It’s hard to imagine that script writers of “Criminal Minds,” a CBS TV drama about psychopaths, would include a storyline about the importance of reading and singing to your child. But that’s exactly what they are doing with the help of Too Small to Fail.

As part of the Seeding Reading project, we sat down with Stephen Massey, senior manager, media and corporate partnerships at Too Small to Fail to talk about the organization’s latest efforts to reach millions of families—including the large and devoted Univision audience—with a different sort of message.

This is a condensed and edited version of that conversation.

This post is part of Seeding Reading, an series of articles and analysis by New America’s Ed Policy Program and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. See also the Learning Tech section of EdCentral.org and the JGCC blog.

Barbara Ray: First off, what is Too Small to Fail?

Stephen Massey:  Too Small to Fail is a joint initiative between the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and the San Francisco-based Next Generation. Its purpose is to encourage parents to talk, read, and sing to their young children in an effort to help close the word gap to prepare them for success in school and beyond.

Why focus on the word gap?

Research tells us that there’s a window of opportunity in the first three years of a child’s life to help that child develop its brain and the vocabulary that will allow the child to be ready for school and later, for life. So we chose the word gap as an area of focus, with a real challenge from Secretary Clinton to find innovative ways to reach parents with this message in trusted formats and settings.

Too Small to Fail has partnered with Univision, an American Spanish-Language broadcast network, on a series of public service announcements and other outreach. Why Univision?

When we launched this campaign, Secretary Clinton was very clear that she wanted to reach lowest-income Americans and those most in need. We know from the research that Hispanic Americans tend to talk, read, and sing less to their children than other groups, particularly low-income Hispanic Americans. Hispanic Americans could really use this message. From focus groups, we heard that Univision is the top source of information for viewers on a range of issues, from health to education.

As part of our Seeding Reading interviews, we were just talking with Roberto Llamas, the executive vice president and corporate officer of Univision Communications. He said that viewers trust Univision so much that they regularly call the station with questions about where to find the best doctor or during Hurricane Sandy, what they should do—that’s a trusted source.

Univision has the highest brand equity of any media company, English or Spanish, in the United States. That’s because since its founding, Univision been the voice of the Hispanic community. In addition to its great on-air assets, it has an affiliate network of 23 stations around the country. In each, they have a community affairs manager whose job it is to reach out and engage the local community. That’s really powerful reach.

Flickr/dhammza

You’ve also gone to Hollywood for help in spreading the message by working the messages into the scripts of some of the most popular television shows, from “Modern Family” to “Criminal Minds”? I’m having a hard time imagining how you do that with “Criminal Minds.”

They’re developing that one yet so I haven’t seen it. Stay tuned! We’ve worked with script writers and producers on some obvious shows like “Parenthood” or “Modern Family” where you’d expect that to be an easy message to integrate. But we’ve also been in some shows you wouldn’t expect, like “Orange Is the New Black” and “Criminal Minds.” Turns out that it’s good TV.

We started our Hollywood work by bringing Secretary Clinton and Chelsea to Hollywood for a half-day session with the top producers and others. Secretary Clinton made a passionate argument for the power of media to deliver this message and why this message is so important to parents. Many parents don’t understand what kind of impact they can have, and the role they play in developing their child’s mind. Being able to dive through powerful platform like TV can make a big difference.

Do you have to educate the screenwriters on this topic?

This was a new message for them too. Often it means doing briefings with the script writers.  But ultimately, they’re the best at delivering fun, educational content in a way that’s entertaining.

We’re not so interested in having Too Small to Fail appear on the screen. We’re more interested in modeling the kinds of behavior we want parents to engage in with their kids. Showing what the interaction looks like. Making “talking, reading, and singing” easily accessible during everyday opportunities—when changing a diaper or at soccer practice. Any way they can create a more language-rich environment. So working with producers to create those moments on popular television shows has been a real win for us.

What’s been the impact of the initiative?

