Starling: A Pilot Library Partnership to Help Build Infant and Toddler Vocabularies

Please note: This webinar relates to a California State Library grant project. It will be of interest primarily to California public libraries.

Description: As part of the California State Library’s 2017/18 ELF grant, five library jurisdictions will be selected from a mix of rural, suburban, and urban locales to receive a supply of Starlings – a wearable tech device – as well as staff training and support to pilot various approaches to sharing and/or loaning the devices to families. This webinar will provide an overview about this pilot Starling project and explain the process for how your library jurisdiction can apply to be one of the five pilot libraries.

Words Matter: Libraries understand the power of words to help develop young minds, and they’ve been encouraging parents to talk, read and sing to their children for some time. Now the Starling can help reinforce these efforts! In this age of busy lives and smartphones, most children aren’t getting the exposure to words they need to reach their full potential. With the Starling, parents can SEE the power of their words. Libraries all over the country have discovered the Starling as a powerful new parent support tool that can show parents they truly are their child’s first teacher.

What is the Starling: The Starling is a wearable word counter that picks up vocal sound waves (without recording), and parses out the number of words a child is hearing. Those numbers are instantly updated on a parent’s smartphone app, and on their library’s Starling Dashboard. It can: Demonstrate to parents the power of words, and inspire them to sustain and expand their early learning and literacy efforts, and Scaffold your parenting community’s focus on talking, reading and singing.

Come join us to explore the possibilities for sharing and loaning these devices with your families!

Webinars are free of charge, you can pre-register by clicking on the Register Now button at the top of this page. If you pre-registered you will receive an email with login link and a reminder email the day before the event.

Presentation Material

Speaker's slides

pdf (full slide)

Online application for the Starling Pilot Project

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/StarlingPilot