to just let everybody know not to worry we are recording this webinar and you will receive a link to the recording as well as all of the handouts including the PowerPoints and resources in roughly a week. So I just wanted to remind everyone I see some folks chatting in and I don't want anyone to worry about taking notes. You will receive all of this information. Okay, so yay. So for our next presenter we have Sandra Gutierrez from Briendo Puertas for Opening Doors and I'm going to turn it over to Sandra next. Good day to everyone participating in this webinar and thank you for being a part of it. I'll start with just a very brief background on the Briendo Puertas Opening Doors. It's a program that was co-created by and for Latino parents with children 0 to 5. It honors and supports parents in their quest for a better future as you can see the byline building a better future through parent leadership and we part from the very deeply held aspirations and dreams that parents have for their children to have a better future to have more opportunities than they've had and work to convert those aspirations and dreams into goals with real-time plans and real-time results. We believe strongly that parents have an unparalleled desire and an unmatched potential to improve child outcomes and to improve their quality of life so that is where our investment begins. I'd like to start and I will tell you a little bit about the journey bumpy as it has been with our development of an Briendo Puertas app. First, why develop an Briendo Puertas app? We were moved by the Pew Research Center report that Latinos have the highest rate of smartphone uses in the United States and that they tend to use their smartphone as the main the principle source of internet use. Our program of the Briendo Puertas was developed seven years ago and since then there's been a boom in technology. It's a new day. There are apps and games tablets for each and every use so we wanted to stay relevant and provide parents support with the decision-making that goes along with this new technology. We agree with Dr. Lopez that learning happens everywhere and anytime and we also believe that parents, what they do each and every day is of great consequences. This isn't our first engagement with technology. We've worked very proudly with the folks from Vroom that Rebecca mentioned. They have a wonderful app available in English and Spanish and English is Vroom and Spanish is Vroom and it's a great app that is based on a lot of research it's very well designed and it is currently part of our curriculum and we encourage parents to use it. In addition to that we received feedback from parents about the concerns about this new reality of technology everywhere and use and overuse of technology so a group of parents from Over the End of Work developed some tech tips for parents these are developed by parents for parents that are going to be part of the resource package that you'll be receiving later. In addition to the tech tips we are currently in the process of working with Common Sense Media to develop a session for Over the End of Work that navigates technology or the good uses of technology and what to avoid what are the best practices. We have to begin always with parents in mind and the audience in mind and the most important thing we did in the development of the app was to seek parent input we spoke to 400 moms and dads throughout the country 80% of them were Spanish speaking not all of them had participated we encouraged parents to bring other parents who hadn't participated so we could get a greater broader input into what people wanted first off there were some very consistent messages and perception issues that were communicated there was a deep deep very heartfelt concern about their children's use of technology meaning that they're overuse of technology and they admitted in each and every focus that they are often quick to give the child a tablet or hand them the phone to appease them as a quick fix for some situation they were worried about the long-term consequences of that and wanted advice on best practices related to that because most of the parents that we worked with speak Spanish many bilingual and in the case of the input we had 80% of the folks were Spanish speaking and the rest were bilingual there was a real fear very legitimate fear that this new technology and how fast moving it was and how ever pervasive it was might create yet another distance for parents that it might be another language that they don't speak that this technology might be beyond their reach that said all of the 80% of the participants rather reported daily use with Facebook and with a WhatsApp and that was primarily to stay in touch with their families here in the U.S. and abroad there was a deeply held overarching sentiment of the focus groups and the feedback we got was that folks want to learn how to do this and how to do it right they know that this is a new day and they don't want to stay behind hence the quote if you don't look forward to stay behind there was a real hunger to try to figure out what's the best thing that they could do in terms of input for the app we really started with the idea that we would work with the content that we already have in the end of this curriculum that was not a popular idea folks thought that the curriculum has a lot of interactive activities and that a lot of the learning takes place as part of the discussion that takes place during the session the social capital and peer-to-peer discussion that happened so we were discouraged from using the current content in the development of an app but we received a very rich amount of feedback about what they would like in an app what are the features and what are the traits that they would want the app to have I'll just give you the top three the first we heard this over and over they recommend that the app be easy, useful, fun and enjoyable easy, useful, fun and enjoyable over and over there was a very sound opinion about it would be great if there was just one go-to resource, NIFA media that would help them with their kids from pre-no-no to 20 years old so that they wouldn't have to navigate and figure out the puzzle pieces of getting further information and that does definitely make a lot of sense we were told time and time again to keep it real to use real families and I think this is congruent with some of Rebecca's comments to show and highlight families that are like them, that look like them that have struggled like them and they encourage the use of videos instead of text-heavy documents and text-heavy content and so moving on to the top five Rebecca was at a drum roll, recommendations regarding the content the number one area where folks wanted support was in stress and this was a, we had a voting process and I can send you a report about what the vote count looked like but stress was an overwhelmingly first and most important area that they wanted supporting and that could be primarily because there's not a lot of, first of all because we're all stressed but second because there's not a lot of information in Spanish about what to do about stress in real life situations the second was bullying and some of us who have worked with parents understand that that is always a common