What we’ve seen is tremendous audience feedback. We’ve had 280 million campaign impressions this year on the Univision campaign alone. We’ve seen tremendous use of our resources online at Univision. Visits have increased, families are using the tools we’ve created. We’ve heard from focus groups how the messages have changed their behavior. Last week Univision’s local station in Los Angeles hosted an education fair, and 40,000 people showed up at Cal State Dominguez Hills. It’s just a tremendous response from this audience. I’ve honestly never seen anything like it.

Barbara E. Ray is a writer and editor living in Chicago. As owner of Hiredpen, Inc., she helps researchers and nonprofit organizations convey their work to broader audiences. She was the communications director for the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, and has held positions as senior writer at the DHHS-funded Joint Center for Poverty Research, and as a managing editor at the University of Chicago Press journals division.

Flickr / paullew

As Thanksgiving approaches, many Americans have been petitioning retailers from opening on Thanksgiving Day, arguing that it is eroding traditional family values. Not only would retail workers have to show up to work and lose out on what has traditionally been a vacation day, bargain hunters would leave their family meals early in order to shop. Critics of Black Friday also point to the irony that just hours after we have given thanks for all we have, we rush out gorge ourselves on material goods.

While I personally do not disagree with these petitions, I think there is an even greater danger to family time under our noses that we’re just not paying attention to: our addiction to digital technologies. And I’m including myself.

We just have to take a look around. At family dinners at restaurants or on the subway ride home, we are constantly on our devices. Over the weekend, I met up with a group of friends.  After the usual chatter about the cold weather and our latest job updates, the conversation immediately turned to the latest gadgets and apps, and whether we saw what our friend had posted to Facebook last night.  In the few hours we spent together, nearly all us (me included!) were on our phones at some point to reply to a text (to someone who wasn’t with us at the moment), snap a picture for Instagram or check an email.

Undeniably, digital technologies are tools that help us connect with one another and learn together—a Skype session with family that is far away, a friendly game of Mario Kart against grandmother and grandson, a father teaching his kids about football while watching the game together on Thanksgiving. There are many ways that technology can enhance our connections rather than disconnecting us from the people around us.

But while I agree that it is sad that the meaning of Thanksgiving is slowly being eroded by a growing demand for material goods, I don’t believe that retailers are to blame for diminishing family time. Nor are digital technologies to blame. We have no one to point fingers at but ourselves because we do this every day, and sadly we will likely do this on Thanksgiving as well—whether we are shopping or not. Family time is being interrupted everyday by the technologies around us because we let them (with instant replies and continuous check-ins).

This week, many of us will be traveling far and wide to see family we haven’t seen in months. Kids will be seeing their grandparents and long lost cousins. So let’s make a pact to have an e-free holiday. Let’s forget about snapping that picture of the perfect turkey for Facebook, overlook re-tweeting the latest celeb tweet, and stop worrying about the number of likes we’ll get on Instagram. Let’s focus on those around us.  Instead of editing our pictures to get the right colors, let’s capture mental pictures that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.  Let’s give a real “thumbs up” or an extra hug to those around us to let them know in reality that we like them.

What else can we talk about if we’re not talking about gadgets and social media?  Bit of a brain teaser isn’t it?  If you’re having trouble thinking of some deeper topics, here are some conversation starters for family members of all ages (it may even be interesting to see how kids answer some of these questions vs. how the adults answer):

1. What is happiness to you?
2. What makes you smile?
3. If you could do anything in the world at this moment what would it be (non-tech… playing video games wouldn’t count, for example)
4. If you could be anything in the universe, what would you be and why?
5. If you had $5m right now, what would you do with it and why?
6. If a Genie granted you 3 wishes, what would they be?

Let’s take the time to get to know each other better this holiday by having more unmediated conversations.  As Omid Safi recently wrote, we need to inquire about each other’s state of being (how is our heart, how are we feeling), not just doing (what is on our to-do list).  As he says, we need to remember that we are human beings, not human doings.

This week, let’s take time to strengthen our relationships with the people that matter most to us, and not let technology take over… so regardless of whether we are on or offline, we are still connected.  And let’s continue this pact every time we are with our loved ones, not just on Thanksgiving.

