It may come as no surprise that kids want gadgets over toys this holiday season. According to the Duracell Toy Report, the top 10 most wanted toys for Christmas among kids 5-16 are squarely focused on tech, with iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads topping the list.

Read full article, Children Want Gadgets Not Toys for Christmas

The final version of the National Education Technology Plan was unveiled on Tuesday, outlining the transition from digital classrooms to other platforms–long overdue. 

Read Fred Belmont’s HuffPo piece, Obama’s New Digital Learning Plan: A Killer App. A few excerpts are shared below: 

Education Secretary Arne Duncan unveiled the final version of the National Education Technology Plan on Tuesday — proposals to use social networking, data collection and multi-media to get U.S. kids to learn more. According to Duncan, the plan — almost two years in the making — will help American education “transition to digital classrooms and transform learning” for the Facebook and IPhone generation and beyond. 

Mr. Belmont writes “A short urban legend might explain how this will work. Willie Sutton, a famous bank robber was asked why he robbed banks. He responded by saying, “because that’s where the money is.” To paraphrase Willie, learning must take place when and where the students are.”

Read the full article

This past August, the New York Times released an alarming article about plagiarism in U.S. higher education. Citing statistics from a Rutgers University study of 14,000 undergraduates, it reported that over 40 percent of students admitted to having copied text directly from the Internet. More frightening still, 34 percent said they did not consider plagiarizing from the Internet “serious cheating.”

As college professors, high school teachers, and parents become increasingly exasperated with a population of copy-and-pasters that fails to see the harm in a practice that the academic community deems utterly unacceptable, the question arises: How can we ensure that the child of today will not plagiarize in her tomorrows of high school, college, and beyond?

The lesson series entitled Respecting Creative Work — one of many free online resources in Common Sense Media‘s Digital Literacy and Citizenship in a Connected Culture curriculum for grades 6-8-outlines the following guidelines:

1.  ASK. How does the author say I can use the work? Do I have to get the creator’s permission first?

2. ACKNOWLEDGE. Did I give credit to the work I used?

3. ADD VALUE. Did I rework the material to make new meaning and add something original?

Although they’re written with older kids in mind, these three rules outline the basic skill set-both conceptual and mechanical-that every child must acquire along the journey from kindergartener to expert term-paperist. If their meanings are abstracted slightly, however, these three, easy-to-remember rules are applicable to children of all ages.

1. ASK: Who made this?

Before they learn how to produce citations, children must learn the concept of idea ownership. This requires an abstraction of more concrete ideas about ownership (“Just like you own this toy, you own your ideas, too”) and an appreciation of history (“All ideas come from people”).

As groundbreaking research on children and plagiarism at Yale’s Social Cognitive Development Lab suggests, notions about idea ownership may develop early. Studies found that children as young as five years old express significant dislike for a person who copies another’s work versus a person who creates an identical copy by coincidence. Teaching children about idea ownership is then simply a matter of explanation, broadening the “No fair, copycat!” reflex to include the online world and compelling them to think about their feelings of ownership over their own ideas when considering those of others. Common sense suggests presenting pictures of authors and artists alongside their work, helping children remember to consider the creator.

2. ACKNOWLEDGE: Did I give credit?

This tenet deals with mechanics. As Stanley Fish noted in his philosophical response to the original August 2010 Times article on college plagiarism, learning to use the conventions necessary for avoiding plagiarism is not unlike memorizing irregular verbs in a second language. Becoming comfortable with the rules takes time and practice, so as soon as kids start learning how to research (another excellent lesson series in the Common Sense curriculum), they should start practicing citations (readwritethink presents a kid-friendly guide for grades 3-5 here).

3. ADD VALUE: Did I do something interesting?

This final point deals with originality: iit asks us to teach children to value uniqueness, innovation, and creativity over the easier alternative of copying others’ work. While this seems perhaps a daunting goal, it may actually be a property that arises naturally when children are creative in groups.

Providing children with environments that allow them to experience the social value of their work empowers them as creators. Anne Dyson, Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has spent years researching the ways in which kindergarteners talk and share ideas while writing stories in their classrooms. Dyson argues that these organic, early forms of creative collaboration-planning imaginary birthday parties, for example — are the experiences through which children come to understand literacy as a social act.