concern something very deeply held in this case we heard a lot of very painful testimony about children being bullied for not speaking English and the parent concerns about what to do and how to navigate that the third content area was dual language learners folks were very comfortable with the advantages of being bilingual they don't want to lose their native language but there was a lot of questions and they wanted information about what are the best practices for dual language learners at home and in school what rights do they have what would help them succeed there was a lot of concern about that the fourth one surprised us because we thought there's a lot of other resources around around literacy but it does coincide with a recent read-alone survey that said 40% of parents surveyed couldn't find the time to talk to their children the fifth one pleased with a great deal because the end-of-work program is based on parent leadership and advocacy folks really understood that even if they read talks and sent their kids to preschool that they were going to be some challenge that they would face and they would need to know how to handle them and these included what are the best practices and what are their rights in transitioning to kindergarten and to the school system talking to teachers, school choice and legal rights as immigrants very quickly the sixth and seventh which we will not get into were connection to services and healthy and healthy recipes there was a thought that we could include recipes and people can upload recipes of healthy Latino cuisine so those can be shared via the app we moved forward with what we had done from parents selected a tech partner and I have to tell you that generational and cultural divide is real there was a bit of a cultural crash we worked with very young folks who grew up gaming who are experts in gaming technology and someone who shall remain nameless a bit of a thumb stone when it comes to tech so I definitely could have been better prepared as we did this process we did learn a lot we had several reality checks hence the rebooted assumptions expectations we started off not understanding the functional limitations of smart phones and so we developed ideas that had a lot of bells and whistles that perhaps could not work on a smart phone and we quickly learned that expertise matters we were first advised that any smart college could do this for you and we tried that for several months and realized that that is not the case we had to work in stages there were several iterations of the app and I have to say that because of the gaming background of our tech partners we wanted to make sure that no one was hurt or exploded in the course of developing the AP apps a lot of the gaming features had that as part of winning and competing in terms of the game and we wanted to say choose a strength based and welcoming environment in the process given that it is parenting is so very personal and so very cultural but there are some funny iterations of the app that I'd love to share with you at some point now drumroll to the story board of the prototype of the app as you can see the first photo is of us getting a lot of input from parents about the process to the side of that is we can see the app on the phone on the mobile device click to the splash screen which will have a daily joke of the day a daily affirmation and a daily tip next on the first you see the videos of well the screen where you can access the videos which really is the heart and soul of the app and a connection to GPS so that folks can easily find some services that they may be interested in including libraries and school recreational areas we've developed along with parents and some of our team leaders two games we've been using successfully for the last seven years we updated it to an app format and the other is a new soccer game that explores myths and realities of child development we're really excited we know that it's a new day and there's a lot of great talent in the tech field and we await a lot of great new resources that will soon be developed we want to thank our friends from TechSoup and from the Early Learning Lab for creating a safe and welcoming space for us to discuss these issues and move forward so that we can better support and honor the families thank you thank you so much, Chandra that was awesome all of the presenters that was fabulous we have lots of opportunity now for questions and I see in our question queue we've got quite about 27 questions so let's see if we'll be able to get to these and I believe the first few will be for Rebecca Rebecca a few people are wondering about the types of video conferencing platforms that parents use or how many parents use those video conferencing platforms like Skype yeah I saw that question it's a great one we did not ask parents specifically about video conferencing platforms I wish we had that would have been a good addition so 2020 hindsight we would have added that I do know from other work at 0-3 that a lot of families are using video conferencing platforms especially military families to stay in touch with parents who are deployed but with regard to this survey we did not include it thank you there are a few folks that would love to get more information about the research instruments you used and that particular survey and I saw you chatting out to some folks about the upcoming survey could you talk a little bit about that yes so the survey instrument itself will likely be part of one of the documents or one of the assets that will be released which will be the first week of May and for those of you who are interested in getting the results you can visit 0-3.org or follow us on Facebook or Twitter and you'll certainly see the results there on social media thank you someone would like some advice or your best advice on how to research or reach families that have lower literacy while being sensitive to their needs but not be condescending yeah, that was a hard one to answer in the chat and I think it's such a balance and I think our other speakers today really have made such strides in this as well so I encourage them to jump in but I feel as though our approach first always validate a parent's experience for example dealing with temper tantrums rather than saying here are the three steps to handling a temper tantrum which as a parent of a very intense child it's more like here than 97,000 steps to handle a temper tantrum so we try to start off by validating a parent's experience temper tantrums can really drive you crazy and that's okay, you're allowed to have feelings but it's what you do with those feelings that really matters for your child and what they're learning and then giving parents ideas to think about giving parents the idea that kids are allowed to be angry and frustrated but it's up to us to teach them the okay ways to express that that might be an idea that you give parents to think about and then say some parents find it's useful to teach their child to punch the couch cushions to get them out you can use one of those ideas or one that works well for your family so really acknowledging that there aren't any simple answers but here are some things to think about and here are some things that have worked for other parents and then really