Louise Bazalgette: [00:00:00] Hello.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the first event of Nesta's early years tech series today's event is to mark the launch of our first report in the series. Could toddler tech help to get more children school ready? And thank you for joining us today. We'll be sharing our latest research into apps developed for children age under five. We'' be asking if apps offer an opportunity to support early childhood developments and reduce their school readiness gap, or if we should be wary of toddler, toddler tech.

Our fantastic panel of early years and tech industry experts will be joining me for an in depth look at this emerging use of digital technology. Before we get going, I'll start with a few introductions. Nesta is the UK's innovation agency for social good. We design test and scale solutions to society's biggest problems.

Our three missions are to help people live healthylives, to create a sustainable future, where the economy works for people and the planet, and to give every [00:01:00] child a fair start. I'm Louise Bazalgette deputy director of Nesta's fair start mission. And the goal of this mission is to narrow the early years outcome gap between children from low income backgrounds and their peers.

And today we are joined on our panel by Karlis Kanders, who is a senior data foresight lead working in Nesta's discovery team. Karlis will be sharing findings from Nesta's recent analysis of early years apps on the play store. Welcome Karlis and following Karlis will hear from Dr. Fiona Scott, who is a lecturer in digital literacies in the school of education at the university of Sheffield.

Fiona will respond to the reports, findings and discuss the benefits and disadvantages of digital media for children's development in the early. We'll then have a presentation from Andrew Asheee and professor Nicola pitchford Andrew, a CEO of One billion, a UK based nonprofit organization, which has developed one course, an app that supports children develop their reading, writing, and numeracy.

And Nicola is a psychologist who specializes in child development at the university of Nottingham. [00:02:00] Nicola will share with us, her research into how One billion software has been used with preschool age children. We'll then hear from Ellie Suggate-Francis who is assistant director of the early childhood unit at the national children's bureau.

Ellie will share her own insights from NTB's national program, which supports children's home learning environment. And she'll discuss the potential role of apps and digital tools. And our final speaker will be Liz Hodgman, who leads on early years for the children's improvement team at the local government association.

Liz will share her thoughts on the role of local authorities in supporting parents to navigate their young children's use of digital media. Once we've heard opening remarks from everyone on the panel, it be the audiences turn to contribute to the debate and put your questions to the panel. So please do join in the conversation by posting in the comments box on the right hand side of your screen, you can post your questions at any point during the event.

And I will then put questions to the panel later on during the question and answer session. And please note that if you want to access closed captions, these can be found via the LinkedIn live stream. So with no further [00:03:00] ado, I'll now hand over to Karlis Kanders., Nesta's Senior data foresight lead, and he's going to share findings from our recent analysis of early years apps on the play store for children age under five. Welcome Karlis.

Karlis Kanders: Hello. Thank you so much. It's really great to be here today, and I'm very excited to tell you about our report on analyzing the market for children's apps. So if we go to the next slide before we jump into the details, let me provide just a high level overview of this project and its output.

Our analysis, primarily focused on mobile apps for young children and parents. And then we complimented this with an analysis of the global venture capital that is falling into companies, working on parenting or early years products and services. And then finally, we also carry literature review. And today I'm presenting our findings on the first report about toddler tech and the market for children's apps.

And in addition to this, we have also published report on parenting apps. We are also working on one final article about more general innovation [00:04:00] trends in this space that were published that be published in July. If you go to the next slide, I will show you just a few highlights from literature review and I'm sure we'll hear many more insights today from our wonderful panel of speakers.

But first we looked at the current state of play in terms of the years of digital technology by children. And I think it is fair to summarize that technology used among UK preschoolers is widespread. For example, Ofcom has reported this year that among three and four year olds about 78% use the tablets to go online and 17% have their own mobile phone in terms of activities watching videos, tops the list with about three hours of video content every day.

But you also see evidence of increased app usage, especially during the pandemic. And the reasons for using digital devices as you would probably expect vary between supporting learning to encourage playing as well as to keep children occupied and importantly children in lower income households, use technology more frequently.

In the next [00:05:00] slide we're of course, naturally then asking the question: should we be concerned about the rise of total tech and screen time and I guess the answer as well, not necessarily. There is research that indicates that screen time is more likely to be beneficial when certain criteria are met. For example, the child should be aged two or older, the content should be age appropriate.

The exposure should be limited to short bursts, less than an hour per day. And the screen time should be shared with caregivers who can help children to interpret and discuss their viewing. At the same time it's also important to be mindful that there can be risks of development. For example, when screen time is in excessive quantities and it's not age appropriate or when children are not interacting with caregivers and screen time is an expensive physical activity. So in the next slide you can see you can see that, given that there are some benefits some screen time. So we wish to understand what digital tools are young children using.

And so we have started here with looking at mobile apps and we used data [00:06:00] analytics to perform a very thorough search of the Google playstore. These efforts are summarizing this picture where we originizing the landscape of different children and parenting apps. And every circle on this on this landscape is an app and apps with similar descriptions are located closer together and the colors indicate different categories of apps.