When the context of creation is within a community of peers, temptations to copy entire works are surpassed by the desire to present novel, interesting material to the group. Individual creativity, originality, and innovation is thus at the heart of all the most exciting creative collaborations and participatory cultures, whether kindergarteners, hiphop artists, or academics are the creators of content.

Giving children experiences with informal intellectual and creative collaboration may be our most powerful strategy for preempting plagiarism. Encouraging children to become practiced and confident media producers will help them prefer the satisfaction of creation to the dullness of plagiarism, even as recent trends in crowdsourcing and content sharing blur traditional lines of idea ownership. The child who experiences the satisfaction and confidence that accompany acts of novel creativity when he is still clutching crayons will grow into the young adult who prefers his own work to Command + C.

Mariel Goddu is a senior at Yale University.

In today’s information-obese world, book reading has become a refuge from my click-happy, easily distracted, multitask-ery. But as books extend their reach into the digital landscape through the Kindle, iPad and the new Barnes & Noble Nook, I have to wonder: Does a book by any other platform still smell as sweet?

The Internet and digital media have often been blamed for the decline of children’s interest in reading books. In a 2007 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence, Chairman Dana Gioia warned: “Whatever the benefits of newer electronic media, they provide no measurable substitute for the intellectual and personal development initiated and sustained by frequent reading.” The NEA report provides a picture of Americans reading less, and reading less well. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2010 survey on kids’ digital media utilization further substantiates this decline in reading: since 2004, the proportion of children age 8-18 reading print media dropped by 7%, and the average amount of time spent reading also fell.

These trends have caused alarm among many education advocates because of the important links between literacy rates and a child’s lifelong success. Literacy is directly related to high school drop out rates and crime, and other important developmental metrics. In fact, the number of books in a household is as good an indicator of a child’s educational attainment as parents’ education level and household income.

It is undeniable that literacy is a foundational skill all children must master to succeed, but when it comes to the “Books vs. Digital Media” debate, are we judging digital reading by its cover? Unlike print media, digital texts have huge potential to engage young readers in stories with richer interactions. Some ebooks offer children the ability to interact with texts and narratives by letting them manipulate letters, words, and stories. Some of these platforms also have the functionality to inspire readers to express themselves through text, visual and audio recording. This technology can help kids express themselves so that they can both consume and create stories.

However, research such as the NEA report commonly includes print media exclusively. Although the Kaiser study did explore how much time kids spend reading online versions of newspapers and magazines, it did not go so far as to measure reading on other digital media platforms. If we applied the same methodology to track my reading habits, for example, we would likely capture less than 20% of the amount of time I spend reading weekly.

Unless we adapt how we are measuring reading and the quality of reading experiences for a digital age, we will face a huge gap in the research literature on literacy. Without comprehensive metrics and data on children’s reading habits on digital platforms, we will be less prepared to anticipate the future of reading, and consequently weaken our ability to overcome the literacy crisis.

Researchers and educators are beginning to explore the new reading landscape with kids:

New Literacies Research Team, University of Connecticut: Led by Don Leu, the team investigates new literacies and online reading comprehension.

Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report (2010): National bi-annual survey or kids and parents behaviors and attitudes toward reading. Among the results, the report found that technology could be a positive motivator to get kids reading.

Family Story Play: Reading with Young Children (and Elmo) Over a Distance by Hayes Raffle, Rafael “Tico” Ballagas, Glenda Revelle, et al. (Nokia Research Center, Sesame Workshop and Cooney Center) (2010): Investigated a shared reading experience between children and their parents with a remote grandparent over video conferencing, mediated by Elmo.

Institute of Museum & Library Services and MacArthur Foundation Youth Learning Labs: Announced in September as part of President Obama’s Educate to Innovate campaign, IMLS and MacArthur will create 30 new Youth Learning Labs in museums and libraries across the country modeled after Chicago’s YOUMedia.

eBooks: Libraries at the Tipping Point Conference: Virtual conference held in September by the Library Journal and School Library Journal to discuss the evolving concept of books in a digital world.

