International Childrens Media Center

With its revolutionary Screen Smart program, ICMC aims to reverse COVID learning loss and close the achievement gap for 12million children by teaching healthy tech habits to accelerate learning.
The ICMC trains children to be screen smart and self-aware by teaching them “what it means and how it feels” to watch digital devices with their “minds awake." In this revolutionary, neuroscience-based pedagogy, what happens in the child's mind before using technology is as important as what happens during and after screen engagement.
Screen Smart and MediaSmart are accelerative learning and literacy programs that change brain chemistry and behavior while children, engage electronic devices. These interdisciplinary programs promote healthy tech habits and boost fundamental literacy, SEL and critical thinking skills.
The program combines:
1 Dynamic energy, concentration and self-regulation skills,
2 Extended response, intellectual rigor and close analysis of screen texts so that children use higher order thinking skills to talk and write about screen experience with high interest and engagement
3 Foundational literacy/narrative concepts and vocabulary
4 Social emotional learning and metacognition skills

Over twelve weeks, in only 30 minutes per session, children learn to focus, self-regulate and exercise emotional intelligence while processing, questioning, and deconstructing screen texts. The result: children make better viewing selections and exhibit rapid academic enhancement and self-control. By leveraging the outcomes of Screen Smart for children and families on a national and global level, we seek to revolutionize the way the world connects with screens and media content so that children grow to be intelligent, engaged citizens with a vibrant future.

Overturns situational learning
Remedies sedentary nature of 21st century learning
Brain body exercises provide an outlet for children's energy, much needed physical activity without detracting from core learning

Addressing core in 21st century education, Screen Smart has great potential to be scaled on national and global levels to accelerate early childhood learning and propel humanity towards healthy, empowering screen engagement. The ICMC's tactics for such strategic scalability starts with enhanced 3rd Party Assessment and Curriculum Review/Revision, followed by National Screen Smart Challenge campaigns and Train-The-Trainer initiatives.
The TTT will recruit, train and accredit 100 Screen Smart Accelerative Trainers who will certify 10,000 in-school instructors every year for four years. This will equip schools with the skills and resources to teach best practices in early childhood screen use and re-engineer the adult-child sphere of engagement around screen time to foster meaningful adult-child dialogue. With 40,000 trained instructors working nationally in major and mid-size cities, a resource-rich website with lesson plans, hundreds of short films and real-time coaching, as well as distance learning programs, we will begin to see a tipping point in screen engagement practices, while exponentially boosting learning outcomes in 40% of the U.S.’s 98,817 schools. Global implementation, based on the success of the U.S. program will start in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Standardize/Professionalize Outcome Reports
5 Partner with leading 3rd party evaluation firm to vet past nine years of ICMC outcomes; create report with data useable for awareness campaigns and school buy-in (12 months, Year 1)
National Awareness & Buy-In
• Work with national marketing firm, film studios, NGO’s, DOE, and major media companies to develop and distribute an impactful and nuanced National Screen Awareness campaign, establishing the need for and defining healthy screen practices for children and adults.
• Create specialized school outreach and marketing campaign.
• Create 30-45 second “Keep Your Mind Awake” spots and partner with MPAA, movie studios, Netflix and Amazon for full distribution of spots on all commercial media and games.
• 18 months for development (Years 1-2), 2 years for ongoing implementation (Years 2-4)
Scalability Plan
• Hire major education partner to revise current ICMC curriculum design for scalability and distribution (3 months, Year 1)
• Complete first book for general public, “Please, just a few more minutes” (6 months, Year 1)
• Develop Train the Trainer workshop for ICMC early childhood, elementary, middle school and high school methodologies (6 months, Year 1)
• Certify 100 trainers (6 months, Year 1)
• 100 Trainers will certify 40,000 Instructors in four years
• Implement national school marketing/outreach
• Concurrently develop state of the art website with films, lesson plans and coaching resources (24 months, Years 2-3)
• Develop new assessment and feedback practices for the national Screen Smart Accelerative program (8 months, Year 2)
Adult Resource Development
Develop adult versions of Mindful Viewing and workshops for Mi

Field tested for ten years, the Screen Smart program has yielded remarkable results for children, parents, and educators throughout Chicago and in select California schools
Assessment instrument - highly evolved

In the 2019 proof of concept for Screen Smart, six Pre-Kindergarten, eleven Kindergarten, and thirteen First Grade classrooms participated in the program. Students received instruction (30-40 minutes) once a week for twelve weeks. Third party evaluators (interns) charted significant positive growth in crucial indicators of child development by the program’s conclusion:
1. Inferential Reasoning & Higher Order Thinking - 67% of students across all grades were able to provide reasons and support for what they thought was happening in specific audio/visual texts by utilizing complex thinking and inferential reasoning as compared to 34% at the beginning of the program.
2. Self-to-Text & Text-to-World Connections - Teachers reported that 80% of students across all grades were able to relate what they see in media texts to their own lives and talk about those connections as compared to 57% in pre-program evaluation surveys.
3. Improved Verbal Communication Skills & Elevated Participation -Evaluators observed a 61% increase in student participation in all Pre-K classrooms, a 68% increase in Kindergarten classrooms, and a 76% increase in First Grade classrooms throughout the program. 75% of teachers surveyed noticed that 90% students who were normally quiet or non-responsive became more engaged and responsive during the twelve weeks of the program.
4. Focus & Self-Regulation - 90% of students in three grades readily implemented “elevated attention” exercises when prompted by instructors, classroom teachers or other students; 45% utilized techniques independently.
Teacher conclusion: “Children who have had this program learn better than children who have not.”

Ten years of field testing
Award winning book
TEDx talk

First, ingrained societal habits are difficult to change even when population benefits and risks are clearly articulated. Furthermore, the polarization of thinking around screens has inundated the public with volatile arguments about screen use.
ICMC's strengths in overcoming this risk are that the solution does not only address screen use, it also boosts learning in early childhood— a “two-fer” that will prove irresistible to schools. Additionally, the Screen Smart Challenge campaign will not assert that screen use is “wrong”. Instead it will focus on the aspects of the solution that strengthen human capabilities, in order to optimize and safely harness the strengths inherent in technology use. The ICMC team uniting researchers, electronic marketing specialists, early childhood specialists, government agencies, entertainment industry and technology leaders around screen smart principles will work to create nuanced messaging for highly varied demographic groups responding to their self-perceived needs.
Secondly, the solution is difficult to describe in linear language since it cannot accommodate or fully describe multi-level, interdisciplinary, multi-sensory, multi-outcome techniques. With input from e-marketing experts, ICMC will refine the messaging so that each facet of the solution can be reflected separately and flexibly combined to fulfill public and private objectives, like a wish-granting jewel.
If we are to co-habit the tech spheres