A lot of parents will tell you that their kids are more tech-savvy than they are.
The Idaho Department of Education is taking advantage of that with their new Smarty Ants program.
"This curriculum can be accessed from a device, like a phone or an iPad, and we're making that available to everyone so that they can brush up on their reading skills before kids enter kindergarten," said Sherri Ybarra, Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction.Â
Wait, kindergarten?
"We're educating the millennium generation but now we're educating something called the alpha baby generation which means that all of our kids are pretty well familiar with technology," said Ybarra.
The Idaho alpha babies will have Smarty Ants, a program designed by a learning solutions company called Achieve3000, who gifted the curriculum to the Idaho Department of Education.
It was designed to give pre-k children an interactive method of learning the basics of reading.
The curriculum will be free to anyone who wishes to use it, and School District 25 is hoping this will engage a group of students they haven't been able to connect with.
"You know I think it'll be a great opportunity for our pre-k kids that we haven't had anything really that we've been able to say 'go do this, or try this,'" said Lori Craney, District 25's Director of Elementary Education.Â
Technology may be taking over the world, but don't expect it to take over all forms of education, at least not yet.
"I still think that there's value in what you can do in face-to-face pre-schools, but I think this will be a great tool for parents to use and help guide them to literacy skills," said Craney.
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