The knowledge gap: Implications of leveling the playing field for low-income and middle income children by Susan Neuman and Donna Celano (2006): Offers evidence of a “scaffolding gap,” children using libraries in middle-income neighborhoods used computers to go to print sites while children in low-income neighborhoods used the Internet to look at pictures with no print on the screen. 

As the eBook reader market continues to heat up, we need to re-examine what reading means in a digital age to more effectively reach struggling learners. With the heaviest media users (kids that consume more than 13.5 hours of media a day) also reporting lower grades and higher rates of unhappiness and boredom than other kids, digital platforms could be an important tool to reach these kids where they are.

A better understanding of reading on new platforms will not only influence how we can best reach struggling readers, but it will also shape how reading is taught and push us to rethink the role of libraries and other educational institutions outsides school that support literacy. Let’s stop judging text by its cover, and figure out which platforms—both analog and digital—are best for supporting children’s literacy skills.

Ann My Thai is the Assistant Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. She is also the lead author of the Center’s report on digital games and children’s health and learning, Game Changer.

The Cooney Center is thrilled to announce our newest report!

A mobile media revolution that is changing the lives of adults, and now children of all ages, is under way across the globe. This report focuses on how new forms of digital media are influencing very young children and their families in the United States and how we can deploy smart mobile devices and applications-apps, for short-in particular, to help advance their education.

Get more information and download report

Where we’re going, we won’t need remotes. In the slim chance that you haven’t heard yet, Microsoft released a game-changing new system called Kinect on Thursday. As the Wii revolutionized the market with a motion controller, Kinect throws the controller out the window altogether and literally puts you, the player, in the driver’s seat.

Kinect attaches to the Xbox 360 and lets you use your very own arms, legs and body (it tracks 48 parts of your body) to make things go and interact with the game space. The game space is, in fact, includes your entire living room (which is hopefully big enough) with endless possibilities for exploration. With four microphones and three lenses embedded around the room, it uses both voice and facial recognition, making the game play a full sensory experience. It recognizes you when you walk in the room and listens to your commands — great for the single gal.

As for kids, the opportunities are endless. Child-centered design is built right into the UI and there’s no better way for kids to gain mastery and self-efficacy, to say nothing about the physical fitness capabilities.

Here’s a selection of recent coverage:

Kinect Pushes Users Into a Sweaty New Dimension (New York Times)

Microsoft’s Kinect Brings Gestures To A New Level (NPR)

Microsoft Rings In Kinect’s Official Launch Amid Celebration, Questions Alike (Gamasutra)

The end of World War II was a pivotal moment in our nation’s history – it was the first time in 150 years that the government made a serious investment in public education. And it was the beginning of a long-term demographic shift of historic proportions.  Soldiers returning from war were given opportunities to a higher education long considered only attainable by the wealthy classes.  Women who served their country during the war in factories, on the ball field, in schools, and in the military returned home to their families.

Along came the 1960’s which brought turbulence and change. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson launched a war on poverty and mobilized a generation committed to change.  Yet the social movements of that era in women’s roles, in civil rights, and in experimental educational practices; were not able to address a glaring gap –the gulf between a more affluent class of families who benefited from a booming economy and those whose low income or other disadvantages led their children on a path to meager outcomes.   When Head Start and Sesame Street debuted over 40 years ago, they were aligned at the hip – they both shared an outlook focused on transforming vulnerable children and their families’ lives through education – and around a 360° approach promoting physical health, emotional development and cognitive learning focused on displayable skills.

From this perch, the stage was set for Sesame Street over 40 years ago.  The founders, Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, asked a question, “can television teach kids their ABCs in the same way it was introducing advertising jingles for cereal?”  This challenge to educators – and television producers, directors and writers ignited an idea. And this idea became the longest running children’s show in the world, now reaching well over 100 million children in over 140 countries.

Yes, we have focused on letters and numbers – but most recently also childhood obesity, military deployment and food insecurity.

Internationally, girls education in Egypt, HIV infection in four year olds in South Africa, mutual respect and understanding in Kosovo and Northern Ireland – even Israelis and Palestinians.

