On December 15th, FOSS@RIT of the RIT Lab for Technological Literacy hosted the first of two Hackathons for the National STEM Video Game Challenge. A Hackathon is like a marathon, but rather than running,  people are coding. Hackathons provide a collaborative environment of like-minded folks, who help each other solve problems, experiment with new concepts, and tackle particular tasks, features, or bugs in a coding project. A typical hackathon here lasts anywhere from 8 and 48 caffeine fueled hours. Below is the description of the STEM Video Game Challenge cribbed from STEMChallenge.org’s About Page:

“Inspired by the Educate to Innovate Campaign, President Obama’s initiative to promote a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the National STEM Video Game Challenge is a multi-year competition whose goal is to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games.

The 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge is launched in partnership with Digital Promise, a new initiative created by the President and Congress, supported through the Department of Education. The initiative is designed to unlock the promise of breakthrough technologies to transform teaching and learning.”

 

 

More than two dozen students and community mentors attended the event over the course of the hackfest to work together and to support other teams, which is capped at four members. A number of student teams got some brainstorming and project planning under their belt before leaving for Winter Break, even if they didn’t officially release their plans just yet. Below are pictures of the event, and a breakdown of two teams willing to share their ideas. Since both teams arel under the four person threshhold, they are open to collegiate contributors joining their ranks.

FOSS@RIT will be hosting Round Two of the STEM Video Game Challenge Hackathon on February 2nd, 2012. The hackathon will be attended by former attendees, students from RIT’s FLOSS Seminar in Interactive Games and Media, and community members who would like to join us. For more information visit the http://foss.rit.edu/stem12. Questions/Comments/RSVP to remydcsi(at)rit(dot)edu.

For more on the Cooney Center’s coverage of STEM Challenge events and winners, browse these photos and videos

Carly Shuler is a researcher, developer, and author in the children’s media and toy industry. As our inaugural Fellow, Carly has researched and authored a number of Cooney Center reports, including D is for Digital, iLearn and Pockets of Potential. Since her fellowship, Carly has continued her work with the Center, leading many of our industry initiatives and research projects with a particular focus on consumer trends, informal learning, and mobile devices.

When iLearn: A Content Analysis of the iTunes App Store’s Education Section was published in 2009, slightly more than 85 million apps had been downloaded from Apple’s iTunes App store.  With successive generations of iPhones and the launches of both iTouches and iPads, the number of downloaded apps has grown exponentially. In the U.S., a quarter of all parents have downloaded apps onto one of these devices for their children.  Through the end of 2011, more than 18 billion apps overall have been downloaded; of these apps many were downloaded from the Education category and designed to serve children – ranging from toddlers to high school aged.

Using iLearn as a benchmark, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center undertook a further examination of the Education category within iTunes’ app store and found similar growth within this channel and in the opportunity this presents for educators, developers and teachers to work together to leverage digital media for learning.

Among the key findings of iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category on Apple’s App Store regarding this market and its trends were:

 – In 2009, almost half (47%) of the top-selling apps targeted preschool or elementary aged children.  That number has increased to almost three-quarters (72%).
– Fourteen percent of the apps were tagged for intended school usage. Of the entire sample, only two iPhone apps and no iPad apps were based on well-known branded characters.
– One hundred and nine different publishers were represented within the sample; 89 of these publishers were not represented in the sample 2 years ago.

Based on these findings, many recommendations were made.  Primarily though, focused on the following:

• – Manage, to reduce, the ‘app gap’– According to a recent Common Sense Media report, 38% of lower-income parents don’t know about apps, while 47% of higher income parents have downloaded apps for their children. While providing market insight into the current atmosphere, this data indicates an opportunity for producers and educators to address this new ‘digital divide’ to help ensure all children can access these new tools for learning.
•  – Create standards for products marketed as educational – No voluntary or regulatory standards currently exist around marketing products as educational. Industry leaders and policymakers should collaborate on developing a voluntary consumer education initiative to improve access to information about apps educational potential, proven impact and age appropriateness.

This report was compiled to provide developers, educators and researchers with tools to address the digital divide and other key concerns as well as optimize existing and new opportunities of this growing and evolving category and its content.

Cynthia Chong is an educational media researcher whose research focuses on how the design of educational media can affect young children’s learning and the way they interact with them, as well as how parents and teachers use these technologies to teach. She recently began reviewing educational apps for 3- to 8-year-olds on her blog, A Matter of App. We’ve invited Cynthia to tell us a little bit more about this blog and why it’s important for parents, educators, and designers to keep a research-oriented perspective on the hundreds of apps that are available in today’s market. 

