June 15, 2010

Last week, the University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted their 6th annual Games+Learning+Society Conference.

Here’s a great week wrap-up by the contributors at UW-Madison’s Antenna: Report from GLS 6.0.

This year included special side events, such as Academic Fest day for Ed Tech folks, an Educator Symposium, and a Mobile Learning Summit.

Keynote speakers included the always awesome Kurt Squire, Henry Jenkins, and David Wiley, Ph.D.

TechDrawl‘s Dave Walters interviewed our Executive Director, Michael H. Levine on May 19, 2010:

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Thursday, April 29, 2010

Read up on the pass-back effect in this article by Mom Logic’s Ronda Kaysen.

As more and more moms trade in their cell phones for smartphones, they are finding that the devices serve a second purpose: that of portable babysitter. CNN has reported that nearly half of the 100 top-selling educational apps in the iTunes App Store were created for preschool and elementary-school kids, according to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, an organization that supports using digital media for children’s education.

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Brand Channel‘s Sheila Shayon explores our recent discoveries on children’s iPhone apps from our recent publication: iLearn: A Content Analysis of the iTunes App Store’s Education Section.

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April 2010

Over a year ago, we began to notice something we couldn’t ignore.  We noticed it in grocery stores and on the subway.  We noticed it at shopping malls and in coffee shops.  What we noticed was children – even very young children – playing on devices that weren’t specifically designed for them.  The iPhone and iPod Touch revolution had hit the masses – and seemed to be including children as young as 3.  While it felt counterintuitive that children would own iPhones, or even iPod Touches, anecdotally it became very common to observe the “pass-back” effect, where a parent or adult passes their own device to a child.

Considering this phenomenon, it became important to consider the role that apps may play in children’s learning.  To delve into this issue, we published a mini study called iLearn last fall.  The short paper was a content analysis of the education section of the iTunes App Store, focusing on the 100 top-selling apps in this section.  While the study was small, the implications were large, making it clear that apps are a significant new medium for providing educational content to children, both in terms of their availability and popularity.

Our most interesting find was that nearly half of the titles (47) specifically targeted children, with preschoolers being the largest single age category with 35 out of 100 titles.  Even more telling, when we drilled down to the top 25 best-selling apps, 60% of them targeted toddler/preschool children — almost double the number that target adults!  The analysis revealed apps available in a variety of school subjects, ranging from letter recognition to test prep. And, good news for parents, we found that children’s educational apps tend to cost less than apps for older children or adults, rarely going above $0.99.

It is now 6 months after publishing iLearn, and the app market for kids continues to explode.  The iTunes store has opened a dedicated section of “Apps for Kids.”  Major children’s entertainment companies have continued diving into this market en masse, and our very own Sesame Street now has numerous apps available for kids and parents alike.  Apple has launched the iPad, which some say could be the game changer in children’s education, and as Warren Buckleitner recently documented, is undoubtedly a kid-friendly device.  And, above all, we continue to notice the pass-back effect, as we observe children nationwide playing with iPhones and iPod Touches as though they were designed just for them.  Who knows where this will all go?  But we do know that the pass-back effect continues to march forward, and as it does we must continue to consider the role that apps may play in children’s learning.

Reprinted from Gary’s Blog, May 2010. Gary Knell is Sesame Workshop’s President & CEO.

Earlier this month, the USDA and First Lady Michelle Obama opened entries for their Apps for Healthy Kids competition.  Via the competition, the USDA is offering a $40,000 prize pool for leveraging USDA nutritional data to create software which encourages children “to make more nutritious food choices and be more physically active.” We’re delighted to have Michael H. Levine, Executive Director of the Cooney Center, as a judge.

Over the last few months, contests which reward innovation have been a subtle and organic theme here at the Workshop. Beyond the USDA’s contest, we are involved in four others. Karen Driscoll, our Vice President of Marketing Services, is a judge for the Doodle 4 Google contest, that invites K-12 students design a Google Doodle. The Workshop has partnered with Aniboom, an online community of animators, to power a contest to develop an animation which will be featured in the next season of Sesame Street.  We’ve also partnered with Nokia — a contest where we ask the world, literally, to help us power educational content for mobile handsets. And the Cooney Center has a contest of its own: $10,000 to use The Electric Company to provide “an innovative digital media experience that promotes literacy skills” among 6 to 9 year-olds. (I’m a judge in that one.)

Contests are a great way to find innovators — people with great ideas and the skills necessary to execute on them — but are especially valuable for us.  As a nonprofit, resources are scarce and precious.  We can cast a large net through these contests, and I find them to be an interesting tool.  It’s not something we can do for everything — far from it — but it is a great way to encourage people to participate in our mission and improve our content at the same time.

May 2010:

This year’s San Francisco Game Developers Conference, the largest annual game developers conference in the world, was marked by a notable focus on player-centered and social game play experiences. These trends began gaining momentum in years’ past, but with the breakthrough success of games such as Farmville on social networks like Facebook, the emphasis on player-centered design and social game play rang loud and clear in 2010. Game makers are tapping into the wealth of content and behaviors users share on social networks to craft personalized, customized play experiences that push the boundaries of how games have been traditionally defined in the past. Accordingly, developers are leveraging users’ networks to expand the reach of their games, and, consequently, have a renewed focus on offering more social and collaborative forms of game play.

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May 2010:

This year’s San Francisco Game Developers Conference, the largest annual game developers conference in the world, was marked by a notable focus on player-centered and social game play experiences. These trends began gaining momentum in years’ past, but with the breakthrough success of games such as Farmville on social networks like Facebook, the emphasis on player-centered design and social game play rang loud and clear in 2010. Game makers are tapping into the wealth of content and behaviors users share on social networks to craft personalized, customized play experiences that push the boundaries of how games have been traditionally defined in the past. Accordingly, developers are leveraging users’ networks to expand the reach of their games, and, consequently, have a renewed focus on offering more social and collaborative forms of game play.

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Reprinted from Gary’s Blog, May 2010. Gary Knell, Sesame Workshop’s President and CEO reports on his visit to the FCC:

It’s not every day you get to go to the FCC. But today, Elmo needs a chaperone.

In February of 2009, Congress passed a bill which authorizes the FCC to create a National Broadband Plan which aims “to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability.” Today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Elmo, and I, will discuss the National Broadband Plan, and how it can and should impact the lives of children.   

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March 2010 Guest post from Jeanne Wellings, a Research Specialist in the Florida school system

Innovation Unique to Education

Keynote speaker, Larry Keeley from Doblin, Inc., described the essential elements of transformative commercial innovations and explained how those elements are needed to revolutionize education. In a slideshow presentation, Keeley noted that innovation in education is currently different than other industries. He said educational innovations happen more slowly and in isolation; educators are slow to adopt new, best practices; few districts choose to be early adopters; and “adoptions of proven advances are erratic and political.” Doblin shared  encouraging educational innovations , including greater openness (Curriki and Whyville), new structures (WA Virtual Academies), business model revolutions, experience revolutions (Khan Academy, PASS model, Green Schools), and technology leverage. Doblin concluded that organizations like CoSN can become catalysts for educational innovation by challenging orthodoxies, fostering interoperability, being modular, using measures to identify and expand successful practices, and using incentives to spur adoption. 

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