And it’s not just about television anymore.  Media are so ubiquitous that children are literally wearing devices as part of their clothing, and are “always connected.”  More viewers are watching Sesame Street on other platforms like iPods and the internet than on television these days.  There are “ebooks” to read online and games to teach literacy and health.  Podcasts and iPhone apps provide on the go/anytime entertainment and learning.

The media landscape for kids is much different from when we first started.  According to research conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, on a typical day, the average elementary student is using personal media more time than they are spending in school.  Or doing anything else other than sleeping, frankly.  And mobile media is where it’s at – globally, 5 billion cell phones – media on my time, where I want it – portable, and on demand.

Where is the education landscape?  Since Sesame Street started, our nation’s population has nearly doubled – our classes and schools are stretched.   In 1983, a Nation at Risk declared that a “rising tide of mediocrity” threatened the US’ competitive position.  27 years later, that prescription sadly has proven prophetic as indicators show that low-income children entering school now are trailing behind – knowing one-third fewer words than their privileged peers. More than one-half of low-income and minority 4th graders score below basic levels on reading exams.  One-half of inner city high school students today won’t graduate at all.  And, as Secretary Duncan says, you can’t get a good job with just a high school diploma!

We have fallen from first in college graduation rates globally to near the bottom of the top 10 in less than two decades.  Thousands of US jobs go unfilled because students aren’t entering the workforce with the technical skills they need to fill them. And the political landscape is in gridlock – stuck between arguments over merit pay and teacher contracts – when Wall Street bonuses boggle the imagination – and a skeptical public justifiably questions the continuation of investment in districts with disappointing outcomes year after year.

Everyone at this meeting shares the belief that education has to be on top of the national agenda, if we want to make America competitive and fit for the country.  The stakes could not be higher.  But let’s be frank—we can’t do things the same way if we are going to turn things around.  What can we do next to break a bad cycle?

The Sesame Street experience offers insights worth considering.  What keeps Sesame Street successful is continuous experimentation.  We are constantly asking ourselves, what works?  What doesn’t?  What is the next “big idea” for reaching children with educational content wherever they are and with whatever it takes?

We know that children and media are indelibly linked, whether we like it or not. We know that educational media can be effective as a learning tool.  We also know that media alone cannot close the achievement gap.  But it can help – a lot.

Students’ natural attraction to technology reminds me of my grandmother’s excitement over the refrigerator.  As kids, we couldn’t understand her visceral joy because, after all, to us, it was ‘just an appliance.’ but she remembered life without that refrigerator.  We did not.  To a child today that cell phone, Blackberry or iPod is just an appliance.  They have never known life without technology.  And never will.

These “appliances” are having an increasingly important role.  You as Grantmakers are driving new ideas around charter schools, innovative assessment models, and the use of smart boards and iPads in classrooms.  There are schools like quest to learn in New York City that are using technology and gaming the same way conventional classrooms use textbooks, pencils and notebooks.  Or the School of One, also in New York City, or High Tech High in San Diego are personalizing instruction through technology enabled project-based learning. They are breaking the mold on how to assess and reward a competent learner.  These schools are generating enthusiasm and motivation in their students.  Technology is sparking that enthusiasm.

And younger kids – our digital natives – can benefit, too.

Digital learning, starting in the earliest years should not be viewed as a threat to parent-child bonding or to purposeful engagement.  If well deployed, and culturally astute, digital educational media can untap a well of innovation in learning, much as we did 40 years ago, that can lead to real change for kids.

Let’s re-point our compass onto five planes –

First, re-invent early education.  There are powerful economic arguments about investing in early education.  Jim Heckman and others have found that a $6700 investment in quality pre-k for at-risk children yields a $70,000 return on investment over the life of the child.  It improves outcomes for long-term educational achievement, home ownership and salary while reducing negative behaviors, like substance abuse and crime.

But are the early education models invented 40 years ago evolving at the pace we need to change children’s lives today?  Are the models using technology as a tool for discovery and intention?  Are the staff and the environments designed and developed for productivity and for personal attention?  Can overstressed parents – who are dealing with an economy that asks for more effort to make ends meet — effectively track and contribute to children’s progress?  Are the skills being taught internationally benchmarked?   The short answer: not yet.