And when you go on Nesta's website, you can also explore the landscape yourself it's interactive, and you can see all the apps and actually look them up on the play store but our first observation was that there is simply a striking number of apps. So in the journey from preconception to preschool, we identified at least 1200 offerings on the UK play tour.

And so if you start at the bottom half of this picture, you'll notice that we have apps for parents, for example, to track fertility, pregnancy, and different milestones for babies. And then as we move higher up, we transition to apps that are used by children. You can see there is a large number of apps for simply playing featuring for example, dinosaurs on the left hand side or cars or [00:07:00] animals.

And then we have games that have some more explicitly stated learning benefits. And finally, towards the top hand top right hand side, we arrive with apps that are specifically for literacy and numeracy. So things like learning numbers and simple accounting problems or tracing letters or learning alphabet and phonics.

And so in the next few slides, I will walk you through a little bit more in detail and I'll be focusing on these apps for toddler. Firstly, we know that this is a growing market and there are at least a hundred new apps for children at least every year, since 2016. Interestingly, this number of new apps for children has tend to grow faster compaired to parenting apps.

And one reason for this could be that there is simply more developers making apps for toddlers. And each of them tend to produce not just one app, but also a number of different apps. And in the next slide, you can see that as as you noticed already from the visual landscape, majority of the approximately 900 children apps are oriented around games and playing.

And about half of these play oriented [00:08:00] apps about 260 claim to include some aspect of learning. And about a third of all apps are intended to explicitly support literacy and numeracy.

Now there are indications it might be challenging for parents to navigate this crowded market and access high quality apps. Recent analysis has founded the majority of apps for young children have low educational value and free apps rank among the lowest. Now to help parents choose higher quality apps our department for education has issued guidance around what makes a good early years app and they explicitly endorse these six apps, shown on the slide. However, while a couple of them appear to do quite well in the play where most of them seem yet to hit the same scale as many others in the market.

And for example, there are at least 360 other apps that we identified that have over a million installations. And to take this point a bit further about access. So in the next slide, you can see it like a good thing, which is that most of the apps are sample are free to [00:09:00] download, but then about 70% of these have in-app purchases, which of course restricts access to all their features.

And this clearly is an issue because research has shown that 78% of parents in England who use apps have never spent money on them. So I think this really underlines that we need to make sure that high quality content is freely available to low income. And then on the next slide, we have another interesting signal we observed, which is a large spike in place to reviews in April, 2020.

So the start of the lockdowns and the time of the pandemic, and this is the blue line in, in this graph. And so we are measuring here, reviews left by users every month as a rough proxy for app. You can see that this increase has been quite sticky. And while it's now decreasing by the end of 2021, it was still 100% higher compared to the pre pandemic level.

And this echos, other observations of increased children's screen time during the pandemic. And of course, it'll be interesting to track this trend and see if early years apps are [00:10:00] here to stay. And then in the next slide I'm showing a little bit more kind of a breakdown of this steep increase between 2019 and 2020.

And you can see this play oriented apps and apps for reading and stories show the most substantial growth. And this might suggest that there perhaps is a higher demand for educational games, which might be more entertaining for children rather than apps strictly for learning. And then finally in the next slide, I would like you to leave.

I would like to leave here with one interesting trend to watch. And this is the voice technology for children. So machine learning algorithms that recognize what children are saying are improving over the years. And companies specializing in this technology are attracting venture capital.

And here, I'm showing you some examples, such as the buddy AI, which is an app with this blue avatar that teaches English vocabulary. And you can listen and understand whether the child is saying the right words. And then there also other apps that can listen to a child reading story. and here, maybe which words are more difficult and they stumble and would need help with pronunciation.[00:11:00]

And I think this is a really interesting development that basically could make children apps more interactive and perhaps more useful for teaching. And so I think we can skip the next slide and perhaps move to the conclusions. Basically this report is saying that UK early year sector should consider the potential role of children screen time in helping to narrow the school readiness gap. And in particular, we identify four key opportunities where number one is to improve the quality of alert tech number two, to help parents navigate discarded market. And of course also making sure that high quality content is freely available to low income families.

And finally, we should also key building and developing evidence base for how to alert tech can be used most effectively in the home environment to boost Short's outcome. And with this, I thank you very much for your attention. In the next final slide, you can see the team, the core team working on this project, and I'm really thankful to my colleagues, Louise for steering your project, as well as for Matt, who did most of the heavy lifting for data collection analysis, [00:12:00] and very much looking forward to the rest of the discussion.

Thank you.

Louise Bazalgette: Brilliant. Thank you. Karlis and Matt for a great piece of research there. And really interesting to hear that overview and I'm sure lots of food if I thought of everyone in the audience and I'm sure we'll return later, some of those points in the question and answer session. So we will now move on to our next speaker.

