I’ve been spending a lot of time on a playground lately. However, this playground doesn’t have swings or tetherball or a basketball court; this one—the PLAYground—is a transmedia learning tool being developed at the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC. The PLAYground is the brainchild of Erin Reilly, Managing Director for the Innovation Lab and someone I’ve gotten to work with closely through the JGCC’s partnership with the Lab. Developing the PLAYground is one element of a larger project on participatory learning, explained in the clip below by the project’s Principal Investigator, Henry Jenkins:

The PLAYground is designed for users across ages, abilities, and contexts. It can just as easily be used in a classroom as in a less-structured afterschool club as at home. Unlike many tools that essentially enable teachers to transpose traditional lessons into a digital format, the PLAYground is designed to facilitate co-learning through two-way participation, embracing a more iterative model of teaching and learning.

Home screen of the PLAYground, showing challenges and collections available within one’s network.

The basic learning unit of the PLAYground is called a challenge. Challenges are multi-disciplinary, blended learning activities that encourage participants to search, synthesize, collaboratively remix, and disseminate information. As a PLAYground user, one can complete existing challenges, create or remix challenges, or curate multiple challenges into collections based on topic, activity type, etc. One way in which the PLAYground fosters participation rather than one-way delivery of information is through a feature called “Your Turn,” through which challenge creators can pose a question, put forth a reflective prompt, or ask participants to complete another action item related to the challenge.

The challenge builder allows users to create and curate a variety of media elements

Sounds great, right? Feedback about the PLAYground, including reactions from participants at the Lab’s 2012 Innovation Summit and the recent TEDx-USC conference, has been extremely positive, and buzz around the PLAYground is growing. (See, for example, this Wall Street Journal article.)

Throughout the last academic year, researchers at USC have tested out the PLAYground with teachers (predominantly middle and high school level) through a professional development program called PLAY! (Participatory Learning and You!), and have gained great insights into the design of such a platform, as well as about participatory models of professional development more generally. (A white paper on PLAY! and a collection of case studies on participatory models of professional development, both of which describe these insights in detail, will be released by the Innovation Lab in the fall.)

As a complement to the research conducted this year and a follow-up to the work of the Cooney Center’s Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council, I’m currently developing a collection of challenges linked to some of the questions currently being asked by the JGCC research team around family media engagement, public media assets for education, e-books and literacy, and transmedia for young children. I’ll soon be heading into the field to learn more about participatory learning in early childhood and elementary school contexts and to test out the PLAYground with PK-5 teachers. In this research, I’m interested to understand the nuances of participatory learning with media for young children who may not have the same literacy skills and technological experience as, say, an eighth grader.

In the meantime, I’d like to pose a question to the larger JGCC community: What does participatory learning mean to you?

This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post on May 29, 2012.

When it comes to learning to read well, the U.S. is locked in a stubborn cycle of conflict. Recall the infamous “reading wars” of the 1980’s and 90’s between advocates of phonics and those of the whole language methodology. The U.S. commissioned a National Reading Panel (NRP) which set forth key guidelines to help settle policy, distribute funding, and inform practice. However, there remains disagreement that a laser focus on basic reading skills encouraged by the NRP and NCLB has backfired. Those concerned argue that high stakes assessments and “drill and kill” direct instruction are diminishing the complex vocabulary, knowledge and “reading to learn” activities that every ten year-old must now master to be on a pathway to academic success in our information age.

The public discourse about early reading remains heated because the stakes could not be higher. California uses third grade reading scores to predict prison bed population growth. Analysis of the most recent NAEP shows that black and Hispanic students have made important strides in improving reading performance, but a breach still separates them from their white peers. Special analyses by the U.S. Department of Education show that black and Hispanic students trail their white peers by an average of more than 20 test-score points on the NAEP reading assessments at 4th and 8th grades,a difference of about two grade levels.

Entering the reading storm is a new disruption: the transition from print to digital books. What impact—if any—will emerging patterns of reading on phones, tablets and e-readers have on young children’s literacy habits? App developers and tech gurus promise a new frontier of digital reading—one need only visit YouTube to observe toddlers swiping print books to unlock their digital potential! But a “preserve print for children” movement appears to be growing, including experts who cite evidence that real books offer both an emotional and intergenerational reading pull.

