
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?"
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Media Multitasking: Impact on Children’s Learning & Development
Media multitasking has rapidly become a way of life for American youth, and yet little is known about how this behavior affects their learning and development. To begin to address this gap in knowledge, a multidisciplinary group of scholars assembled for a one-day seminar on media multitasking at Stanford University on July 15, 2009. This meeting report, by journalist Claudia Wallis of TIME Magazine, summarizes the ideas brought to light at the seminar, including an agenda for next steps by participants and for the larger research community.
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Call for Entries! Apply to the Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation
The Cooney Center is accepting applications for the inaugural Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning, a national competition intended identify, inspire, nurture, and scale breakthrough ideas in children’s digital media and learning. The program will award cash prizes and provide ongoing business planning support to innovators in children’s educational media. This year's prizes include $50,000 towards prototype development in the Mobile Learning category, and $10,000 and the opportunity to work with Sesame Workshop to promote literacy skills through its iconic literacy show, The Electric Company.
Cooney Center’s Top 5 CES Trends
The Cooney Center kicked off 2010 with the 3rd annual Consumer Electronics Show Kids@Play Summit in Las Vegas on January 8. The jam-packed agenda included an announcement by the Cooney Center that our Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning are now open for submissions. White House executives, including FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Department of Education Director of Technology Karen Cator delivered remarks. Panels included a mix of industry, public media leaders, research, and policy leaders and included a “Demo Derby” showcasing new innovations in children’s products and voting for the first annual KAPi Awards. Check out our event wrap-up and the top 5 trends the Cooney Center team saw at the CES
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.