Next we'll hear from Dr. Fiona Scott, who is a lecturer in digital literacies in the school of education at the university of Sheffield. Fiona frequent takes research in collaboration with industry partners, including Cbeebies, the Lego foundation and XR games. And Fiona will respond to the reports, findings and discuss the benefits of disadvantages of digital media for children's development in the early.

so, thank you so much for joining us,

Fiona Scott: Thank you. I'm just trying to share my slides at the moment. There we go. Yep. This is me. I hope everybody can hear me. So yes, as Louise said lecturer in digital literacies at the university of Sheffield, and I'm very interested in children's digital play, but particularly the relationship between digital play and the behavior of families, including parents and carers and differences [00:13:00] in family practices, particularly around socioeconomic status. So thank you so much for the team at Nesta. What a fantastic study and much needed. I wanted to start with the finding from the report that many of the apps in the app store are now explicitly selling themselves as being, offering learning content with more than a quarter offering, more general play with no explicit educational benefits advertised.

And whilst I, I understand and feel strongly about the importance of quality apps, which I will return to it for. The end. I also wanted to think about the space of play and the needs of children in relation to play and remembering that, that play fulfills a broad range of functions for children.

Not all of which are about explicit learning. So I wanted to refer briefly to our recent study funded by the Lego foundation. It was called children technology and play. The full report is available online. And in this study we looked into pair lots of things, including sort of parent attitudes.

The nature of children's [00:14:00] play what some of the outcomes were as lo as well as looking a little bit as socioeconomic difference. And we found that really in line with some of these findings in terms of what apps are being produced. Parents are now very committed across the spectrum, really to prioritizing education and learning when they're selecting apps for their young children to play with.

And they think that these apps will provide valuable skills that could serve. In the future. And they spoke particularly in this about these explicitly educational apps, including things like spelling shed and times table rock stars. So one thing we noticed was that parents in fact, tended to focus more on learning and developments in terms of these very specific perceived educational benefits.

And I think this is something we're seeing coming through in terms of the apps that are being provided, but it was less common for parents to talk about the social, emotional, cognitive and creative skills that can be developed in digital play. We know from the findings of our study, that actually there were a [00:15:00] broad range of knowledge and skills that children developed in their relationships with digital apps.

So yes, this sort of subject knowledge and understanding, language literacy, mathematics also not forgetting the digital skills themselves. So the operational skills around using devices but also those really important skills around being able to create their own digital texts and interpret digital texts and finally these important holistic skills.

So social, emotional, cognitive, physical, and creative skills. And I want to speak to one example quickly of a family who loved finding rollercoaster simulation videos on YouTube. And it was such a joyful, shared practice. Perhaps, not these explicitly educational outcomes that we're talking about, but at the same time, in terms of children's wellbeing are really important, of bonding and joyful moments.

So speaking specifically to socioeconomic status, we did see more diverse forms of adult mediation of digital play in managerial administrative and professional [00:16:00] occupational families when compared to intermediate routine and manual occupation families. So in particular, a practice that I refer to as extending and this is a very familiar practice whereby parents build on an existing digital practice to make it educational in a specific way. So for an example, in one family, there was a little boy called mal playing on spelling shed and his mom, he was really struggling with how to spell hopeless and his mom Serena prompted him to think about how you would spell hope and then add on less also reminding him that there was a girl in his school called hope and saying how would you spell her name?

So these sort of very traditional practices that are involved in extending children's learning at home, also appearing in relation to digital play. But within this, I think there's a need to think critically about school readiness. So children across the socioeconomics spectrum, we're experiencing these sorts of benefits and positive outcomes, [00:17:00] but there is space for more apps to support creativity in making, but children do have needs beyond just school readiness. We also found that adults were more likely to engage in Coplay when technologies would described as particularly educational in nature, which seems to be somewhat of a double standard when they were very keen to include to engage in a broad range of play beyond digital play that wasn't necessarily ex explicitly educational in nature.

So a sense of digital play only being of value when it was educational. And it's really of interest that some of the more relaxed, non, explicitly educational Coplay that we saw was between grandparents and children. So some of these more relaxed environments. We also saw that little of the digital Coplay that we had served involved some of the more productive and creative uses. So things like coding, making their own films and music. So there's a lot of scope there to extend those practices. And I'd like to end with some work that I know Jackie [00:18:00] marsh was involved in with the DFE around. That advice on the good digital design of apps and also my own work.

So we think good digital design for naught to five year olds, lots of looks like this. So lots of overlaps with Nesta's report, something that is developed specifically for the O appropriate age group. So under threes, plenty of repetition that sort of. Apps that are designed to encourage this more open ended or sandbox play really important for creativity, appropriate scaffolding within apps.

But of course, remembering this idea that good quality play. If we want to frame it in that way, comes out of the combination of the digital design and what happens at home. So very much looking at features and design that encourages and supports parents and carers to get involved in digital play. And I will end there.