The research base analyzing the quality and quantity of early literacy activities, mediated by digital device usage for children ages 2–8, is weak. To begin to assess the potential and challenges that e-book reading poses for young children, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center has mounted a series of “quick studies” to dive into the dynamics of parent-child reading with and without the aid of technology.

“Print Books vs. E-books” outlines the results of the Center’s first exploration in this area. The Center worked with partners at the New York Hall of Science to tackle questions we have about the growing popularity of e-books. We asked:

• How do adults and children read e-books compared to print books?
• How might the nature of parent-child conversations differ across platforms?
• Which design features of e-books appear to support parent-child interaction? Do any features detract from these interactions?

We observed families reading both basic e-books, which are essentially print books put into a digital format with minimal features like highlighting text and audio narration, and enhanced e-books, which feature more interactive multimedia options like games, videos and interactive animations. We recruited 32 pairs of parents and their 3–6-year-old children. Each pair read a print book and either an enhanced or basic e-book while researchers videotaped their interactions and took notes. Researchers interviewed parents about their reading practices at home and elsewhere.

Our key findings include the observation that both the print and basic e-book elicited similar levels of content-related actions (e.g., labeling, pointing, and verbal elaboration of story features) from the children and parents, but that parent-child pairs engaged less with the content of the story when reading the enhanced e-book than when reading the print book. In addition, children who read enhanced ebooks recalled fewer narrative details than children who read the print version of the same story. And interestingly, our findings on overall engagement (a composite measure of parent-child interaction, child-book interaction, parent-book interaction, and signs of enjoyment) found that only 6% of the pairs were more engaged with the e-book than the print book. However, developers of ebooks will welcome the finding that children did show signs of additional physical involvement with the enhanced e-book when compared to reading either the print or basic e-book.

Future research on the transition from print to digital reading is ripe with possibilities. At the Cooney Center we are especially interested in ways that digital media can be deployed to encourage vulnerable children to spend more time in purposeful literacy activities. We are probing the importance of differences in parental age and parenting styles, and the ways in which digital media may be used for ELL families.

These initial studies are small scale and should be viewed with caution: the research and developer community’s need to work with a larger, more diverse sample and a wider variety of books to draw further conclusions. We must also spend more time understanding changing demand from parents as they are the ones who will ultimately define new practices. To help understand evolving perspectives in this regard, the Cooney Center will be publishing findings from its survey research on modern day parent-child co-reading practices, based on results from a group of some 1200 parents later this summer.

Solving America’s reading challenges are fundamental to our future as a productive nation: let’s use technology as a boon to finding solutions that will last for all children.

Still buzzing from the exciting events of the previous evening, many participants from the STEM Video Game Challenge‘s Celebration of Success attended The Atlantic’s second annual Technologies in Education Forum on May 22 in Washington, D.C.  The Forum continued a lively discussion around the role that games play in STEM learning, with editorial staff from The Atlantic asking probing (often skeptical) questions and speakers generally offering optimistic answers.

A panel on “Framing the Role Games Will Play in Future Learning” addressed whether there is a danger that children will expect the real world to engage them as games do.  Robert Torres of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation described mastery as the nexus of high engagement and high cognitive demand (and the ability of games to provide both), while Sandra Calvert from the Children’s Digital Media Center emphasized the continued need for face-to-face interactions between teachers and students.

Our colleague Jessica Millstone contributed to a strong panel discussion on the role teachers will play in game-based learning, citing her recent survey and the work of fellow panelist Joel Levin.  Joel explained how Minecraft–a commercially successful game–can be repackaged for classroom use, and noted teachers’ roles in providing context and direction to help students learn the most from games.

From left: Jessica Millstone, Alexander Reppening, Joel Levin, and Clive Crook. Photo by Michelle Miller.

Discussing how educational technology will train future workers for next wave jobs, Andrea Taylor from Microsoft shared a whopping statistic:  there are 5,000 high-paying, open positions at her company due to a lack of applicants skilled in STEM. Larry Irving, founder of the Internet Innovation Alliance, said that policy makers and others in the academic sphere should be more in touch with real users in diverse communities and more open-minded about unconventional solutions to bridging the divide.  A recurring theme was the concern that digital opportunities for some could cause those already at a disadvantage to fall further behind.  Questions about gender, income level and children with disabilities peppered discussions through the day.

