Cooney Center Research Associate Ingrid Erickson is teaming up with Ruth V. Small from Syracuse University and Eric Meyers from the University of British Columbia to co-edit a special issue of the journal Learning Media & Technology on the topic of digital literacy in informal learning environments.

I’m excited to be co-editing an upcoming special issue of the journal Learning, Media and Technology that will be published in late 2012.

We’re seeking proposals for papers that will focus on the relationship between digital literacy, digital skills and practices, and informal learning environments. Beyond the ability to find and use information online, digital literacy encompasses issues of cognitive authority, safety and privacy, creative, ethical, and responsible use and reuse of digital media. We think this is a rich framework for analyzing the important learning that is going on in public libraries, museums and after school programs today.

Contributions that address the several ways digital literacy affects the lives of people as they explore media representations, solve everyday problems, and create new knowledge are particularly welcomed. As an “anywhere, anytime” learning ethos takes hold, we need to better understand and evaluate the relationships between tools, context, content and environment. We’re hoping this collection of papers will help to shed light on these important, yet complex, interactions.

To be considered for the special issue, please send your 300-word abstract to us by September 30, 2011 at LMT.diglit[at]gmail.com. Finalist authors will be contacted by mid-October 2011 and completed papers will be due late January 2012. Check http://bit.ly/LMTdiglit for more information.

We’re always happy to spread the word for our Cooney Center Prize finalists — especially when they have exciting new projects and updates to share. This week, Andy Russell and Thushan Amarasiriwardena of Launchpad Toys have partnered with Wired’s GeekDad to announce a fun new contest: Kids and their parents are invited to share ‘toons they create about their summer travel adventures for a chance to win a LEGO space shuttle or a $100 Amazon gift certificate. (Check out the video of Andy and Thushan hard at work testing the “usability” of the Lego shuttle below.)

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Dale Lipschultz, Literacy Officer for the American Library Association, was a panelist in the “Targeted Public Engagement Campaigns” session at the Learning from Hollywood Forum. She is also helping to guide our Action Teams as they work to turn their collective energy into collaborative projects.

I came to the Forum with an open mind tempered by a healthy dose of skepticism. As a pragmatic Midwesterner, I wondered if it was reasonable to learn anything relevant from Hollywood. After all, I know literacy across the lifespan. In fact, I’ve made a rather long career of working in “non-school” settings – libraries, museums, after school programs. I understand the magnitude of the issues and challenges that we as educators, innovators, and occasional optimists face.

Our current educational crisis is not new, but it is reaching epic proportions. We’ve long been a nation at risk for educational failure. We know the statistics — maybe too well. The daunting numbers roll off my tongue every time I make the case of investing more in libraries, literacy, and education. It’s easy to talk about the fourth grade reading crisis, the high school dropout rate, and adult illiteracy numbers so large they shake me to my core and keep me up at night. I know what’s been tried, what’s worked, and what’s fallen by the wayside in the name of progress and ideology.

I also know that the devastating cuts in education funding are deepening this crisis in elementary and secondary education. On the state and local level, under education is now a political and economic strategy. One cost cutting strategy is shortening the school day. These decisions place children already at risk for academic failure on the very brink of slipping through the cracks.

The number of hours children spend outside of the classroom presents both a challenge and an opportunity for educators and innovators. We need to focus on and make the most of this out-of-school time — the ways kids use the time; how communities can develop innovative, coordinated, and scalable learning activities; how the Academy and the philanthropic community can encourage, facilitate, and promote these efforts. And how, in the end, we can inspire a new generation of teachers, learners, and innovators.

I thought about what engagement and participation would look like for libraries. Libraries — public and school — are a critical element in any initiative that addresses 21st century learning, children, after school time, and innovation. Libraries have long served as homework help centers and resource centers. Now the need is greater, the call for action is louder, and the stakes substantially higher. Libraries are the heart of the community serving as community centers and technology hubs, providing access to resources, and offering multiple opportunities for learning, teaching, collaboration, and innovation.

