Initiatives

National STEM Video Game Challenge

The Cooney Center, in collaboration with E-Line Media, is proud to host the National STEM Video Game Challenge, part of the "Educate to Innovate" campaign, which President Obama launched in November 2009 to harness the excitement and educational potential of video games to advance STEM learning (science, technology, engineering, and math). 

Key Tags:  STEM, video games, competition, prize, innovation, E-Line Media, Microsoft, ESA, Educate to Innovate, White House

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Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children's Media

The goals of the Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation are to identify, inspire, nurture, and scale breakthrough ideas in children's digital media and learning. The program will annually award cash prizes and provide ongoing business planning support and mentorship to a new generation of children's media entrepreneurs and visionaries.

Key Tags:  innovation, prize, competition, Mattel, Skild, literacy, mobile, The Electric Company

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Cooney Center Fellows Program

Cooney Center Fellows assist with high-priority research, program development, and dissemination activities that examine the potential and challenges associated with digital media applications in promoting children's learning and healthy development. In addition, the Cooney Center has established a research fund to help establish priority issues to study.

Learn more about our current fellows.

Key Tags:  fellowship, educational research, Cooney Center Fellows

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Story Visit

The Cooney Center Sesame Workshop, and Nokia Research Center have formed a research collaboration to explore ways in which mobile media can support family communication and literacy. Dr. Glenda Revelle, a Senior Fellow at the Cooney Center is the recipient of the Center's first Nokia-funded research fellowship.

Key Tags:  literacy, Nokia, reading, intergenerational, coviewing, Glenda Revelle, Sesame Workshop, Elmo

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Intergenerational Play and Literacy Learning

Forty years of Sesame Street research has consistently demonstrated greater learning benefits when children co-view an educational television program, compared to viewing alone. Might benefits also accrue when adults and children use educational games together?

Key Tags:  Intergen, educational research, co-viewing, game research, educational gaming, Cynthia Chiong, video games, intergenerational learning

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Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council

The Cooney Center, in collaboration with the Stanford Educational Leadership Institute, has convened a Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council, co-chaired by Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University and Susan Zelman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which held its first meeting at Sesame Workshop on January 28, 2010. The council's sixteen members from academia, industry, and policy are assessing current practices in early education and elementary school teaching. They will then design a professional development "blueprint" to advance the use of effective digital media in teaching and learning, with a special emphasis on instruction for underserved students. The final report will be issued in Fall/Winter 2010. 

Key Tags:  CPB, DATPC, SELI, Linda Darling-Hammond, Susan Zelman, educational leadership

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Giigle Study

The Internet has great potential as a source of learning for children, but search engines such as those offered by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft were originally designed for adults. Given the growing number of young children who are using the Web, we need to understand how children approach forming queries, make sense of the results presented, and how they may be hampered by the search engine's interface and/or by their own cognitive abilities. With the knowledge gained from the Giigle study, new interfaces and algorithms can be designed specifically for children.

Key Tags:  Allison Druin, HCIL, Giigle, search, educational research, digital literacy

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Kids Closer Up: Case Studies of Digital Youth

Researchers from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center observed four ordinary 8-year-old girls to get a sense of what they are doing on Club Penguin, with their Nintendo DS systems, and on the Internet and why. We also asked their parents what they think their children might be learning from this daily diet of digital technologies.

Key Tags:  Kids Closer Up, Club Penguin, Nintendo DS, digital learning, James Paul Gee, new literacies

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First Book Literacy Initiative

This model development project is examining how to deliver printed and digitally formatted books and other rich interactive educational media through existing distribution channels to low-income and minority children in the United States. The Center has established a partnership with First Book, an internationally acclaimed literacy network of preschool, afterschool, and school-based programs that have distributed more than 50 million books in the U.S. Key partners in the planning are Dr. Allison Druin, whose Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland is developing prototypes and exhibitions of digital books from the International Children's Digital Library and Christopher Cerf of Sirius Thinking Ltd., the noted children's literacy expert and Creative Producer of the Public Broadcasting System's Emmy Award-winning early literacy program, Between the Lions.

Key Tags:  First Book, literacy, development model, Allison Druin, HCIL, ICDL, Christopher Cerf, Sirius Thinking, LongView Foundation, Between The Lions

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The Global Schoolhouse Project

Which digital curricula and literacy elements will help define the "classroom" of tomorrow for elementary school kids? Working closely with leaders from internationally themed schools, principals, and curricular experts, the Center is reviewing educational media materials, websites, and game content that focus on reading, writing, second language acquisition, and global understanding to define how an elementary school or extended learning setting for diverse, low-income and minority kids can be transformed with rich, multimedia content. The Center's research will take place in tandem with Asia Society, the nation's leader in the creation of global education initiatives, including the International Studies Schools Network, a school development initiative that serves urban youth in urban settings with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Key Tags:  GS, Global Schoolhouse, global learning, Asia Society, Gate Foundation, ISSL, Panwapa

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