Touch screen tablets have greatly expanded the technology accessible to preschoolers, toddlers and even infants, given that they do not require the fine motor skills required for using traditional computers. Many parents and educators wish to make evidence-based decisions regarding young children’s technology use, yet technological advancements continue to occur faster than researchers can keep up with. Accordingly, despite touch screen tablets entering society more than 5 years ago, we are in the infancy of research concerning interactive media and children. The topic has gained traction in the past couple of years. For example theoretical papers have discussed how interactive media activities differ from physical toys and passive media (Christakis, 2014), and how educational apps development should utilise the four “pillars” of learning (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). Yet there has been little experimental research published on young children and touch screen use.

Increasing numbers of parents grapple with children who are acting out without obvious reason. Revved up and irritable, many of these children are diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar illness, autism, or other disorders but don’t respond well to treatment. They are then medicated, often with poor results and unwanted side effects. Based on emerging scientific research and extensive clinical experience, integrative child psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Dunckley has pioneered a four-week program to treat the frequent underlying cause, Electronic Screen Syndrome (ESS). Dr. Dunckley has found that everyday use of interactive screen devices — such as computers, video games, smartphones, and tablets — can easily overstimulate a child’s nervous system, triggering a variety of stubborn symptoms. In contrast, she’s discovered that a strict, extended electronic fast single-handedly improves mood, focus, sleep, and behavior, regardless of the child’s diagnosis. It also reduces the need for medication and renders other treatments more effective. Offered now in this book, this simple intervention can produce a life-changing shift in brain function and help your child get back on track — all without cost or medication. While no one in today’s connected world can completely shun electronic stimuli, Dr. Dunckley provides hope for parents who feel that their child has been misdiagnosed or inappropriately medicated, by presenting an alternative explanation for their child’s difficulties and a concrete plan for treating them.

The Learning Sciences in Conversation explores the unique pluralities, complex networks, and distinct approaches of the learning scientists of today. Focused on four key scholarly areas – transdisciplinarity, design, cognition, and technology – this cutting-edge volume draws on empirical and theoretical foundations to illustrate the directions, perspectives, methods, and questions that continue to define this evolving field. Contributions by researchers are put in dialogue with one another, offering an exemplary analysis of a field that synthesizes, in situ, various scholarly traditions and orientations to create a critical and heterogenous understanding of learning.

This handbook is the first book ever covering the area of Multimodal Learning Analytics (MMLA). The field of MMLA is an emerging domain of Learning Analytics and plays an important role in expanding the Learning Analytics goal of understanding and improving learning in all the different environments where it occurs. The challenge for research and practice in this field is how to develop theories about the analysis of human behaviors during diverse learning processes and to create useful tools that could augment the capabilities of learners and instructors in a way that is ethical and sustainable. Behind this area, the CrossMMLA research community exchanges ideas on how we can analyze evidence from multimodal and multisystem data and how we can extract meaning from this increasingly fluid and complex data coming from different kinds of transformative learning situations and how to best feed back the results of these analyses to achieve positive transformative actions on those learning processes. This handbook also describes how MMLA uses the advances in machine learning and affordable sensor technologies to act as a virtual observer/analyst of learning activities. The book describes how this “virtual nature” allows MMLA to provide new insights into learning processes that happen across multiple contexts between stakeholders, devices and resources. Using such technologies in combination with machine learning, Learning Analytics researchers can now perform text, speech, handwriting, sketches, gesture, affective, or eye-gaze analysis, improve the accuracy of their predictions and learned models and provide automated feedback to enable learner self-reflection. However, with this increased complexity in data, new challenges also arise. Conducting the data gathering, pre-processing, analysis, annotation and sense-making, in a way that is meaningful for learning scientists and other stakeholders (e.g., students or teachers), still pose challenges in this emergent field. This handbook aims to serve as a unique resource for state of the art methods and processes. Chapter 11 of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Notions of the body and embodiment have become prominent across a number of established discipline areas, like philosophy, sociology, and psychology. While there has been a paradigmatic shift towards this topic, there is a notable gap in the literature as it relates to education and educational research. The Body, Embodiment and Education addresses the gap between embodiment and education by exploring conceptualisations of the body and embodiment from interdisciplinary perspectives. With contributions from international experts in philosophy, sociology, and psychology, as well as emerging areas in related fields, such as embodied cognition, neuroscience, cognitive science, this book sets a new research agenda in education and educational research. Each chapter makes a case for expanding the field and adds to the call for further exploration. The Body, Embodiment and Education will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students who are interested in the body and embodiment and/or its relationship with education or educational research.

The interdisciplinary field of the learning sciences encompasses educational psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and anthropology, among other disciplines. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, first published in 2006, is the definitive introduction to this innovative approach to teaching, learning, and educational technology. In this significantly revised third edition, leading scholars incorporate the latest research to provide seminal overviews of the field. This research is essential in developing effective innovations that enhance student learning - including how to write textbooks, design educational software, prepare effective teachers, and organize classrooms. The chapters illustrate the importance of creating productive learning environments both inside and outside school, including after school clubs, libraries, and museums. The Handbook has proven to be an essential resource for graduate students, researchers, consultants, software designers, and policy makers on a global scale.