Louise Bazalgette: Thank you so much, Fiona. Really interesting and thoughtful presentation and some really good kind of challenges and reminders really around the value of play in apps as [00:19:00] well, even without explicit educational content. So really interesting to hear about that. And we can talk about that a bit more later on.

So thank you so much for your presentation. And we'll now hear from Andrew Ashe and professor Nicola Pitchford. Andrew is CEO of One billion, a UK based nonprofit organization, which has the aim to get One billion children numerate in reading in their own language. One billion has developed one course, an app that supports children's develop their reading, writing and numeracy.

And Nicola is professor of developmental psychology at the university of Nottingham. And she has researched the world of maths apps since water early numeracy, and specifically she has researched at early yearsapps at One billion. So Andrew and Nicola are gonna share us their thoughts on the role of apps in supporting the home learning environment for preschool aged children.

Thank you for joining us, Andrew and Nicola.

Andrew Ashe : Hello everyone. So I wanted to start by telling you a little bit about our software and I want to refer to a question that Louise posed at the very beginning. Should we be wary? And I think the answer has to be, yes, we have to be wary. Does screen [00:20:00] time support a child.

Yes, but we need to see the child's time as precious. And what is their half an hour, a day or their up to an hour a day? Is it a worthwhile activity I've started with this slide and each of those little rectangles is it is giving a snapshot of some of the 4,000 different units that our app has in it for children.

It's in the child's own language and we deliver this in this country, but we started in Malawi and we're now working with the government in Malawi to reach all 6,000 primary schools using this software. We have an app, which and an app isn't even the right word. It's a complete course.

A child uses it for about half an hour a day. And it starts absolutely at the beginning for young children kindergarten and pre-kindergarten in Malawi. We have 4,000 different units. You're seeing [00:21:00] a few of them on the screen there. And we have it that it'll work adaptively for the child, so it adapts to their level

and also it can be used by the teacher in Malawi and in other countries. We have this. We have three elements. We have this course the course that takes a child from zero to reading with fluency and basic numeracy. We also have a library. We call it one library, which is at about 180 books. In it in Chichewa for Malawi.

And when you consider, there are only 23 physically published children's books in ch in the language Chichewa. This is a large body of work that children and teachers could have access to. And if we could go to the second slide, Which is also the last slide. This is something else we passionate believe in and we have a digital E assessment for testing.

The children the version you're [00:22:00] seeing is in is in English, but we have this in Chichewa and Swahili and and French for east and west Africa. And in just about to come out in Portuguese. So this is testing the children's sub skills. I'm about to hand over to Nicky professor Nikki Pitchford cause we believe passionate.

Passionately that you have to have evidence. It's no good. If you don't follow the research, it's all guess work. And I want to end by just repeating what I said at the beginning. We have to view early ch childhood development. As their time is the most precious resource. The problem we particularly are addressing is the world bank statistic that 8 outta 10 children of 10 year olds in low income countries cannot read a basic text of basic.

They can't read adequately. So this is 80% of children. So the problem of the marginalized children is enormous and we believe that education technology [00:23:00] can have a massive impact. And now I'd like to pass over to Nikki Pitchford.

Nicola Pitchford: Thank you, Andrew. And thank you to Nesta for inviting me to speak today.

I'm going to be talking about research that we've conducted in the UK with One billion software with preschool children. We've conducted a lot of work with school based school based children in Malawi and in the UK and have shown that one billions one course materials are highly effective at supporting literacy and numeracy skills in a class environment.

But what about the home environment? We're going to, I'm going to draw on some research that we conducted with preschool children. The research was actually conducted in a nursery setting. So it wasn't actually in the home environment, but I think that the findings generalized to the home environment especially given Fiona's Presentation and you'll see quite a lot of similarities[00:24:00] with the findings that we have To the results that Fiona was talking about from her research.

So we were looking at the maths content of one billion's one course, and we were working with the nursery school children. And we conducted an impact evaluation to look at how much children actually gained in terms of their maths learning after working with the apps, but we also conducted.

Process evaluation, which involved interviewing the earlier's educators to find out what they thought. The benefits were to using this kind of technology with preschool children. And I wanted to share with you today. The findings of that process, evaluation of the qualitative work. So the facilitators in the nursery that were using this app with young children identified these areas of.

Of benefits. So they showed skill acquisition in maths learning. So domain [00:25:00] learning acquisition. So we found that the teachers were reporting an increase in preschool children's maths knowledge. Things like number recognition and shape recognition, their math skills, their operational skills, such as counting, also improved.

And the teachers also highlighted that this generalized to other domains as well that were being supported in the nurse. They also reported a general increase in general learning skills. So children's confidence in learning new material increased. So their general confidence increased and we also saw increases in their confidence with working with technology.