Today’s kids are digital natives — they’re eager to learn, innovate, create, and share. They’re looking to us for direction and strategic guidance. The Forum is a starting point. Our task, as educators and innovators, is to work together, think creatively, and build new systems for educating America’s youth. We have this opportunity, we have the minds, we have the tools, and we have the support. The question is — do we have the will?

Dale Lipschultz, Ph.D.

Literacy Officer, Office for Literacy and Outreach Services, American Library Association

Dale Lipschultz is the Literacy Officer in the American Library Association’s Office for Literacy and Outreach Services. As Literacy Officer, Dale focuses on building ALA’s capacity in adult literacy by working with the Association’s offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C., supporting the literacy efforts of public, school, and academic libraries, and collaborating with national partners. Currently, she is the project director for The American Dream Starts @ your library, funded by the Dollar General Literacy Foundation. Prior to coming to ALA, Dr. Lipschultz played a leadership role in the founding and development of several Chicago-based literacy initiatives serving children and families. In 1989-1990, she worked as a researcher and teacher in the former Soviet Union. The Velham Project, a grassroots diplomatic and educational initiative funded by the Carnegie Foundation, used first generation computer games and early telecommunications to create a network of computer-based activities for after-school centers in the United States and Moscow. She has a M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Child Development from the Erikson Institute in Chicago, Illinois.

Just over a week ago, I had the pleasure of assisting members of the Cooney Center staff in a two-day research study at the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) in Queens, NY. The study, conducted in corroboration with NYSCI, focused on the interaction between children (ages 3-5) and their caregivers when reading two different science books: one regular book and one on the iPad. Would the iPad serve as a distraction to children or would it actually promote as much parent-child conversation and interaction as the print book? In order to answer this important question, the children and their caregivers were asked a series of questions after each book was finished as well as at the end of the session.

In theory, the research study seemed like a fantastic idea but you can never be certain until you try it out in the field. So, off we went to Queens. When we arrived at NYSCI for the study, Dr. David Kanter, who is founding director of SciPlay, warmly welcomed us. (SciPlay, formally known as The Sara Lee Schupf Family Center for Play, Science, and Technology Learning, was launched in 2010 as a design and research center for teaching children about science through play.) He then brought us to the Preschool Place, where we would be conducting our study. I was assigned the job of recruiting and signing up families for the study—a worthy job for a first time researcher!

As families started pouring into the museum I thought that recruiting would be a piece of cake. Boy was I wrong! The main problem seemed to be that both the parents and their children didn’t want to sit down and read two books, or parents did not expect to take time away from a “fun visit” to ask their kids to read. After all, a science museum with cool gadgets and a mini golf course is kind of hard to compete with!

Nevertheless, once I got people to sign up for the study, everything went pretty smoothly thanks to the Cooney Center’s great research staff. Of course, a few families walked out in the middle of the study because their child couldn’t sit still, but overall, most families were very cooperative. In addition, I found that this type of research really excited a lot of families and many even asked us to put them on our mailing list so that they could see the study when it was finished. In the coming weeks we will be reviewing the results of the study and I think they will be quite fascinating. We hope to share them soon!

I want to give a special thanks to Dr. David Kanter, Alice Stevenson, and the staff at the New York Hall of Science for their help at the museum. It was truly the perfect setup.

Zachary Levine is an intern with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center this summer. He is a rising sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is studying international relations. In summer 2010, he worked at E-line Media as a playtester for Gamestar Mechanic and during the Spring 2011 semester, he worked at the Morgridge Institute for Research as a playtester for a newly released iPad game called Virulent.

We’re pleased to help our friends at Reading Rockets spread the word about their great new mobile site. But even beyond the great content that the site provides, they’re also offering the chance to win some great prizes, including an iPod Nano. Rachael Walker shares more information on the new mobile website and how to win below:

For more than ten years, Reading Rockets has been spreading the word about research-based reading instruction and offering the latest information on what works in the classroom, in a way that teachers, parents and other who work with children are able to understand and use. Now those same research-based tools and strategies for teaching children how to read and helping those who struggle are available on your mobile phone.

