Digital Technology Intervention Program

Program Overview

Initial Workshop-During this initial workshop, we will discuss the purpose of using an interactive tablet as it relates to emergent literacy; determine if their children are learning with any type of interactive technology in their homes and if so, how are parents selecting appropriate emergent literacy apps.

We will also provide parents with the Amazon Kindle Fire (tablets) for their use for the four weeks of the program, demonstrate its use, demonstrate how to select emergent literacy apps and provide them with the Amazon gift
cards.

Home Visits Weeks One-Four- Involve observing parents in their homes to assess how they engage in digital technology activities with their children (observe them interacting and discussing emergent literacy apps with their children) and providing them with feedback at the end of the observation process. These visits should last no longer than 90 minutes. Each week parents in the intervention group will be instructed to purchase an emergent literacy app using their Amazon Gift cards. The parent child observations will be video recorded and their conversations (both parents and children) during the interaction coded for the frequency of occurrence of emergent literacy talk. Emergent literacy talk is operationalized as questions, comments, words used, definition of terms, and strategies to sound out words. Coding verbal behavior is a common method used in observational research (Harris & Almutairi, 2016). These data will be instrumental in helping us to select emergent literacy apps that appear to be the most effective in eliciting emergent literacy talk between parents and children as we move forward with the design of the DTI program for Home BasedH ead Start settings.

Digital Technology Diary- Parents will be asked to complete a digital technologies diary each week. They will be requestedto provide information about the use of the interactive tablet in their homes (e.g., what they used), how frequently they engaged in using the downloaded apps with their children during the past week, and any challenges with using apps and their use in the past week.