And children's enjoyment was evident with your, with working with these apps. The One billion software is highly engaging. It's really developed from a child's perspective and you could see the children really enjoyed learning with with this technology. There were caregiver and child [00:26:00] interactions which would translate to the home environment where the caregiver or parent were interacting with a child, but also peer to peer interactions that enhance motivations.

So in a home environment, if you've got siblings, this kind of technology could be used. One of the main benefits that was identified was an increase in language skills. So especially SP speaking and listening skills. So the children were able to follow the instructions that were given to them in the app.

They talked more with caregivers and peers after interacting with this technology. And we also saw teachers reporting an increased level of attention. So children were identified as focusing on a task for an ex an extended period of time. The quality of focus on the task was better. They were less distracted and less impulsive.

But the outcomes did vary depending on the individual differences of the child. And as with any of these [00:27:00] educational technologies, child factors are important in influencing progress. So all of these factors were found as being beneficial to children working with this technology in a preschool nursery environment.

But I think you would find very similar things working in the home environment. If the parent were actively engaged with the child, can I have the next slide?

So what I'm showing here is a model that we put together from this research that just really highlights areas of value, but also if these are missing, then areas where the potential for gains will be less obvious. If you look at app features, you really need to look at using apps with preschool children that are targeted for their age range, so that they're accessible for them.

And especially in terms of the [00:28:00] language that's used, it's really important that the app has language content, which is aimed at preschool children. Also for educational apps, if there's instructional demand given then that helps children navigate through the app and the task structure and task processes need to be well specified.

And ideally, if it's an educational app, they'll be curriculum links. The learning environment is also important. So the physical learning environment, ideally an environment where you do this kind of engagement with your child on a daily basis, it's a quiet environment. If there's a chance for social interaction through peers or through caregivers then that can enhance learning and having a facilitator there to help the child navigate through the app for the facilitator factors.

We're looking at a parent, a caregiver, or a preschool educator being able to help the child guide through the pedagogy. [00:29:00] Provide instructional scaffolding. So Fiona gave an example of hopeless. That's an example of how a facilitator, a parent or an educator could aid the child in understanding the content of the app, effective scaffolding.

So supporting the child to continue you're doing great. Let's continue that kind of thing. As well as technological scaffolding. And we also found that the attitude of the facilitator was important. So if the educator had a positive attitude towards technology that seemed to aid the engagement with the child, But finally, we mustn't forget that the child themselves are an actor in this in this activity and the child factors that we found that are important, a language proficiency language really underpins a lot of.

The child's ability to engage with this kind of technology, but it also underpins child's school readiness. So you really need to link the language proficiency of the [00:30:00] child to the accessibility of the app. Any prior learning that they've had will help them work through the one course content attention, skills, motivation, and motor skills are also important and their experience with technology.

So from the home environment and using these kind of apps in the home environment to support preschool readiness, I think is a very feasible thing for parents to do. Especially if the parent is able to sit with the child and help help work them through or an older sibling or a grandparent Just having somebody who can help work the child through the content is very important.

But one of the risk factors, especially with low income families is language. And the, if you look at the linguistic environment in a lot of low income families it's very impoverished. In terms of content and in also in terms of structure. So I'm talking about things like [00:31:00] syntax and vocabulary, and I think that there is a real opportunity for high quality educational apps that are targeted on developing language skills.

To facilitate closing the preschool attainment gap in school readiness for children in low income families. And I think that's an area where this kind of technology can be used extremely effectively to help prepare children for the school environment. I'm going to stop there now, but thank you for us today.

Louise Bazalgette: Thank you so much, Andrew and Nicola for a fascinating presentation. And we've had lots of questions coming through, which we'll be able to pick up later on. So I'll look forward to posing some of those to you later. Everyone in the audience. Please do keep putting questions in the chat because we will have time for question answer session later.

There are no stupid questions. So if there's anything that's intriguing you or anything you wanted to clarify or any questions you wanted to pose the panel please do put those in the chat as we go along. So I'm now going to introduce Ellie Suggate-Francis , who [00:32:00] is assistant director of the early childhood unit that the national children's bureau Ellie will share her own insights from NCBS national program.

Support the home learning environment and discuss the potential, all of apps and digital tools. Thank you so much for joining us Ellie ,

Ellie Suggate-Francis: thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Yep. I'm gonna look at this toddler tech kind of question through the lens of making it real making it real stands for raising early achievement in literacy.

It's a program. We we deliver at the national children's bureau, it was developed in conjunction with the university of Sheffield. It's delivered in approximately kind of 80 plus local authorities nationally. And what real does is it supports practitioners to be able to upskill parents around the home learning environment.

So parents practitioners go into the home and model to parents, how to support their child's learning. So at NCB, we obviously, we really welcome any additional tool in the toolbox for parents around supporting their child's early learning supporting the home learning environment.