As a developmental psychologist who does educational media research, I often get asked by colleagues and friends (many who are new parents) what games, toys, apps, etc. are best for young children. With the explosion of apps this past year, I’m embarrassed to say I have not been able to keep up! So for my own knowledge, I’ve started this blog to systematically review educational apps for young children.

A second goal of this blog is to help keep parents, educators, and designers informed about what’s out there. I hope that this blog will contribute a new, research-oriented perspective to what seems like hundreds of educational blogs that already exist. I rate each app in the following four areas that I think are important to fostering learning. You can find a more detailed description of these ratings in the blog, but to give you a sense of what I mean by each of these, here are some excerpts from a few reviews I’ve done so far:

Developmental appropriateness:

Digitz: “This game could be used to encourage those who like this type of game [tetris], but who may not like math so much to get some extra practice in. But keep in mind that this type of rote memorization of number facts is only part of skill set needed to attain good math skills. Read the full review.

Bartleby’s Book of Buttons Vol. 2: “…some of the tasks require good motor skills – some tasks require one hand to hold down a button while the other hand spins a gear or to tilt the iPhone or iPad to complete a puzzle (this was kinda hard!). A younger child, 4- or 5-year-old, may not know what to do or may get frustrated because they do not have the gentle touch or coordination required to complete the task. An older child, 7 or older, may possess the skills needed, but may also find the tasks boring once they’ve figured it out. Read the full review.

 

Balance of features:

The Town Musicians of Bremen: “After my first reading, I realized I didn’t actually know what happened in the story – I was too busy finding all the hotspots and doing the puzzles!” Read the full review.

Team Umizoomi Math: “… kids still get to press on all the cool hotspots, yet not be distracted by them when it comes time to learn.” Read the full review.

Sustainability:

Team Umizoomi Math: “The key strength for this game is that it stems off a popular television show. Kids know and like the characters and that should keep them coming back.”  Read the full review.

Parental Involvement:

The Town Musicians of Bremen: “Parents should also remind their child of what’s happened in the story as they will likely have lost track after spending time on the puzzles. The more extra features, the more parents should be involved.”  Read the full review.

I hope that this blog will help start healthy discussions about what we value and should look for in an app for our kids. These reviews will, of course, just be my humble opinion. I’d love to hear what you think!

Check out Cynthia’s blog at http://childrensappreview.blogspot.com/.

You’ve likely heard the saying “two heads are better than one” used in support of collaboration. Besides the increase in brainpower, the availability of different perspectives and experiences also contributes to the value of working together. On Sesame Street, this adage is embodied by the Two-Headed Monster, who literally puts his heads together to solve problems and explore the world:

While we at the Cooney Center fancy ourselves a bit more civilized than the Two-Headed Monster, we also recognize the value of multiple heads when trying to understand and address problems. Especially when thinking about the uses and possibilities of digital media in education, sharing the load with many other smart, dedicated people and organizations working in this area seems like a wise choice. Throughout its existence, the Center has consistently partnered with universities, not-for-profit, and industry groups: In late 2011, we began a new collaborative relationship with the Annenberg Innovation Lab, housed at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California—and I am just lucky enough to be one of the heads involved in this partnership.

The Annenberg Innovation Lab is involved in a number of different projects related to innovation in media technology and communication practices. Among the numerous research and design tracks supported by the Lab is Children, Youth, and Media (CYM), which focuses on understanding participatory practices and transmedia storytelling in relation to learning. CYM is also dedicated to designing tools (ranging from high- to no-tech) for extending such practices and learning opportunities to youth in different settings, including both formal and informal educational spaces. The Children, Youth, and Media research-design track, supervised by Principle Investigator Henry Jenkins and Research/Creative Director Erin Reilly, continues research conducted through Project New Media Literacies at MIT.

As a Research Associate for the Children, Youth, and Media research-design track, I am currently working on two projects that blend the research interests of the Cooney Center and the Innovation Lab. Both of these projects are linked to current and completed research from the Center and Children, Youth, and Media. I’ll dig into the projects in more detail in future posts. For now, here are short summaries of each project:

PLAY! (Participatory Learning and You!) for Elementary: This project aims to understand how concepts of participatory teaching and learning operate in elementary education. The elementary level project is an offshoot of a larger research initiative that has been under way at the Lab since summer 2011. In this research, I’ll be working with elementary school teachers to design and test out “challenges” (participatory activities) created specifically for elementary school teachers and students.

Transmedia Storytelling and the World Wide Telescope: This pilot study aims to understand how principles of transmedia storytelling can support elementary school students’ learning about science. The study will utilize the World Wide Telescope, tool developed by Microsoft Research to engage students in telling and sharing stories about space.

As mentioned, more information on both of these projects will be coming in future posts. In the meantime, if you’re an elementary school educator in the Los Angeles area and want to get involved, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!