CAREER: Broadcast and the Bits: Enhancing Educational Television with Digital Justification

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This research focuses on children's television and how it can be enhanced with digital technologies. We envision the convergence between television and computing leading to new types of learning interactions between children and parents around television content. In particular, we may be able to borrow features from educational reform movements to develop novel, informal learning around television. For instance, if we can model question-asking and inquiry strategies to parents and children, they may be able to adopt and use them to structure learning conversations in the home. We add a new layer of digital information to the analog television experience, justification structures that explain how and why a television program is intended to facilitate learning. By providing additional meta-information about the educational intentions of a program, we hope to engage parents and children in critical reflection and inquiry around television content. The justification structures are digitial design rationales, capturing elements of the production process that would otherwise be hidden from viewers (e.g., historical justifications for the inclusion of content, alternative viewpoints and additional questions that were omitted from the final program). To develop the justification structures, we will examine how television producers currently design and develop their programming. As we understand their practices and conceptions of learning, we will define justification structures that make explicit the tacit assumptions underlying their programming decisions. We will then design and deploy digital television technologies to families in low-income housing projects with the goals of: o Developing a theory of justification that describes the content and rationale behind children's television programming o Assessing the impact of justification structures on parent-child interactions and learning o Rethinking the content of educational television in light of these justification structures