And of course we're talking about apps which have moderated content here, re [00:33:00] research based evidence based. And also, you've got to think about, this kind of often there's a breakdown in family networks now. People are increasingly isolated. Anything that can add additional support to parents when it comes to the home, learn home learning environment is brilliant.

But I do think there does need to be more research around once downloaded how these apps are being used, because I think there are risks as other colleagues have mentioned. Making it real uses something called the ORIM framework. The ORIM framework was developed by Peter H at the university of Sheffield and, ORIM stands for opportunities, recognition, interaction, and modeling.

And these are the things that parents do in the home, which support their child's learning. And if we think about apps in relation to the, ORIM framework. Yes. Apps are another opportunity for learning, but if we think about interaction and modeling and real world interaction and modeling then there are, there is the risk.

If apps are being used instead of the real world [00:34:00] interaction and modeling there's of a detrimental effect. So if we think about language and the importance of interaction with a parent or carer that you are you're attached to, or a key worker that you're attached to and that back and forth of learning language, then the real world interaction is really key.

And also if you're thinking about modeling really is about language, but it's mostly about also literacy. And if you think about the opportunities which parents present in the home, for example, the use of a recipe, Children are looking at that and thinking, this is how, this is why I need to learn to read.

This is how writing works. And they're excited and infused by that real world opportunity and that real world modeling all the environmental print, the signage, which is out there which supports us as adults to know what we're doing, where we're going. Pointing that out to children in the real world is what infuses them to learn.

For example, learn to. So I think inter real world interaction and modeling are key. Also. I just wanted to think a bit little about real world [00:35:00] recognition and celebration of learning. So that's the R in ORM parents and carers celebrating a child's successes, celebrating a child's real world learning development.

Especially from a parent or carer or sibling or a key worker, which the child is attached to obviously really supports that emotional health and wellbeing for the child. And I think, a digital digital confetti across the screen, for example, obviously doesn't have the same impact.

So I would just like us to look through the lens of the, ORIM framework at this and think about all the things, the rich things that parents do with their children. Day to support their child learning and the potential, if it's used instead of those real world interactions the potential, the detri potential detrimental effect.

So a very brief overview from me, a brief glimpse into making it real and how that looks, uses the ORIM framework to think about the home learning environment. But I think it agrees with colleagues on the panel about the potential. The potential, it has as another tool in the toolbox, but [00:36:00] also the potential risks, if not used in that kind of interactive way with a parent or care.

Louise Bazalgette: Thank you so much, Ellie, for those reflections. And I think, yes, as you say, very important to highlight the potential risks, if this isn't done well, as well as the opportunities which we're looking at today. So great to hear from you on that. And our final speaker is Liz Homan who leads on early years.

To the children's improvement team at the local government association. And let's us go and share her thoughts on the role of local authorities in supporting parents to navigate their young children's use of digital media. So thank you very much for joining us, Liz. It's great to have you with us. Thank you.

Liz Hodgman : So have the next slide, please. Thank you. Is there role for local authorities? I think we've heard today that yes, there is a role in supporting the rollout of apps to families. Although with some caution to hear that there's 1,200 apps available. It's a bit of a minefield. Yes, apps can offer universal support for the home learning environment at a very little cost that couldn't be replicated with face to face support for every [00:37:00] family.

So there is a real opportunity there to support the home learning environment. So the role for the local authority I'm posting and promoting the apps, recommending the right ones and some local authorities that's been going further and buying into an app. For example, the 50 things to do before your five thank you of next slide,

Nicola Pitchford: but there are challenges

Liz Hodgman : with local authorities promoting apps.

We've heard today about how many there are and about the quality of them and the low educational value of some of them. So how do you decide which of the right apps to promote within your local authority? You need to have the staff understanding the apps that you are promoting. You can't support a family, maybe to download the app and then start using it with their child and role modeling, using it with their child.

If you don't have an understanding of the app yourself, There's an issue around staffing capacity. We're asking staff to do additional things on top of their already busy workload. Local authorities also need to evaluate [00:38:00] uptake and impact of any service that they deliver. And an external app is going to be very difficult to monitor the impact of the work you're doing.

Enrolling it out. , it's also a continual piece of work to promote the apps, new families arriving all the time and going into different age groups. So it's not something you can do once and tick the box and say, you've done it. It's a continual piece of work. There's also a huge range of professionals who would need to be working together to promote the apps.

It's not just, doesn't just sit with the early years team in a local authority. There can also be an associated cost. If you're going to promote certain apps, you might want to produce flyers or posters or literature to actually give to parents. On the next slide. We're gonna look at what are the opportunities.

So you have opportunities using existing social media. A lot of local authorities have Facebook that they use with families or Instagram childcare providers also have the opportunity to really promote apps through their [00:39:00] families, to their families, via networks, social media, newsletters, and some childcare provision actually use it in their curriculum, which we've already heard of today.

It could be added to family meetings, checklists. So for your health visitors and your early health teams, having it on their checklist, as a reminder for them to mention it to families and maybe give them a leaflet providing marketing materials, obviously that does come with a cost. It could be included in the red book.