Joel Klein, EVP of News Corporation and Former Chancellor of the NYC Department of Education, gave spirited remarks about changes in “the game” over the next three to five years.  But from my very biased perspective, the event came alive during the presentation of our STEM Video Game Challenge winners.  A few of the youth winners were on hand to receive a boisterous round of applause from a room full of VIPs, and winners from the Educator and Collegiate categories received their $10,000 checks and the opportunity to demonstrate their games. As many in the audience pointed out, those students and educators are really what it’s all about.

View video of the “Stand and Deliver: The Role Teachers Will Play in Game-Based Learning” panel below. View the rest of the day’s discussions on The Atlantic Live website.

The 9th Annual Games for Change Festival will be taking place on June 18 – 20 in New York City. There is less than a month to register, so be sure to get your tickets now to catch the following featured keynote speakers: the legendary Nolan Bushnell, “father of the video game industry” and founder of Atari Corporation, leading games for change evangelist Jane McGonigal (Author of the New York Times best seller Reality Is Broken and Chief Creative Officer for SuperBetter Labs), linguist and researcher Dr. James Paul Gee (as presented by the Games for Learning Institute) and a closing program with Lucy Bradshaw (General Manager, Maxis/EA) and Michael D. Gallagher (President/CEO, Entertainment Software Association). Learn more about these amazing speakers on the Games for Change website.

Full event program here:
http://gamesforchange.org/festival2012/events/

With over 800+ attendees last year, this event is sure to sell out again, so remember that friends of the Cooney Center can save 10% with the code COONEY here:
http://gamesforchange.org/festival2012/attend/

Other featured speakers include:
Matt Binkowski (SVP, Social Experience with Social@Ogilvy)
Sojo Studios founder Lincoln Brown (“WeTopia”)
Sharna Jackson (Tate Kids Editor)
Babooga’s J Moses (Founder and President, and Board member, Take-Two Interactive Software)
Afroes Transformational Multi-Media’s Anne Shongwe (Founder and CEO)
HopeLab’s Richard Tate (VP Communications and Marketing)
AMD’s Ward Tisdale (Director, AMD’s Global Community Affairs Department)
GameDesk’s Lucien Vattel (Founder and Executive Director)

Featured game designers include:
Chris Bell (“WAY,” “Journey”)
Ian Bogost (Game-o-Matic)
Tracy Fullerton (Director of the Game Innovation Lab at the USC School of Cinematic Arts)
Navid Khonsari (Cinematic Director “Grand Theft Auto,” “Alan Wake”)
Jesse Schell (Author, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses)
John Tynes (Lead Game Designer, Microsoft Studios)

See the complete line-up of speakers.

For nine years, the Games for Change Festival has brought the advocacy of social impact games to the industry’s attention. It’s where cause owners, foundations, and game designers are exposed to new initiatives to bring games and social impact together. Capitalizing on last year’s sold-out event that drew in over 800+ attendees, the 9th Annual Games for Change Festival will feature over 40+ hours of content from some of the biggest names in social impact games.

Friends of the Cooney Center can save 10% using the discount code COONEY when registering here:
http://gamesforchange.org/festival2012/attend/

An adventure game where your character moves around by manipulating the attractive and repulsive forces of the atom. A 3D battle against pathogens inside the human body. An early learning game starring a shark that teaches first graders about inequalities. They could be the latest releases from a premiere educational game studio, but these and 14 other incredible games were all made by students between the ages of 10 and 18: the winners of the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge Youth Prize.

On Monday, May 21, I had the pleasure of participating in the Challenge’s Celebration of Success, where 28 youth game designers from around the country — out of a field of over 3,700 entries — were honored for their original game designs at an event held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC presented by Challenge Sponsor Microsoft.

The youth winners began their visit with a VIP tour of the Smithsonian’s Art of Video Games exhibit where they got to see and play some of the most significant titles in the history of gaming. Then it was off to the auditorium where representatives from the game industry, government, and the educational community — along with family and friends — recognized the designers for a job well done.

Challenge judge and game designer Sean Vesce of 20after1, whose work includes titles like the Tomb Raider and Mech Warrior franchises, praised the designers’ work and talked about his own experience as a young game maker inspired by some of the great early Activision titles. Alex Games, Education Design Director at Microsoft also addressed the youth, telling them “You did something awesome! Making games, like anything good in life, takes a lot of hard work, a lot of perseverance and a lot of not giving up.” Dr. Games was followed by video congratulations to the winners from celebrity Challenge judge (and self-professed nerd) Zachary Levi of NBC’s Chuck.