This is why we are looking at the role Sesame Street can play in recharging early education.  Sesame Street is an educational brand that three generations of viewers are familiar with.  Believe it or not, we’ve produced over 4,000 hours of curriculum-based content that can be used to reinforce lessons of all kinds — from literacy, health, and socio-emotional skills to math and science skills – not just at home but now  – in the classroom.

We can help that preschool teacher in Dallas or New Orleans reinforce her lesson on geometric shapes with compelling video about Telly’s love for triangles.  Or help connect the home-school environment through mobile messages to parents about what their child is learning and how that learning can continue at home, in the car or at the neighborhood grocery store.  Today – Julio learned the letter C – “point out things that start with the letter C – C is for clock, C is for cat … cauliflower, cantaloupe” … or provide the individualized learning that a struggling child might need to help Julio build knowledge and confidence at his own pace.

Learning never stops – it is 24/7 and must encompass the whole child.  We have an opportunity to really build a system that looks holistically at education connecting the home and school to create a preschool for the 21st Century.

Second, the quality of the content matters.  We know kids are using media more and more everyday.  And while their media choices continue to expand, sometimes more is just more.

There is a real lack of quality, educational content available for elementary children, especially those in grades k-3. An analysis of nearly 300 interactive media products for preschool and elementary age children by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop found only two products based on an explicit educational curriculum available on the market.  We need more.  And we need to know how this content is impacting children’s learning.

Without quality educational content, technology is essentially a neutral medium.  It is “dumb”. It is the content that gives way to learning.  It is the content that makes technology such a valuable partner for individualized learning both inside and outside the classroom.

Take The Electric Company.  We recently brought it back to provide a “360 degree” literacy experience for 6-9 year olds using television, the internet, mobile devices, video games, print materials, after-school programs and community events.  It was created to hit the crucial time in literacy when children transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.”

What we’ve found is that kids are showing significant literacy gains, especially when our content is embedded in a robust early learning intervention program for struggling readers.  Kids are learning from just one segment — image what an entire library of great content can do?  In fact, we are now creating a complete phonics genome collection – so teachers can illustrate each or all of the 126 phonemic rules of the English language – the silent e and the c-h sound — we have to tap into this potential.

Third, train teachers to use technology.  When I think about teachers today, I think about Jennifer Ward at Kilpatrick Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee, a school in the shadow of Titans Stadium in an African immigrant neighborhood.  In her class of low-income preschoolers, she uses a slide projector hooked up to a computer to show video clips that support her lessons. These short videos open her students up to a larger world.  They also open up possibilities for how she teaches her students.  And she is doing it with some success.  But think what she could achieve with cataloged lesson plans tied directly to digital content illustrations.

Of course, we can talk all day about how great technology is in the classroom – how it holds unlimited potential for learning — but if we don’t train and support our teachers it will be just another gimmick with low return.

Teachers, especially young teachers, are increasingly receptive to the possibilities media hold as a learning device.  In fact, three-quarters are already using some form of digital media in the classroom.

We expect these numbers to only rise as more graduates enter the classroom, out of colleges and teaching colleges, themselves digital natives.  Now we have to make sure that behind every teacher is a solid professional development program to maximize the arsenal of content they can now have at their disposal.

Fourth, we have to engage parents – children’s first teachers – in a much more thoroughly modern and systematic way. 

A few years ago, with the assistance of a research team at Wested Labs, we developed a pilot study in Oakland, California looking at how cell phones could be used to encourage children’s emergent literacy skills.  Parents who participated agreed to take a call from Sesame Street’s Maria introducing a new letter every day for a month.  After the call, they were asked to hand the cell phone to their child who would then see a short video message about that letter from Elmo.  At the conclusion of the study, 75% of lower-income parents said that this interaction really helped improve their child’s knowledge of the alphabet.  Just as importantly, parents felt connected to their child’s learning.  A crude test – but in one month using a cell phone – kids learned the alphabet in Oakland, California.

Finally, we must forge unpredictable alliances to innovate.   You know the African proverb (or maybe it was the Tea Party) that says, “if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”  In this revolution we will need to unite our own expertise to create a new style of learning for the 21st Century.  It will fuse unlikely partners to create content and resources that work inside and outside the classroom.  Simply put, the sum of the whole will be much larger than the individual parts so we must work together.