try and engage them in a discussion Thank you I think this question is for you Rebecca but Chatelle or any of the other presenters can chime in on the traditional standards for the use of technology that these folks can use for curriculum planning and to share with families Wow that did not was not encompassed in our survey so I'm not sure I'd be the best person to respond to that but I'd love to hear what others think This is Elena the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Fred Rogers Center for the Proficient Statement Regarding Technology It's not exactly standards but it's principles and solidly backed by the research that we have to date Thank you so much Elena This is Chatelle I just wanted to jump in with another resource that might be helpful in terms of thinking about the use of digital media and technology with young children New research that is coming out at the Jogands Cooney Center and a book that was recently published called TAP Click Read which was written by Michael Levine and Lisa Guernsey so you may want to check that out as well they have a website and we included it on our resource list so you'll get that with the post event email Yes it was also attached to everyone's reminder email and we will be sure to include that research page with that link and there's an amazing array of resources on that page if you haven't had a chance to look at that yet, folks, on the webinar you should check that out The next few questions look like they're for Elena and if I'm incorrect presenters, please chime in Elena, how long has the Comienza program been going? I think it's been going for at least five or six years and the question that I often get is how was it funded? They use the Federal Migrant Education Fund Great, thank you One other question was about the term you used Random Acts Could you talk a little bit more about what you mean? By Random Acts you know we mean that with the ease with which you know, apps and other forms of digital media are available that they are used we would like to see the use of that digital platforms in relation to the purposes and learning objectives of a program and to think about them and consider any other type of platform whether digital or not how does this contribute to engaging families in their children's learning What can we expect or what would we like to see as desired results also do we have the capacity is it something that is feasible within the resources of an early childhood program and then how do we engage families of decision makers in the use of this technology and platform Thank you Elena The next couple of questions Sandra, I believe this question is about your app Some folks are wondering about tracking the use of the app if you have any metrics that you can share on who is using it Not yet, I did want to add that we are still in the prototype phase some of the app is 5-day at 5-day and we are working to get the prototype so it does have some rudimentary analytics we hope to have it up on our website soon so that folks can interact with it and provide feedback it will be free, it will be available in Spanish and in English it is not fully completed yet because you are taking it slow and steady based on the feedback that we are receiving I also wanted to add that part is getting used to things not working and having to edit because a lot of the Latino parents are smart phone dependents there may not be enough bandwidth for all the video that we had originally intended it is still a work in progress it is in infancy or toddler stage Thank you Some folks are wondering if it will be available in androids and IOS or We are planning for both We are planning in English and in Spanish We are still working and raising funds for the full development of the app We want to be very careful and mindful of the feedback that we will receive in the next six months as we roll this out for people to try If anybody is interested please contact me and we will be happy to make it available for you to interact with Great, thank you We are actually almost that time and there are a couple other things that I wanted to make sure to cover those of you that are still on the call and the webinar, don't worry if we didn't get to specifically address your question, we do collect these and our presenters have agreed to answer the questions so that we would be able to send those back out to you in a document so you can benefit from everyone's questions and the presenters answers Before you go it is important for us that we helped you achieve a learning objective So tell us what you learned today Go into the chat box Tell us one thing you learned today or one thing that you are going to try to implement yourself Yes, a lot of folks are interested in trying out the app, Sandra and a lot of folks are interested in getting contacts You will receive all of that information and follow-up emails and it looks like a lot of folks learned a lot about the research as well Great. And some upcoming webinars and events On the 23rd we have a special digital literacy training tutorial for libraries On the 29th we are going to have a TechSoup tour that is for folks that are new to TechSoup and we talk about how to order a donated product And then on the 31st we have Excel for beginners for folks that have little to no experience in Excel but want to learn It is an hour and a half and there will be lots of attachments and things for you to practice as we do So I want to thank the early learning lab for partnering with TechSoup Chateau, thank you so much for putting this together and getting such a wonderful group of experts from zero to three Rebecca, thank you so much Dr. Lopez from the Harvard Family Project, thank you And Sandra Gutierrez from Briendo Puertas, Opening Doors So she'll tell if there's anything else you would like to add about the upcoming webinars so folks can stay tuned Definitely. I just wanted to echo the thanks to all of our presenters for this wonderful program and just wanted to tell the audience that the next early learning lab TechSoup webinar for the field with technology and early learning settings that will be coming in June So stay tuned for that, we'll be sending out more information about it And we are also creating MicroSite which should be launching in April I believe Susan, that will be an early learning lab TechSoup partnership collecting and providing resources on technology in early learning for the field So stay tuned for that as well Yes, we're looking forward to working on that and getting that right, much like Sandra said sometimes it's trial and error and feedback from folks like you on this call So I do also want to send a special shout out to Becky Wiggins who has been helping out on the back end and has been my mentor in learning, ReadyTalk and getting used to this platform I want to thank everyone who attended today, especially those who have been new to TechSoup I want you to check out our website and attend other events One other thing, we want to thank our sponsors, ReadyTalk for providing this platform Again everyone, you will receive a follow-up email with all of the resources the PowerPoint and a link to the recording. Thank you so much We hope you have a great rest of your week and we look forward to seeing you again. Bye-bye