Joining the sponsors and game industry professionals in praising the young designers were Representatives Debbie Wasserman-Shultz and Jim McGovern as well as Cristin Dorgelo, Assistant Director for Grand Challenges at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Following the ceremony, several of the winners of had the opportunity to demo their games for the guests in attendance.

You can meet the 2012 Youth Prize winners and see some of the amazing things they’re doing in the video below. You can also check out the complete winners list here with footage of each of the winning games and even links to play a few online.

Brian Alspach is Executive Vice President and General Manager for Gamestar Mechanic at E-Line Media.

Allison Mishkin teaches at a game design camp for middle school students. Here she shares some of the lessons that she’s learned — and tries to impart — to her students during this week-long sessions.

A group of students stumble into a computer lab on a bright spring day, unsure why their parents wanted them out of the house on their vacations. By the end of the day, they would emerge optimistic and excited for the week to come. After a lifetime of being told video games were for “relaxation” or a “waste of time,” they had finally met adults who understood: through the right lens, games can be both fun AND educational.

For six years, I’ve spent my summers and afternoons teaching students about game design. I teach kids why games are awesome, empowering them to creatively analyze and develop their own. When I work with students, I don’t need to equip them with technological skills, I need to give them passion; skills can come later. I want everyone to think critically about the power of video games, and to analyze them the same way they might examine a book or piece of art. In order to empower the students, we structured the camp around three rules of game design.

RULE 1: You can’t make games…unless you play games.
I hate to say this to the parents and teachers out there who say that nothing good can come out of time spent gaming — but a lot of good can come out of those experiences: good games.  You can’t make a game until you play a game. And on the first day of our game design camp, we spent a lot of time playing both video and board games. From Go Fish to xBox Dance Central to Killer Bunnies to Scrabble (and even some educational ones thrown in there), we played a lot.

After each round, we would divide into small groups to discuss what we liked and didn’t like about the game. What engaged us? What bored us? Who was the intended audience? Why would someone have made that game in the first place? Not only did we demonstrate to the students that they had actually learned something from all of their hours spent gaming, we also led this discussion into our own taxonomy of game elements and what we personally like in a game.

RULE 2: It’s not all fun and games…sometimes you do have to learn.
We used basic game elements to talk philosophically with the campers about what makes a game. We taught them how game designers go about designing games and how stereotypical players examine games. (Now that they were on the road to becoming experts, they moved from designer into player). We tried to keep it brief, because no one wants to learn during camp. However, my counselors and I hoped to reinforce what the students had independently discussed. By showing how a host of academics had in fact agreed with some of the students’ findings, we encouraged them to think even more thoughtfully about the task at hand and to critically break apart all elements of a game when creating their own. One girl was particularly excited by this exercise. She began cataloging the elements of the game she had been working on and used that as an excuse to show off to her parents and friends that she was an “accredited” game designer.

Rule 3: If at first you don’t succeed…try again.
Next up…we took a stab at creating our games.We let the students get to work brainstorming and designing their own games. Like most academic exercises, we wanted to get the students used to iterating, critiquing and revising. However, since all parties were equally versed in the elements of a good game they could thoughtfully examine each others creations. Moreover, the experiences they’d had playing games as a group: whether it be laughing at the ridiculous descriptions on Killer Bunnies cards or chasing each other around the room in Freeze Tag helped them feel like a cohesive group in just a few days. During the critiques they were interested enough in pursuing a “longer term” friendship with one another that they thoughtfully reflected on all they had learned. Games were the perfect avenue to loosen our guard. In school, we’re always afraid to try academically or we know the expectations and over-compete. Here we were equal players and equally motivated. And by teaching students that some of the best games, like their recent favorite Draw Something, are in fact collaborative, we were able to work together to create some truly awesome games.

And finally, while I did not have time to give them the technical skills, all of my campers came up with some truly exciting games that I wish I were playing right now. I hope that the camp will motivate them to get these skills and enter their creations into next year’s STEM challenge. Then, I’ll be able to say I knew 2013’s winner back before they even started making games.

