One of the most exciting things about receiving a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the opportunites the foundation provides to connect and collaborate with other organizations.  Last week, Michael Levine and I had the chance to attend the Gates Foundation’s annual convening of organizations working on Teacher Effectiveness.  The groups who attended and presented at this meeting, including The Center for Teaching Quality, VIVA Teachers, Educators 4 Excellence, Purpose, Student Achievement Partners, The Hope Street Group (and many more), are expanding the idea of “Teacher Voice” by supporting teachers in their efforts to innovate the profession and play a larger role in shaping education reform across the country. Along with the leadership of each organization, a number of classroom teachers affiliated with each group attended the convening to participate in the workshops and meet other leaders within the teaching profession.

The Cooney Center was invited to lead a hands-on workshop for these classroom teachers that explored some of our recent research around games and learning. We also introduced the next phase of our research on teacher/parent experiences using digital games with children at home and at school.  After playing some online games and watching our video case studies, we had a lively and informative discussion about what works (and what doesn’t!) around using digital games in the classroom.   As always, a great deal of attention was paid to assessment, and how games can play a role in reaching all the learners in our classrooms.

We took this opportunity to meet and engage with this highly motivated group of teachers very seriously—we want to learn from their experience and use this knowledge to help shape our upcoming Games and Learning initiatives.  At the end of our workshop, we solicited ideas for new topics and questions to field in the next phase of our National Teacher Survey, and we hope to hear from many more teachers over the next few weeks. If you are classroom teacher interested in learning what other teachers think about games and learning, please contribute your own topic ideas via this online form!

Avast! Today marks an exciting day for our hornswoggling crew here at Launchpad Toys: Toontastic Jr. Pirates is LIVE in the App Store for iPhone and iPad! With 3 million cartoons created in over 150 countries, our first app – Toontastic – has been a great success for kids ages 6-12. Now, with the launch of Toontastic Jr. and our new StoryShare platform for online, creative Co-Play, little brothers and sisters as young as 3 years old can create their own cartoons collaboratively in real-time with friends and family anywhere in the world.

Designing for Co-Play

As most parents can attest, getting a young child to talk on the telephone or Skype can be quite an endeavor — abstraction and lack of context makes it challenging to hold kids’ attention. Yet, sit that child down with a toy box of dolls or action figures and you’ll find yourself awash in a sea of chatter. Kids communicate naturally through imaginative play, learning about the world around them through creative collaboration with peers and family, using toys as contextual catalysts for conversation.

In designing for Co-Play, our challenge is conceptually simple, but technically complex: empower kids and their families to create and communicate as naturally and fluidly as they would playing with a box of LEGOs. The Cooney Center’s recent report on Co-Viewing outlined some great tips for this, three of which we found particularly inspiring in creating Toontastic Jr.’s StoryShare feature — we hope they serve you well too!

1. Build Synchronous, Shared Workspaces
   With sites like Facebook and YouTube, “sharing” has become synonymous with posting and uploading. Yet as our 3-year-old play-testers reminded us, we’d forgotten about the original form of sharing — not just sharing what you create, but sharing in the creation process itself. Co-Play, our first foray into “social” media as kids, requires real-time collaboration, open chat, and shared workspacesthrough which kids can communicate, imagine, and create freely. With Toontastic Jr., families can talk, play, and tell their own stories in a shared creation space — recording their voices and moving characters onscreen from thousands of miles away, just as they would sitting together on the living room carpet.
2. Empower Kids through Mutual Engagement
   In engineering a shared workspace, it’s tempting to simplify development by limiting interface control to one user, but true collaboration requires equal access and active participation by everyone involved. This is why “leader/follower” models like online co-reading fall short of the mark so often. Toontastic Jr.’s interface is built for universal accessibility — anyone can pick a scene, move a character, or choose a song at any time. We’ve found this offers a great balance — elders generally take the lead the first time through the app, but kids assert themselves in subsequent scenes and sessions. Once this happens, our biggest challenge was ensuring both parties were on the same page creatively. Turns out it’s pretty hard to tell a story together without time to sync up beforehand. For this reason (and to help kids with “blank canvas anxiety”), we created “Story Starters” that play before each scene. These 10-15 second video clips not only set the stage for storytellers, but also create a window of time to plan the upcoming adventure prior to recording.
3. Inspire Creative Collaboration Through Toys, Not Games
   From Madden “Social” to Call of Duty, there’s no shortage of multiplayer games in the market today. Unfortunately, very few live up to the high standards of Co-Play for one simple reason: they’re games, not toys. Games are scripted experiences defined by game designers. Toys, on the other hand, are paintbrushes that inspire kids to create their own imaginary worlds. While multiplayer games can be cooperative, they can never be truly collaborative because they don’t allow players to generate their own ideas. With digital toys, families can work together to create and realize their collective imaginations.