So it's information available to all families at all times, and posters in libraries and doctors and clinics waiting rooms. So what support would local authorities need? I think we've heard today about the huge number of apps. So they'd need support around what are the best apps that are available to families that are free of charge at comm's talk it to help promote them so that they can share that information.

It' very difficult and will be a waste of time. Really, if each local authority we're asking their comms team to produce information that could be done [00:40:00] central. and also maybe a train the trainer session so that, that could be cascaded across the local authority in other forms to everyone that you'd want to work with.

So who needs to be engaged? It's huge. So everyone who has contact with young families, that's from early years, providers to your social workers and early help teams in children's centers and family hub. From early on in midwives and health visitors, your children's librarians at your rhyme time sessions can support families, speech, and language therapists that they continue the work in the home toddler group leaders, doctor surgeries and clinics.

But also we need to think about the wider involvement. So you need your council comms team to be involved, so can help with the promotion online. And you also need your strategic leads within your council to be involved. Thank you.

Louise Bazalgette: Thank you so much, Liz, for those really helpful and insightful thoughts about both some of the barriers in terms of [00:41:00] support for local families in how's apps, but also some of the opportunities there and how that could be operationalized.

So great to hear from you on that. Thank you. So we've now got a question and answer session, so I'm gonna welcome back the panel. And thank you so much to the. For those really interesting questions that you've been posting. So I will get started with a question from Maria Jose Martin, who said, I'd like to know how the data on video content usage has been changing over the years or decades.

Is it similar to the amount of TV that kids used to watch or has it increased? Are there any members of the panel who'd be able to provide an insight on that one?

Karlis Kanders: And maybe I can make a quick comment on this saying that I. I think one, one striking fact, which is maybe more recent than looking back in the decades, but just looking back pre pandemic.

So there, there are reports that I mentioned that kids now watch about three hours of video content every day, and this is half an hour, more than pre pandemic. So that's already about 20% increase. And of course these are just averages and, there will be kids that watch much more. I guess I would [00:42:00] also add that.

I think the way the content is reaching children has fundamentally changed over the past decades where it's not so much that we are watching a program broadcasting on our TV sites that it's now at, please call kids our digital natives and they can navigate digital platforms themselves.

And they maybe don't need that much guide direct help from parents to actually find content on their own, which of course also comes through its own challenge.

Louise Bazalgette: Thank you, Karlis, for those reflections. And had a question from Dr. Maryanne Hardy, who said, is there a sense of how much, and in what ways these apps are being used in childcare settings and nurseries in the early years would anyone member of the panel have some insights on that one?

Nicola Pitchford: So thank you for the question. The One billion apps that we were evaluating were being used in nurseries. And we've also looked at these apps in earlier years in schools. So there was a larger evaluation conducted by the education endowment foundation that was evaluated by the university of Oxford and Nottingham implemented [00:43:00] along with.

Teacher partner through the apple distinguished educated network, mark FAU. And we put it into a hundred, over a hundred primary schools across England. And so it was part of an integrated activity in, on a daily basis in the primary schools, they were using the apps for about 30 minutes a day.

And in the nursery schools, they were using them for about 15 minutes a day. And sometimes a couple of 15 minute sessions. So other care settings I'm not sure about, but certainly in sort of education based nurseries in early years, they are. They are being used. I think the one maths apps are being used in over 200 schools that I know of, that we've been involved in with research.

And we also have an implementation guidelines. We've got a manual to help educators implement effectively that's freely available through. Mark F's school at Berton Joyce primary school. Thank

Louise Bazalgette: you. Fantastic. Thank you for your answer. That question. And Anna KA has asked, is there [00:44:00] somewhere to refer to help parents picking good educational app?

Any insights from the panel on that one looks like Dr. Fi Scott's modelling. That's sorry, nodding.

Fiona Scott: sorry. I can't I can't remember the exact name of the document, but the department for education worked with a panel of early year specialists. I know Jackie marsh was involved in it and they did produce some guidelines for making high quality apps.

Particularly around children's literacy. That document, if you do a little bit of Googling is available but obviously that is quite specific to literacy. Although when you look at it, a lot of it is based on principles that would apply more broadly.

Louise Bazalgette: Fantastic. Thank you, Fiona. And that, that report is I think, linked from Nesta's report as well.

And we can include that when we send out various information after this call were there any other suggestions when you were on the panel for advice for parents?

Nicola Pitchford: There's also a report recently published by Laura AWA and colleagues at UCL that is in the Nesta report as well. So that's really accessible and parents can get hold of that.

I think that focuses specifically on maths apps, but again you'll see the sort of [00:45:00] principles coming through there. Thank. Fantastic. Thank

Louise Bazalgette: you, Nicola. And there are a few questions about the one course app. So Maria Jose Martin has asked, will it be available on the app store? I for the iPhone as.