I’m going to be leading another camp in June that will help me realize my wish. By working with a computer science instructor, I am so excited to see what the campers create.

photo: from stemchallenge.org

We’re thrilled to release the newest addition to the series of video case studies put out by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, in collaboration with and support from BrainPOP.

In this video, Steve Isaacs, a Technology Instructor at William Annin Middle School in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, shares how he integrates video game design and development into his 7th grade curriculum.  Steve’s emphasis on the design process helps students develop essential 21st century skills, while sparking students’ interest and motivation through the use of a medium they are passionate about. Using game design programs such as Gamestar Mechanic and Gamemaker enable this teacher to embed essential programming skills into a unit of study that also has an authentic purpose — his students are creating games to enter in the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge!

The winners of this exciting competition will be announced at The Atlantic’s Technologies and Education Forum on Tuesday, May 22, 2012.  You can read more about how Steve Isaacs prepared his students to enter their original video games in the National STEM Video Game Challenge here.

To learn more about the full research project, including highlights (PDF) from our survey of over 500 K-8 teachers documenting their attitudes about using digital games in the classroom and view three other video case studies from the series, visit our Publications page.

In January, we introduced Cooney Center Research Associate Cynthia Chiong’s new website, A Matter of App, in which she rates educational apps for children. Fifty reviews later, she shares what she has learned along the way.

THE BIG 5-0. Fifty reviews, that is. Woo-hoo! This has been quite a learning process for me. I started out with the goal of seeing what’s out there in the app world for kids, and I must admit that my goal has shifted a bit now to seeing what I want to be out there. As a result, I’ve been setting the bar higher. I’ve barely given out any 5 star ratings — just five in all. I’d love to be giving out more! So instead of doing a “best of” list to celebrate the big 5-0, I thought I’d do more of a Top 5 Wish List — things I’d like to see more of:

Apps that are more than just drill. Understandably, drill material like basic math problems, or sight word lists are easy to translate over to the digital world. The content is ready and available — slap it onto some sort of game environment and voila. I’m not trying to demean the importance of drilling or even the effort it takes to create such an app, but just having kids memorize, say math facts, will not lead to great math skills. Specifically with math, we need to teach strategies and help kids build a good foundation. Tablets have the potential to convey strategy information in a great hands-on way. They can tap on objects, group them, drag them to compare, and more. We can include useful references like number lines and even a base-10 tool. Let’s create apps that make kids practice specific skills and leads them to understand the strategy and or reasoning behind them.

Apps that target the full spectrum. With most subjects, there’s usually a progression of to-be-learned skills and concepts. Let’s take reading for example. Our goal is not just to teach kids the alphabet or even just how to read, but to also teach them to understand what they are reading. That’s what it’s about in the end. So sure, letter knowledge and phonics are important initial steps, but what about the latter steps like vocabulary and comprehension? I’ve seen many apps targeting the former but much fewer targeting the latter. And I don’t mean just flashcards or sight word recognition for vocabulary. Again, drilling phonics or sight words is important, but let’s take it to the next step. Kids learn vocabulary best when within a context or theme, which then helps comprehension. Apps need to target skills further down the spectrum in meaningful ways.

Apps that involve parents. Regular readers of my blog know that this is something I would like to see more of. I’ve definitely started to see a trend of reporting systems for parents. This is a great start to get parents to think of apps as more than just something fun kids can do on their own. “Just-for-fun” apps certainly have their place, but I’d like parents to see the potential for apps to provide an educational opportunity. To do so, I think they need more help. I see parental involvement in three steps: 1) Review – as with the reporting systems, 2) Share – features that allow kids to share what they’ve done (i.e. saving artwork, completed tasks, etc.) so that they can continue the conversation outside of the app, 3) Link to real world – suggested activities for parents to do with their kids to reinforce concepts from the app to the real world.

More than just an app. OK, this one is harder to explain. Apps tend to cross over to other types of media — they have the ability to be different things. They can be more static, like books and videos, or more interactive, like video games. Let’s take what works best from those media. For example, often, what makes a great video game — those play- all-night-until-you-master-it-games — is the plot or narrative that goes along with it (Save the princess!). Educational app games should have that quality too. We also know from research with television that a format that makes learning more “active” — like pausing to wait for the child to answer — leads to better learning. Or, what about merging with real-life activities? The mobility of tablets allows apps to be a part of real life more so than any other media. Why can’t the iPhone become the weapon with sound effects in a game of Cowboys and Indians or be taken to the zoo as part of an app science project and used to record data?

