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Incorporating technology to foster effective communication and documentation in child care programs

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Abstract

Advances in technology present multiple modes by which parents and teachers can now communicate. This article examines a new approach that a child care program adopted to document and share daily activities of individual children, including their development, while making this information accessible to the child’s parents, using a Childcare Management Software (CMS) mobile application (app). Using a mixed methods approach, data was collected from both teachers and parents through a Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo, UT) survey to examine how parents perceive the role of technology in communicating with early childhood teachers. Survey results revealed that the incorporation of the CMS app has become an effective communication tool to help track children’s developmental needs at the early childhood center and to communicate children’s daily activities with parents. However, the findings also indicate a need for CMS app training for teachers and parents to make efficient use of the mobile application.

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Data and materials are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Codes are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

The authors declare that there was no funding support this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stephen F. Austin State University, SFA Station, Nacogdoches, TX, 75962, USA

    Tingting Xu, Adam Akerson & Brandon Fox

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  1. Tingting Xu
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  2. Adam Akerson
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  3. Brandon Fox
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Contributions

TX created the survey instrument and delivered the survey to participants. TX collected all data, analyzed, and interpreted the participants’ data, write the results and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. AA contributed to literature review, assisted the design of survey questions, and the data analysis. BF assisted the design of survey questions and the data analysis. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tingting Xu.

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This study is approved by Institutional Review Boards, file number is # 2019–1078.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Xu, T., Akerson, A. & Fox, B. Incorporating technology to foster effective communication and documentation in child care programs. Educ Inf Technol 26, 5685–5695 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10561-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10561-9

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