You’ll also find daily news headlines about reading, the latest articles and research, recommended reading lists of children’s books, Q&A with literacy experts, and access to Reading Rockets’ extensive video catalog featuring exclusive interviews from award-winning children’s book authors and prominent professionals in the field of teaching reading and writing, as well as video of real-world examples of best instructional practices.

To explore Reading Rockets Mobile, go to readingrockets.org on your phone’s web browser. Then send feedback for great prizes-all summer long! Use the “Send us feedback” link on the mobile website and you’ll be entered into a weekly drawing to win an autographed children’s book. Sharing gets rewarded, too! Tweet about the Reading Rockets mobile site using @readingrockets to be entered for a chance to win an iPod Nano. For more information visit www.readingrockets.org/mobile_info.

We were thrilled by the energy and enthusiasm that the Action Teams brought to the Cooney Center Leadership Forum last May. The seven groups that we brought together willingly embraced our call to work as local networks of organizations dedicated to making an impact on the future of children’s learning in their communities. We have invited each Action Team to share their experiences at the Forum with us, and hope that they will continue to keep us posted on their activities throughout the coming year. Our first Action Team blog post comes from TASC, The After-School Corporation in New York City. Susan Brenna shares her team’s excitement about the new insights they gained during their time in Los Angeles and the collaborations they look forward to developing with fellow New York team member organizations.

I suspect many of us have been to more than one forum where we could recite every panelist’s talking points without leaving the lobby coffee bar. “Learning from Hollywood” was the opposite of that experience for my colleagues from The After-School Corporation and me. Every panel was a revelation. My notes from the event look like letters from a kindergartner: bolded, starred, high-lighted, a glorious mess of upper case and exclamation.

At TASC we are old hands at the work of expanding learning time and opportunities for kids who otherwise have few enriching options outside traditional school hours. But we are relatively new to thinking deep thoughts about digital media and the power of digital content and technology tools to make kids the center of their own learning, with schools and families and after-school educators all partners within kids’ human and online networks. (I trust I can come out as a beginner to Sesame Workshop friends: new learners are the ones with the greatest potential!)

Here’s what we came into the conference knowing: That the after-school hours (and summers and weekends) present ideal venues for expanding learning through high quality digital media. That the least advantaged kids are the most likely to attend publicly-funded after-school programs, so integrating digital learning goes right at re-dressing the digital divide. That the national structure of after-school systems – including 39 statewide after-school networks and multiple city-wide systems – are pathways to push out the best in digital tools, strategies and networked learning opportunities. And that school and community educators are overwhelmed by options and products; they need help finding the good stuff.

Here’s what we came away with: inspiration, generous advice, and a storehouse of promising ideas and models from people doing good stuff across the nation. We got really excited about the possibilities, through formats like online badge portfolios, for kids to start to documenting their true 21st century competencies and learning accomplishments beyond what in-school tests show.

Through the New York Action Team, we became network buddies with the trailblazers in the New Youth City Learning Network. They are leading the way toward demonstrating what kids can accomplish as creators, not just consumers of digital media. We set a new goal for ourselves: to help New York break down institutional barriers and become a city of connected opportunities where digital natives can leap from one learning experience to the next, building their skills and leadership capabilities every step of the way.

We’re hosting a forum on digital learning in and out of school time in New York this month to keep the conversation going. Come if you can, and share. We’re still learning.

One of the perks of working with The Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop is getting to meet people doing amazing things.  The industry is full of passionate organizations and individuals that are using digital media to promote children’s healthy development and learning in a multitude of ways I never would have dreamed of.  As part of my blog series, I hope to occasionally spotlight these organizations — groups that are doing something different, something amazing, or something inspiring.  It wasn’t difficult to decide where to shine my first spotlight — on an organization called HopeLab that is doing all three.

HopeLab is a California-based nonprofit that develops innovative technology-based solutions to help young people with chronic illness.  Probably best known for Re-Mission, a video game for teens and young adults with cancer, the vision stemmed from founder Pam Omidyar’s days working in an immunology lab. At the end of long days spent watching cancer cells multiply, she unwound by playing video games with her husband, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.  Pam began to wonder if giving young cancer patients a chance to blast their malignant cells in a video game might actually improve their health. In 2001, Pam founded HopeLab and started to develop Re-mission to test this concept.

