You, a parent of young children, may be tethered to your phone, iPad and laptop. But you cringe at the thought of touchscreens and apps slinking into your children's preschool classrooms. You worry about your 4-year-old turning into a device-obsessed zombie who barely notices the world around her. You might...

Amid the agitation over childhood in the digital age, two visions are battling it out.

One side soars with optimism. Digital technology has become so intuitive, so finger-swipe simple, that even babies can open and manipulate information on a touch-screen tablet. The world is at their fingertips. Who needs...

Today's young children, from birth through age 8, are spending an average of two hours and 16 minutes with screen media on a typical day. More than a quarter of their screen time comes from playing on computers, videogame consoles, cell phones and iPad-like tablets. The average age for first-time...

Should reading be taught in first grade or in kindergarten? Maybe preschool?

How about even younger?

Most literacy researchers agree that there's a limit to how young you can go and that in infancy and toddlerhood it makes no sense to try to start formal reading instruction. Don't tell...

This post was co-written with James Losey, program associate for the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation.

Last year Melanie Manuel, a high school Spanish teacher, decided to reinforce vocabulary by requiring her advanced students to study human rights. She sent them to the Web to...

Is it possible to talk about balancing work and family life without invoking the image of the harried working mother? With two young kids, a full-time job, an overworked husband, and a freezer on the fritz, I'll admit: Not really.

As we recognize and celebrate National...