Everyone in this room is already working hard to tackle the challenges of education.  Literacy.  Early childhood.  Stem education.  High school dropout rates. Small schools. Big schools. You are all here in New Orleans because of that commitment to help build solutions.  You are the action leaders that can invest and convene allies from contrasting sectors to seed new ideas and scale proven ones.  And, by the way, promote and push and prod political leaders who are increasingly incapable of driving dramatic, structural changes.

Just as we faced at the end of WWII and at the declaration of the War on Poverty, we are at a crossroads in education in 2010.  We can shape the kind of transformational change we want to see in our education system, or maintain the status quo that is pushing our nation farther down the global economic ladder.

The message goes much farther than educating a child.  This is about educating a nation on how and why we must start education early, all the while igniting children’s passion and enthusiasm for learning through lessons that meet children on their own turf through the common bond of technology – teamed up with great teaching – and a new digital trend to the connected parent.

If I leave you with one thought today it is to not underestimate the power of technology in education and the vitality and sense of fervor it can bring when looking through the lens of 21st Century learning.  Technology can help build and create innovative linkages in education, employing new ways for how we prepare that low-income preschooler in Oakland to succeed in school, or help that teacher in Nashville challenge and motivate a clever, tech-savvy – yet struggling – 3rd grader reach reading proficiency, or inspire that high school student in Detroit so when he is handed that diploma, he is positive and motivated about his future.  And our nation is the better for it.

This is the kind of future we all want for our children.  There really is no room for failure at this level of the game – the stakes are just too high.  For how we move the education agenda forward today not only impacts the life of a child; it impacts the trajectory of a nation.  This is our legacy.  Thank you allowing me to be part of this discussion today.

The 2010 midterm victors may have technology to thank for sending them into the majority. The blogosphere is abuzz about how much of an impact social media and geo-location services will play in the outcome. Whichever way it goes, there is much to learn about the connection and/or distinction between real and online worlds. In addition, the following products and trends also have great implications for how we develop social science based content and how we engage kids in civic participation.

– How the ABC News iPad App is Adding Interactivity to Election Night
ABC News’ interactive electoral map app served up real time updates straight to the iPad, making election night a game, not unlike Play the News, a social impact game in which youth and adults can be active participants in current events.

– iCivics published two new games for the occasion: Activate and Cast Your Vote!

– Foursquare and Facebook also got in on the election scene with location based polling locators and voter buzz messaging. Foursquare’s Election Page shows final check-ins at nearly 46,000.

– The New York Times published a tool at The Election Will Be Tweeted (and Retweeted) that measures tweets related to specific candidates in a very interesting animated interface.

– Shaping Youth has a nice roundup of online and offline activities for getting kids and teens politically involved.

This post originally appeared in New Media Literacies on October, 25, 2010.

I recently attended Digital Hollywood, a digital media trade conference in Los Angeles for executives in the film, television, computer, music, and telecommunications fields. As a Ph.D. student in Communication at USC Annenberg, I attended four panels relevant to my research interests in children and media. These panels were organized around the following themes: immersive touchscreen media, mobile apps, crossmedia content reinvention, and one specifically on children in the digital space (of which the Cooney Center’s Ann My Thai and PBS Kids’ Sara DeWitt were panelists).

There was a wide range of conversation topics between the different panels, far too many for a single blog post. However, my main purpose in attending was to hone in on this question: In what ways can we meaningfully leverage the technological innovation driven by profit in Hollywood into creating deep-learning digital experiences in informal and formal education for children?

My single day at the conference (Me: “Sorry, I’d attend your panel on Tuesday morning but I have stats class at 9AM.”) brought up some evocative questions, as well as some perennial frustrations. I would divide my takeaways into three categories: opportunities, obstacles, and those issues for which an in-depth discussion was unfortunately missing.