In Re-Mission, players travel through bodies of fictional cancer patients destroying cancer cells, battling bacterial infections, and managing side effects associated with their illness and treatment:

“An epic battle rages deep in the realms of the human body.  Colonies of microscopic cancer cells replicate, attack and damage healthy organs.   Enter Roxxi, your gutsy and fully armed nanobot, and medicine’s mightiest warrior.  Lead her through challenging missions and rapid fire assaults on malignant cells, wherever they hide.  It’s the world’s smallest battlefield, yet the stakes have never been higher.”

As with all of their work, HopeLab used scientific research methodologies to evaluate the efficacy of Re-mission, and found it to be an effective tool for young cancer patients.  As of April 2009, more than 142,000 copies of Re-Mission had been distributed to 81 countries worldwide, and Re-Mission is still being distributed free of charge to young patients and their families.

In the decade since it was founded, HopeLab has developed a number of other innovative solutions.  When it came time to tackle their second major health objective, childhood obesity, they tapped into the power of the crowd to help come up with a new approach to this serious social issue.  HopeLab’s Ruckus Nation idea competition launched in the fall of 2007, challenging entrants to imagine a new product that would be fun enough to get kids up and moving.  Over $300,000 in cash prizes was awarded to contestants who ranged in age from 6 to 82 years old, and ideas from the competition informed development of HopeLab’s latest product, Zamzee.

Zamzee is an online program that rewards teens for their physical activity.  Merging the virtual and real words, participants wear a physical meter that records their physical activity, which in-turn powers their online account. Teens who use Zamzee earn recognition, the opportunity to take part in a range of online activities, and the ability to acquire things they want based on how much they move in the real world.  Research shows that the program encouraged teens to move around 30% more — the equivalent of running one extra marathon a month.

Not only has HopeLab developed innovative products that are positively impacting the lives of children who need it most, but they have proven that specially designed technology can be both fun and effective in driving positive health behavior in young people. Thanks to a wonderful organization for giving us not only the hope but the motivation to develop innovative products that are rigorously researched, ultimately making an impact with our work.

We are proud to announce our Cooney Fellow for 2011! Sarah Vaala will be joining the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in October of this year from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Sarah will be completing her Ph.D. in Communication this summer, with various research work surrounding the issue of how to uncover ways to maximize television’s potential to teach and motivate young children.

Amid clinicians’ and psychologists’ arguments for keeping children under the age of two away from all screens, Sarah’s work asks the question, “What do parents really think?” She has been working with mothers to find out what drives media use and what their perceived outcomes and attitudes of parents really are regarding children and media. While at Penn, Sarah has also worked extensively in the field of Health Communication through involvement on an HIV/AIDS prevention mobile technology project with the Center for Health Behavior and Communication, publications such as a paper on the influence of cartoon characters on children’s choices in cereal brands, and work on a study which examined the television show “Postcards from Buster” being used in a classroom as a supplement to teaching. In the future she would like to look more into the potential of mobile media for learning and innovations to bridge learning across different environments including home, school, and after-school settings.

We’re very excited to welcome Sarah to our team and look forward to working with her as she applies her expertise to the Cooney Center’s research initiatives for 2011-12. We had a fantastic group of applicants this year with very impressive backgrounds, and are thrilled to have gotten the chance to speak with many of them. Thank you to all those who applied and congratulations to Sarah!

I always love going to the Games, Learning and Society (GLS) conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Where else are you guaranteed access to a lakeside terrace, local microbrews, and warm Midwestern hospitality? In addition to these welcome amenities, GLS is also a place where games are taken quite seriously, albeit in a playful way. This year was no exception.