Taming of the e-books. E-books is an area where I think we have seen a good deal of innovation. There are endless types of interactive features such as “pop-up” features, sound effects, and animation — some are pretty amazing. We are truly redefining what an “e-book” is. Of course, with the creation of all these features, we need to proceed thoughtfully. We need to ask ourselves if each feature adds to the plot and the child’s experience of the story. Does doing a puzzle after two pages of reading really add to the story? Do we really need 150 interactive spots in a 10-page book? Finding the right balance is tricky, but is truly important.

I think the app world has done a great job of translating a lot of materials we already have into the digital world. What’s next is to capitalize on the affordances of tablets to make what we already had into something different, something better.

“Radical change” and “storm the Bastille” were the rallying cries of the inspirational opening keynote of the 2nd Annual New School Venture Fund Summit, held on May 2, 2012 in San Francisco, CA.   This invite-only conference attracts big names from the education reform movement, including:  school chancellors from Newark and Washington DC, representatives from the US Department of Education, charter school network leaders, educational technology entrepreneurs and of course the venture capital managers who invest in them.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center was invited to put together a breakout session called “Fun and Games – and Real Learning: Game-based Learning in the Classroom” to discuss the role digital games can play in student learning and reshaping schools for the 21st century.  We had the privilege of releasing new research from the Games and Learning Publishing Council’s slate of products at the NSVF Summit, including the findings from a new survey of 500 teachers who use digital games in the classroom and three video case studies of teachers using games in a variety of classroom settings and student demographics.  We asked GLPC members John Richards of C4Ed Research, Michael Angst of E-Line Media, Robert Torres of the Gates Foundation, and Rocketship Education’s Aylon Samouha to be our panel participants to discuss the new research findings and offer thoughts on the state of game-based learning in K-12 education.

After a brief overview (PDF) of the Teachers’ Attitudes about Digital Games in the Classroom survey and a screening of one video case studyfeaturing NYC teacher Joel Levin using the commercial videogame Minecraft with his 2nd grade students, Virginia Edwards, editor-in-chief ofEducation Week , engaged the panel and standing-room only audience in a lively discussion.  Some of the topics covered: the market for games in education, what funders like the Gates Foundation are investing in to create truly educational (and fun) games, and the tension educators face when mandated with teaching basic skills to lower-performing students, yet yearn to engage these same students in higher-level conceptual thinking through digital games.  Michael Angst cleverly summed up where we are with integrating games into the curriculum with a food analogy:  he believes that “games are nutritious and part of a students healthy diet of learning,” but we just don’t have enough top chefs and recipes out there to make it work in all classroom environments.

It was especially exciting to meet the people who came to our panel through their questions and their interactions with each other.  We had members of the press, game developers and ed-tech entrepreneurs (including our research partners at BrainPOP!), a neuroscientist from Johns Hopkins, charter school leaders, and at least one veteran of the Chicago Public School system weigh on the state of game-based learning.   One expert from our audience noted that today’s parents have real power to influence a school’s curriculum, and their recognition of the range of learning opportunities children experience through video game play might pressure teachers and administrators to integrate digital games sooner than we think. Everyone at the New School Venture Fund Summit was able to experience a bit of what we discussed through their “Please Touch” exhibit near the registration desk. This area was filled with examples of digital games from BrainPOP, Minecraft, Sifteo, Motion Math, and others that we could all play at our leisure. Two of our case studies were on continuous play throughout the conference, which garnered lots of great feedback about our work with teachers.

Throughout the day, we met and spoke with technology entrepreneurs, New School Venture Fund investors, school leaders, and political activists from across the country — many of whom are seeking to disrupt education by creating truly innovative learning environments and experiences for children. The excitement around this cycle of investment in education reform was contagious.  The day ended with a conversation between Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Laurene Powell Jobs, Director of the Emerson Collective (and Steve Jobs’ widow) about the kinds of reforms we will be seeing in education over the next several years — particularly as they relate to underserved, low-income, and disfranchised populations.