Opportunities

Teaching “R&D”: Numerous panelists emphasized the importance of research and development (R&D). There are a number of skills that programmers and developers practice during this process that could apply to education (e.g., putting things in beta, trial-and-error in usability testing). How can we translate this “digital sandbox” (a phrase the grown-ups in attendance were fond of) into informal and formal learning opportunities? What if we gave children the time to stop along the course of their personal innovations to spend ample time with that which is endlessly frustrating? As a society, are we rushing children too much or are we providing them with the freedom and flexibility to fail early and fail often? Failure can be valuable, not just in debugging a video game set for mass market release, but in developing creativity and resilience in school and beyond.Augmented reality and touchscreen with texture: A couple panelists richly described features we can expect from handheld electronic devices in the coming years. The digital world opens even wider when we consider the potential for augmented reality in educational iPad apps or the potential for haptic devices with the ability to simulate texture (as opposed to the glossy smoothness of a tablet). Imagine the uses for occupational therapy, for feeling the strings and vibrations of a virtual harpsichord, or for pop-up e-books. How can these features exist in tandem with and supplement their “real-life” counterparts?

Obstacles

“The living room”: A number of panelists, particularly those in the home entertainment market, spoke on length and broadly about “the living room” as a multimedia hub. The industry is quite openly interested in creating multi-screen experiences, so that someone can start watching a movie or playing a game on the TV in their living room, for example, and continue the same experience when they move to a different compatible device in a different place. A few panelists emphasized that this advance is a few years away from being the norm, and that right now, the multi-screen landscape is a “a playground with no kids playing in it yet.” There are opportunities and obstacles in this development. How can this anytime/anywhere/anyplace innovation promote intergenerational media experiences around education? On the other hand, will families have to work harder now to find their own balance between mediated and unmediated family interaction in the living room?

iBooks store interface: The real time searches people are experiencing, and are now coming to expect, are not being translated in the iBooks store interface. For example, one panelist, a digital distribution marketing executive, mentioned frustration about the lack of a comic book or graphic novel category in the iBooks storefront. Does this imply that comic books aren’t as worthy as other forms of literature? Besides the economic significance, what parameters defining “literacy” are being constructed from the top down?

Missing Conversations

A nuanced discussion of children’s media habits: Far too many panelists spoke in broad generalizations about children, especially about how “different” they are from prior generations. These observations were mainly based on anecdotal evidence about the panelists’ own children (a skewed sample at best), as opposed to research. For example, one panelist in the children’s media space talked quite absolutely about the child audience being “like locusts – moving from field to field” until they’ve exhausted all available content, and that like locusts, children will move on in hordes without new content. It seems to be a problematic chicken vs. egg dichotomy to say the least. Is that truly the way that children inherently “are” or are they treated as such in order to drive the profit margin? What about children who will eagerly watch the exact same DVD or single episode of a TV show over and over? How much about what digital Hollywood “knows” about children is based on developmental psychology?

Content creation: As I suppose is par the course for a conference focused on turning people’s digital navigation into revenue streams, the conversation in all of the panels I attended was completely dominated by content consumption, with far less of an emphasis on content creation, even counting YouTube and Twitter. (Ironically, for a “Digital Hollywood” conference, there was very little backchannel Tweeting going on using the conference hashtag.) Even when talking about content in the kids’ digital space, when the dialogue did focus on children’s content creation, the initial focus was on the harmful content children create (e.g. mean Formspring posts, cyberbullying) as opposed to the potential for learning through creating in a digital context.

Diversity: While living in Los Angeles and toggling through different hats – academic, researcher, developer, and content creator – I’ve come to realize that “Hollywood” means a whole lot of different things conceptually to different people. Similarly, when discussing “digital Hollywood,” I could conceivably refer to the day laborers of USC’ Mobile Voices project, just as I could be talking about the largely Caucasian and male attendees of this conference. I hope that in the years to come, as we support future generations’ digital learning, there is a greater plurality of perspectives among the gatekeepers of Hollywood.

What do you think are the opportunities and obstacles for meaningfully leveraging Hollywood’s technological innovations for deep-learning digital experiences? What is missing from the conversation at large?

Meryl Alper is a Ph.D. student in Communication at USC Annenberg and Research Assistant for Project New Media Literacies with Prof. Henry Jenkins. Prior to graduate school, she was an intern in the domestic educational research group at Sesame Workshop, as well as Research Manager for Nick Jr.