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Monthly Archives: July 2014

Publishing a Digital Magazine for Kids: The Making of Sesame Street’s S’More (Part 2 of 2)

by Paul Roberts
July 31, 2014

This past spring, our colleagues at Sesame Workshop Publishing launched S’More, a new online magazine for kids 2-5. Last week, we got a look into some of the research that informed their publishing decisions; here, they share a glimpse into the production process. Technical Development by Paul Roberts, Manager, Digital …

Tags: digital publishing, magazine, production, sesame workshop

How Teachers Can Use Video Games In The Humanities Classroom

by Jordan Shapiro
July 25, 2014

Part 12 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. We often think about game-based learning as if video games can become robotic teachers. In the same way that software file systems have created more flexible and efficient file cabinets, we imagine that video games can make great instruction more scalable …

Tags: mindshift guide to games and learning

Playful Learning and Rigorous Assessment: Can We Level-Up the Common Core?

July 25, 2014

This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post. According to a recent New York Times piece that has stirred a highly emotional debate among my many colleagues, parents across the U.S. who once felt confident helping their children with homework until high school are now feeling helpless when confronted with …

Merging Past, Present, and Future into So Much S’More: The Making of Sesame Street’s First Digital Magazine (Part 1 of 2)

by Betsy Loredo
July 24, 2014

This past spring, our colleagues at Sesame Workshop Publishing launched S’More, a new online magazine for kids 2-5 that is a more interactive experience than a traditional “magazine.” We invited them to share the process with us in a two-part series that looks at the research that informed their publishing …

Tags: e-reading, interactive media, magazine, publishing, sesame workshop

Using a Digital Recording Device to Encourage Talk with Children

by Maureen Kelleher
July 22, 2014

LENA technology is helping researchers and low-income parents better understand how adult-child conversation affects language and literacy. Recent efforts to reduce the “word gap” between affluent and low-income families in Providence, Rhode Island, and Chicago have garnered high-profile headlines and big bucks. Much of the media attention has focused on …

Tags: intervention, literacy, seeding reading

From Mars to Minecraft: Teachers Bring the Arcade to the Classroom

by Jordan Shapiro
July 21, 2014

Part 11 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. Teachers have found many different ways of using digital games in the classroom. But what kind of games are these students playing? And how are teachers incorporating them in the classroom? Last year’s report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, “Games …

Tags: games, interdisciplinary, learning, mindshift guide to games and learning, research, teaching

Kids Need Truly Interactive Experiences

by Jason Boog
July 15, 2014

“Interactive” is one of the most overused words in the 21st Century, a label attached to thousands of digital devices, apps and TV shows for kids. Interactive tablet apps will read a book to your kid and interactive cartoon characters will invite your kid to dance during a TV show. …

Tags: apps, co-viewing, dialogic reading, interactive, ipad, iphone, literacy, reading

Q-and-A with Alexis Lauricella on Parenting Texts and Language Development

by Barbara Ray
July 14, 2014

Can text messages to low-income parents help close the word gap? It’s not an idle question. Last month, the advocacy group Too Small to Fail announced plans to experiment with text messages to parents in a new partnership with Kaiser Permanente, Sesame Workshop,* and Text4Baby. In a recent blog post for Seeding Reading we reported …

Tags: head start, intervention, literacy, parenting, seeding reading

Parent Voices: Doubts, then Excitement on Texts to Promote Literacy

by Heidi Moore
July 14, 2014

When Alexiss Evans enrolled in the Ounce of Prevention Fund’s Parent University literacy program, she did so because she believed in the organization and because she wanted to give her daughter every possible opportunity to learn. “I’m one of those parents who, if [the Ounce says] something, I’ll do it,” she …

Tags: head start, intervention, literacy, parenting, seeding reading

Games Can Advance Education: A Conversation With James Paul Gee

by Jordan Shapiro
July 11, 2014

Part 10 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. Most people involved with games and learning are familiar with the work of James Paul Gee. A researcher in the field of theoretical linguistics, he argues for the consideration of multiple kinds of literacy. The notion of “New Literacies” expands the …