The Cooney Center investigates and creates new knowledge, putting it directly into practice by engaging key decision-makers to invest and take action. Working closely with our national advisors, Cooney Center Fellows, media scholars, and practitioners, the Cooney Center conducts and disseminates timely research that examines key issues in the field of digital media and learning.

Initiatives: The New Coviewing Initiative: Investigating and Designing for Joint Media Engagement

In the 1980s, communications researchers discovered that children whose parents talk about Sesame Street as they watch learn more from the show. Caregivers who coview with their children can help guide their attention to media features salient for learning. But today, with approximately two-thirds of mothers in the workforce and more platforms delivering media into homes than ever before, children are often engaged with media by themselves, at earlier ages, and for longer periods of time. We can no longer consider television the primary platform, parents the primary participants, or living rooms the primary settings for shared media experiences. In the changing face of American family life, we must now also turn our attention to mobile devices and video games; teachers, grandparents, and siblings; and schools, after-school programs, museums, and the backseats of cars.

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Reports

iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category on Apple's App Store

by Carly Shuler | January 2012 | View Bio

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center has released iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category of Apple's App Store, an examination of nearly 200 top-selling education category apps for Apple’s iPad and iPhone with the goal of understanding this market’s dynamics and trends. The analysis highlights industry best practices and future opportunities for developers, educators and researchers to influence this important, but under-scrutinized category by closely examining the content of children’s apps within the education category. The report continues the work of the groundbreaking iLearn, published in 2009 as a benchmark for change of an ever-growing and evolving category.

View coverage of iLearn II on Wired, e School News and kidscreen.

DOWNLOAD: Report

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Upcoming Events

Teachers College Educational Technology Conference

May 19 - 20, 2012 | New York, NY - Columbia University

TCETC 2012 will take place on Saturday, May 19 and Sunday, May 20, 2012 at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY. This conference will serve as a multi-disciplinary forum for graduate students to discuss and exchange information on the research, development and applications of emerging technologies in PK-12 classrooms, at home environments and afterschool programs, distance learning settings, higher education, and corporate learning environments. Lori Takeuchi, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center's Director of Research, will be a guest speaker at the conference. http://blogs.tc.columbia.edu/tcetc/

Dust or Magic App Camp 2012

May 20 - 22, 2012

For the third year, designers and researchers interested in children’s apps will meet at Asilomar Conference Grounds on the Monterey Peninsula for the Dust or Magic Children’s App Design Institute. The three-day event includes sessions on child development, demos, critiques, testing and brainstorm sessions, including time with children talking about what they like and hate when it comes to app design. Speakers have been carefully selected to include relevant reviewers and designers with a track record in shaping the children's interactive space. http://www.childrenssoftware.com/dustormagic/