Television educational tool

Change the channel or turn off the TV when offensive material comes on. Make sure you give an explanation of why. If you choose to view a violent show with your children, stress the belief that violence is not the best way to resolve a problem.

Watch out for programs that glamorize or sexualize violence — especially for tweens and teens. If you choose to watch violence, make sure there are real consequences. While you can control viewing at home, unless the screen is in a bedroom, you cannot control what is viewed at other homes.

Similar rules help minimize peer pressure. Does your guess include TV watched at friends, at daycare, in their bedroom, after you are asleep, watching what another family member is watching? Is this the result you want? Keeping a TV diary for a couple of weeks will help answer these questions and get you started towards mindful viewing. Mindful viewing means treating TV as the tool it is and consciously using it to help your children, not harm them.

Use the DVR wisely. Show or record high-quality, educational programming for children. Studies of families going without TV for a period of time find initial withdrawal symptoms for the first 3 days:. By the end of two weeks, families had adjusted and replaced TV time with other activities. Families tried new things. They found exciting alternatives. Most added TV back into their lives, but did so in a limited, less obtrusive, more thinking way.

Or is it an incentive for your child to be creative? Are the raw materials for creativity available? Often newspapers or websites have lists of inexpensive or free activities that can be done as a family. They may come up with all kinds of fun things you might not think of. And it will make them more invested in the process of more mindful TV viewing. Your family could make a boredom jar. When your children say they are bored, they get to pick something from the jar that they must do.

It can be something fun or it can be a chore. The fact that it might be a chore encourages them to find their own solutions to boredom. Facebook Linkedin. The Center for Parenting Education. A resource to help parents do the best job they can to raise their children.

Television: Teacher, Trouble Maker, or Tool???? But most TV limits our children. The Research The following summarizes the research and more importantly, suggestions of things we as parents can do to minimize and mitigate the damage. Violent Behavior Literally thousands of studies have looked at whether there is a link between exposure to media violence and violent behavior. Health Effects Kids who watch more TV start smoking at an earlier age. School Performance Research has a lot to say about television and school performance.

Studies have found the following: Children who watched exclusively educational TV as preschoolers had higher grades, less aggression, and placed more value on academics than those who watched all kinds of TV. Many of the following suggestions come from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Observe How do our children act after watching various TV shows? Listen What are our children saying after viewing different shows? Questions, adjusted for age, might include: Are characters mad, sad, scared?

Who might be hurt? How do you think they feel now? What would happen if you tried that? Did anyone break things? Who is going to fix it? Why do you think that character hurt the other? What could be done instead without hurting anyone?

What would you do if you were that character? Does the character look unnaturally thin? How many people really look like that in real life? Listen and share views Was there a moral to the story and did your children get it? Challenge claims of advertisements Will the items shown really make you happier, more popular, sexier. The success stories of using television for education in many countries has negated the concept that television is basically on entertainment oriented medium and it is hostile to thoughts.

Television is adaptable and can follow different approaches when used in the different educational situations. The medium is used for formal, non-formal and informal education. To support formal education, television usually function as supportive and reinforcement tool.

Television can be attached with school curriculum and time tables. When systematically organized it takes the form of school broadcast. In non-formal education, television has a more specific role to play. When used as a part of multi-media communication tool, television can directly or indirectly teach the subject matter. Importance of television to communicate information, idea, skills and attitudes has been affirmed by researches. You should attempt to study various reports published on educational television in different countries in different situations.

If media is to work as an effective teaching tool then certainly it is helping hand towards, achieving the aim and objectives of education. Media is an agent of boost cultural economic and social development activity. Television, as an important mass medium disseminates education through formal and information methods. Television also continues to benefit the masses by making them conscious of the environment, rights, duties and privilege. It is a source of teaching etiquettes, language skills, hobbies, social relations and religious believes.

Parents trust PBS as a safe place for their kids to view media content and are appreciative that the programs reinforce the values they teach at home. PBS KIDS remains dedicated to providing equitable access to programming and resources to help narrow the learning gap that exists between minority, low socio-economic status children and others.

You can listen to the full interview here. Education Blog.