Forty years after Joan Ganz Cooney's landmark study stimulated the creation of Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop has established a new center devoted to accelerating children's learning in a rapidly changing world.
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will focus new attention on the challenges children face today, asking the 21st century equivalent of her original question, "How can emerging media help children learn?"
Release of Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children’s Learning and Health
The Center's latest report specifies how increased national investment in research-based digital games might play a cost-effective and transformative role. Game Changer provides recommendations for the media industry, government, philanthropy, and academia to harness the appeal of digital games to improve children’s health and learning. The report was unveiled on June 23rd at a policy briefing at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., featuring a panel discussion moderated by David Rejeski, Director of Foresight and Governance, Woodrow Wilson Center. Speakers and panelists included: Gary Knell, President & CEO of Sesame Workshop, Michael Levine, Executive Director of the Cooney Center, Debra Lieberman, Director of Health Games Research at UCSB, Alan Gershenfeld, Founder and President of E-Line Ventures, and Congresswoman Diane Watson. Click here to watch the archived webcast.
This study was made possible by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.
Growing Up Digital: Adults Rate the Educational Potential of New Media and 21st Century Skills
The Center is excited to announce results from a national survey conducted with Common Sense Media that examines parents' and educators' attitudes regarding digital media use in young children. Among the findings, parents expressed skepticism about the value of many digital media platforms, particularly when it came to whether digital media could teach kids how to communicate and collaborate, skills that are essential in a 21st-century workforce.
Getting Over the Slump: Innovation Strategies to Promote Children's Learning
Noted literacy and video games expert and Cooney Center advisory board member Dr. James Paul Gee examines how conventional and “new” literacies can converge with emerging media to produce a powerful new learning equation that can stimulate both our early education system and our children's abilities to innovate and create.
email : cooney.center@sesameworkshop.org
phone : 212-595-3456
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We're on YouTube
Our YouTube channel features short interviews with some of the most innovative thinkers in digital media and learning. Some recent favorites include: Danah Boyd, James Paul Gee, Katie Salen, Marc Prensky, Congressman George Miller, and of course, our very own Joan Ganz Cooney.