I attended the conference to present some of the early findings from my own research. With my collaborator LeAnne Wagner, I am a Co-Principal Investigator of a National Science Foundation grant entitled “Urban Game Design as a Tool for Creativity, Collaboration, and Learning Among Youth.” We’re looking specifically at how teaching young people the principles of game design can impact how they use mobile devices for creative ends. We just finished our first workshop with a group of young people, aged 9-14, at the Chatham Square Branch of the New York Public Library in the heart of Chinatown. While things didn’t necessarily go according to our prepared curriculum-always of interest to the researcher but a source of frustration to the facilitators!-we did discover a few important patterns about how young people approach the act of designing games for mobile devices. These insights were the basis of my presentation at GLS.
I had three early takeaways from my time with the kids at the library. First, kids’ interest in games doesn’t necessarily translate to an interest in creating games. I found that many of our participants at the library were self-identified gamers: they came to the library to play games every day after school, so they knew quite a bit about the details and mechanics of games and game play. But when they were encouraged to move from player to creator, it took them a while to realize the wealth of their own knowledge. My colleague, Kyle Li, one of the workshop facilitators, got kids to move into this creator frame of mind by getting them to complain about the games that they played regularly. These complaints evolved into reimagining new game features and finally into creating new games altogether. This whole process made me realize that the power to be a creator, even a modder, is not encouraged enough when it comes to kids and games. We should celebrate not merely learning through play, but learning through design. I’ll have more to say on this topic as our research progresses.

I also reported on the way the way that kids had some trouble moving from a 2-dimensional game board, either on a computer screen or a table top, to a three dimensional one. Our project is trying to use New York City as a “game board” but that perceptual transition is proving to be more challenging that I thought. In our next workshop, we’re going to focus more on using the Hunt’s Point neighborhood in the South Bronx as a base to tell mobile stories. At the library, we were restricted to using the library space itself as the game space and used QR codes placed on various walls and bookshelves to put  game elements into play. QR codes are 2-dimensional bar codes that can be read by a smartphone to reveal an attached message or image or link to a webpage. We’ll see whether the perceptual shift from 2-D to 3-D is any more natural when the game space is a city street instead of a city building.

Finally, kids reported that creating and articulating the rules for their games was the hardest part of being a game designer. In game testing, it became obvious that the importance of rules is not only their logical, but their social, function. A game is not a game if it cannot be played by other people. So in future workshops I am going to focus more closely on how rules are shaped and iterated by our young game designers, both as they relate to the elements of their games as well as the playing satisfaction of their peers.

My presentation was matched with two researchers from the University of London’s Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media, Rebekah Willett and Andrew Burn. Dr. Willett spoke about how kids make up imaginary games on the playground and Dr. Burn shared his research on how teenagers used a virtual world to create a new platform for sharing Shakespeare’s The Tempest.Very interesting work — check it out!

The GLS conference is full of great sessions like this, all of which take the topic of digital media and learning seriously. This annual convening in Madison creates a playful environment to explore games from a research angle like mine as well as from the vantage point of aesthetics, educational policy, knowledge acquisition, and everywhere in between. Can’t wait to return next year!

Photos by Ingrid Erickson

Bottom right: Kyle Li and members of the GameMaker workshop at the Chatham Square Branch of the New York Public Library, June 2011.

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Gaming Education Reform: Starting Points for a Digital Revolution

An Ode to QR Codes

At the 2011 Games, Learning and Society research conference in Madison, Joan Ganz Cooney Center Executive Director Michael H. Levine was the closing keynote speaker on the topic “Gaming Education Reform.” His presentation to a multidisciplinary group of scholars, game industry leaders and practitioners focused on several missing key elements in our current approaches to learning. He shared some of the most cogent lessons learned from Sesame Street’s rich and instructive history as well as the Center’s more recent research on games and “the new coviewing” that he hopes will reunite generations in play and learning. If we are to change the trajectory of achievement in our country, Levine argued, we will need to radically modernize early childhood education by introducing developmentally appropriate technology in preschool, change the current 20th century approaches to assessment and teacher education, and add a lot more engagement to the learning diets of kids who have been raised in a ubiquitous media culture. The talk ended with five new priorities for President Obama and Congress to consider.

View the presentation after the jump.
Michael Levine: Gaming Education Reform: Starting Points for a Digital Revolution