Based on our research and the response we’ve received in the press and at the New School Venture Fund Summit, we know there are still many more questions to ask teachers about how to integrate digital games successfully into the curriculum. We see this research as the beginning of a deeper investigation into how to define “games” for educational use, and what kinds of school or home environments support game play that gets to deeper learning. But we are encouraged by these teachers’ attention to how digital games can better engage, motivate and assess lower-performing students.  We look forward to presenting this new research at conferences throughout May and June, and delving into the questions it raises from researchers, journalists, educators and game developers further through the year.  Let the games begin!

Film.  It’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about.  Television is, of course, part of our daily lexicon here at the Cooney Center given our Sesame Workshop roots, but movies — not so much.  Last week I had the chance to head out to TIFF Kids (the children’s version of the famous Toronto International Film Festival), where I moderated a panel on transmedia and presented our latest work in the app space.

In preparation for a busy few days, I sort of forgot that what I was going to was actually a film festival.  But upon arrival, I walked in to the amazing new TIFF building to be greeted by the most beautiful sight.  Picture about 40 under-served 3-year-olds waiting in line to see a movie.  For many of them, likely their first movie in a theatre.  Their first movie!  Popcorn buckets the size of their heads.  Excitement actually emanated from their bodies to the point that I had goose bumps.  Ahhh, the magic of film.

TIFF Kids offers children the opportunity to learn about cultural perspectives from around the world through the power of the moving image. The festival includes two public weekends for kids ages 3 and up and a two-week long School Program for students in elementary schools, allowing Toronto’s youth to view features and shorts from around the world, and often giving them the rare opportunity to participate in Q&A with producers and directors.

The festival is really best in class in a number of ways. They have a Special Delivery program that reaches out to youth in under-served local communities who may not otherwise have access to the festival, bringing the experience to such schools and community groups free of charge.  They also have a Jump Cuts program that presents short films created for young people by young people, giving amateur filmmakers from grades 3 to 8 the chance to create and share.  In addition to all of the wonderful kids programming, the Industry and Nexus streams give professionals from multiple disciplines the chance to learn and network.
Well — we may not be thinking about movies, but they are thinking about us.  For the first time ever, TIFF Kids produced digiplayspace, Toronto’s first digital playspace for kids that ran as part of the Film Festival, and is probably one of the best interactive digital play spaces for kids that I’ve ever seen.  Amongst other activities, children got to learn about green screen and stop-motion animation techniques, participate in a micro-makers fair where they learned the basics of making robots, 3D prints and other interactive electronics, and manage their own interactive ecosystem using active play.  I really can’t do the digiplayspace justice using words, but check out this short clip that the TIFF folks put together (it is a film festival, after all).

One of the less sexy but most popular sections of the play space was the “appcade”, a curated selection of educational apps across several tablet and mobile device platforms.  Numerous wonderful apps were featured (full disclosure, I helped with the curation), including the current favorite in our household, Sesame Workshop’s own The Monster at The End of This Book.  But I felt like one app in particular captured the vibe of the festival, and that is The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore.

So I’m going to admit something kind of embarrassing. Morris Lessmore has been one of my favorite apps for some time.  Beautiful imagery, a wonderful story, interactive play seamlessly integrated into an e-book, a digital media experience that celebrates the power of good ol’ reading – five stars!  The embarrassing part?  I totally forgot that the app was based on a short film.  And not just any film.  After winning over a dozen film festivals, the film was awarded the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards this year!

So despite being embarrassing, this realization was also enlightening.  And it makes perfect sense.  How many apps incorporate beautiful moving image sequences, a layered story, an original score, a deep character; so many core elements of film.  But to me, living in the digital media world, I saw a fantastic app.  And it is!  As mentioned, I came to TIFF to moderate a panel on transmedia.  As with any panel on transmedia, we grappled with the definition of what that word truly means.  But however you define it, I think Morris Lessmore is a great example.  When we don’t know where the content originated, when each piece of media tells a story in its entirety but also fits perfectly into a larger puzzle; to me, that is true transmedia.  It all left me pondering how we in the world of kids’ media can further repurpose more of the amazing film content out there into digital experiences that kids can interact with.

On that note, in many ways my TIFF experience left me with more questions than answers.  What does this whole digital media world add to children’s experience with film?  If something on the big screen sparks their interest, how can we develop new media experiences to help them go deeper?  How can we capitalize on the new interactive media so that the magic of the movies doesn’t end when the credits roll?  In addition to augmented realities, virtual environments and apps, there is this thing called film.  Let’s not, as professionals in the interactive media, forget about it!