Andrew Ashe : Yes I can answer that at the moment. We produce a dedicated tablet that can be solar powered for use in countries like Malawi, cuz I, I mentioned 6,000 schools and 5,400 of them don't have electricity. They do have a lot of sunshine. We've had a as Nicola has discussed, we've had for many years an early version of our math apps on the apple app store.

Those are quite old now and we are in the process of. Putting one course both on the play store and on the and on the app store it won't be on the app store till the beginning of next year. It's an enormous it's an enormous app and it's a a lot of work. We do have our E E assessment.

On the play store now and got called one test and that will also be [00:46:00] on the app store quite soon. And as will the, our library the library of digital and digital books and audio books will be on the the library as well. But one course itself, I'm afraid won't be till on the app store till the beginning of next year.

Louise Bazalgette: Thank you. And there's actually another question, Andrew. On one course, which was, is it available to.

Andrew Ashe : It is not available yet to schools apart from through our through our partners who put it on dedicated tablets or and they install it. So we provide it can run on schools, but we provide either what they call the wrong, which is where we have our own and version of the Android operating system.

And it takes over the tablet or. What is called an APK. So it's the application itself. So we do provide that to partners, but we we are the publisher and to be completely honest, our main focus at the moment is on is on with ministries of education in African countries.

Louise Bazalgette: fantastic. Thank you.

And [00:47:00] I imagine once it's on those app stores, then it'll be much more free available schools, should they wish to download it? And we had a question from Shiv and Chan who said interesting point from Nicola about how the apps could be used to help children develop their language skills. Does anyone have any experience of using apps for this?

Is that anyone on the panel who's done work in this area?

Andrew Ashe : Could I just do a quick introduction to that? There's a very interesting statistic in, in in countries like Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, where about 40% of children, a massive number seem to be failing a primary school, whatever intervention is given to them, there's extra support.

There's more teaching assistance. And there's a lot of D. Our theory is what what is happening. One of the possible ones we are looking at is very poor language skills. And we know that's the case with children. And even in UK schools, some a minority of children do come to that. So we're working at the moment on improving basic oral language work for [00:48:00] children.

Cuz we do know that some children arrive at school. With extremely poor language skills in their own first

Karlis Kanders: language

Louise Bazalgette: that was fascinating to hear about. Thank you. And we had a question that was directed towards Nicola, which was, does including the psychology aspect from different assessment tests using AR tech.

Does that provide added value to parents when they get insights about their children's behavior on the app?

Nicola Pitchford: I think from a parental point of view, if you No. If you can upscale yourself in terms of understanding how children perform tasks and where your child has particular strengths and weaknesses, I think that can only be of added value.

So what we tend to do when we evaluate the impact of different apps is we look at how much they improve learning. But we look at it from a sub skill component as well. And also from. Domain general skills, such as attention and executive functioning and memory that kind of thing. So I do think that looking at [00:49:00] psychological aspects helps to create a more comprehensive understanding of how and why children.

Benefit, but also why they may not benefit from this kind of technology. And I think that was represented in the model that I showed you, that, the work we can look at app features and we can look at what's happening in the learning environment and the home environment, but we also need to look very closely at the child and if a child isn't progressing with any kind of education intervention, we need to understand why.

And I'm a firm believer in tailored interventions to help children strengthen. The skills that they have and to support any weaknesses that they have. And I think as apps become more smart in a sense and more adaptable to individual needs if they start to be integrated with some kind of assessment that enables you to understand what they can and can't do, then I think the technology is out there that.

Could [00:50:00] lead to a very adaptable kind of instruction for individual children, even though everybody is is using the same app. I think the smart technology is just about. There and coming that will give tailored instruction for children and that's what's really needed.

Louise Bazalgette: Thank you so much, Nicola, absolutely fascinating to hear about those opportunities in terms of where the tech is heading.

So we're now reaching the end of our time. So I wanna say thank you so much to our panel for such interesting and well thought through and useful Contributions from each of you and really fascinating answers to those questions from the audience as well. So thank you so much for joining us at this event.

I've really enjoyed hearing from all of you. And now that we've reached the end of the event I'd be really grateful if those of us, if those who are joining us in the audience can please fill out a short survey. I think the links will be posted in the chat. And as a thank you, filling out the survey, you can be entered into the prize, draw to win 50 pounds book.

Do org voucher as an added incentive to take part. So we'd really value you taking part in those surveys and giving us your feedback. And then a quick plug for our next event, which is on Wednesday, the 13th of [00:51:00] July, we'll be hosting the second event in our earliest tech series. This will be an online launch of our second report, which is about parenting app.

And how they can help improve outcomes for children. And we'll be sharing our latest research into the landscape of parenting support apps at that event and discussing whether parenting apps have the potential to help improve outcomes for children. So thank you so much to both our speakers and to everyone in the audience for joining us.

Goodbye.