Thanks to incredible advancements in mobile platforms and years of study by researchers and groups like the Cooney Center, the remarkable promise of Co-Play is finally within reach. As developers, it’s now our responsibility to take the last step – to imagine and create the next generation of children’s media that brings families together and enables kids to create and learn collaboratively with friends and family next door or thousands of miles away.

We ask our children to play and work collaboratively, but too easily forget that we need to do the same. Today, we hope you’ll join us in embracing digital toys to collaborate with others, that our findings will help you in your development, and that — just maybe — you’ll take a moment to play out a few high-seas adventures along the way.

Andy Russell is a toy designer and a co-founder of Launchpad Toys — creators of Toontastic, MonkeyGram, and Toontastic Jr. Inspired by the movie BIG and a lifelong obsession with small brightly colored plastic bricks, Andy is a graduate of Learning Design programs at Stanford and Northwestern and has worked for companies like Hasbro and Sony PlayStation to design playful learning experiences for kids. 

Hannah Clemmons is a playful storyteller and educational technology specialist working with Launchpad Toys to build a global storytelling network for kids. Hannah is a graduate of the Early Childhood Education program at Columbia College Chicago.

How can you use technology to grab a struggling student? How does access to high-speed Internet open a world of learning? What combination of pedagogy and curriculum can deliver the magic blend of fun, interest, academic content, and the many component skills that lead to academic success—especially for students who need to make up for lost time? (more…)

The Cooney Center and E-Line Media are preparing for the third year of the National STEM Video Game Challenge. This year’s competition is open to middle and high school youth, who are invited original game designs beginning in January 2013 for the opportunity to earn recognition and prizes for themselves, as well as monetary prizes for their schools.

This year, we’ll also be offering opportunities for mentors to get involved through a new website featuring toolkits, resources and curriculum. Plus, we’ll be featuring some exciting words of wisdom from top game design professionals, as well as offering a forum for aspiring youth designers to get feedback, advice and encouragement from pro mentors.

But you don’t have to wait until January to get started! Check out the stemchallenge.org website for more information on the prize categories, eligibility and streams for 2013. Then, head over to the Resources section to learn about the many tools you can use to make your game and start designing!

We’re also thrilled to be working with an all-star group of sponsors including the AMD Foundation, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, the Entertainment Software Association, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the HIVE NYC Learning Network, who will reach out to underserved youth across the country through hands-on game design workshops and other supplemental curriculum activities.

This year’s Challenge will also unite a corps of outreach partners and mentors who will be instrumental in supporting youth and teacher participation including BrainPop, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting PBS KIDS Ready To Learn Initiative, Learning Games Network and Edmodo.

Learn more about our partners and sponsors in this press release. And check out the video of last year’s winners below.

The New York Times, December 6, 2007

This is a big week for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. It’s our fifth birthday!

To celebrate, we’ve given our website a fresh new look. You’ll find it even easier to find the great content that we’ve got — our publications are now directly available from the top level navigation, and you can find related content even more easily. We’ve also made it easier to share links with your friends and colleagues directly from each page — so spread the news on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, or wherever you like! You’ll also find it easier to share your thoughts with us in the comments section of each page – so please let us know what you think!

For a look back on our beginning, check out this article from the New York Times, published on December 6, 2007.

We’ve got even more exciting news coming up in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for a new report by Michael Levine and Lisa Guernsey, and for more details about this year’s National STEM Video Game Challenge.

Did you know that research shows that people who play video
games tend to have better vision than those who don’t? According to
cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier, who studies the impact of
video games on the brain, gamers have quite a few advantages over
those who don’t play often. Check out her TED Talk to learn
more.

We’re very excited to be working with Dr. Bavelier on the Gut Sense Action Video Game project — learn more about this exciting partnership that will develop a video game to teach math skills.