How can games unlock a rich world of learning? That is the key question behind a new resource that aims to help teachers successfully incorporate games in the classroom. The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning is the culmination of a series of blog posts authored by Forbes contributor and professor Jordan Shapiro, and tackles many of the most pressing questions that teachers and parents have about using digital games for learning. Featuring a foreword by Katie Salen, the Guide features highlights of Jordan’s reporting as well as examples of how teachers are using games in their own classes.

The Guide is available as a free PDF on the MindShift site.

“Introduce your hearing-impaired child to a world of new friends,” reads the above 1986 advertisement in Exceptional Parent magazine for the TeleCaption II, a closed-captioning decoder system produced by the National Captioning Institute that could be hooked up to a standard television set.  By “a world of new friends,” the ad alludes to the cast of Sesame Street, symbolized here by bright yellow Big Bird, who boldly stands out from the black-and-white background.  In a mock-up of the TeleCaption II system, the caption “IT’S HERE ON SESAME STREET” appears beneath Big Bird.

At the time, it was no simple task for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) children to find their way to Sesame Street, or to children’s TV in general.

In 1986, the TeleCaption II would have cost parents a suggested retail price of $200 (while Sears and JC Penney marked up the device to $250, expensive even by 2014 standards).  Media scholar Greg Downey notes how few DHH households were buying caption decoders back then due to the exorbitant out-of-pocket price and a lack of captioned content being produced by TV networks.  The dearth of content was in turn due to networks not volunteering to caption their material, which they claimed was too costly a process considering the relatively small potential consumer audience.  All of this was also taking place prior to the 1990s, when Congress and the Federal Communications Commission eventually stepped in to regulate the captioning industry and the telecommunications marketplace, but only after significant activism by DHH individuals.

In my new book, Digital Youth with Disabilities (MIT Press), written with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative, I analyze some of the issues that today’s parents of youth with disabilities encounter in selecting digital media for their child and managing their child’s engagement with media.  I highlight here the history of the antiquated TeleCaption II system, and its limited potential to provide access to captioned episodes of Sesame Street, not because DHH children and families are so much better off nearly 30 years later, but because it is difficult to say.  Modern kids’ TV platforms such as YouTube introduce new issues surrounding accessibility and are mired with continued struggles over regulation.  I argue in the book that deciding which media makes a best “fit” for a particular child with a disability not only involves their personal preferences and needs, but also the limits of existing platforms, content, and standards.

More broadly, the book focuses on the ways in which school-age youth with disabilities and their families make media and technology part of their everyday lives, with particular attention to the heterogeneity of disabilities and additional dimensions of difference such as race, ethnicity, and class.  I step outside of traditional research on disabled youth’s use of media and technology, which heavily focuses on school and therapeutic settings.  Instead, I outline new parameters of research on “digital youth with disabilities”—those who also, as cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito and her colleagues put it, “hang out, mess around, and geek out” with media and technology—and call for further investigation as well as better translation of research into practice and policy.  Digital Youth with Disabilities should be of interest to anyone working to make the children, media, and technology space more inclusive for young people and their families, as well as to those interested in the interplay between social change, cultural convergence, and new communication technologies.

Sago Sago‘s apps are charming interactive experiences that aim to engage the youngest players. We recently had the opportunity to ask CEO Jason Krogh to share the story behind the company and to tell us more about their most recent game, “Friends,” which encourages young children to go on a digital play date.

Photo: Sago Sago

Can you tell us a little bit about your path to developing apps for children?

Like most people in the field, I stumbled into it. Shortly after graduating I bought a used Mac and turned it into a kiosk for an environmental education center. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was fun. I ended up spending almost a decade creating websites, CD-ROMs and kiosks before the App Store came onto the scene. Creating software for desktop computers was always filled with frustrations, especially for kids. Children were typically stationary at a desk, using a mouse, dealing with web browsers and keyboards. None of it was good. I quickly made the switch to working on touchscreen apps and haven’t looked back since.

What is Sago Sago focused on that sets your apps apart in this very crowded market?

As a parent I’m sure you’ve had the experience of reading a book with a child where the author just gets it—they’ve crafted a story that kids can truly relate to and care about. Often it’s really not apparent until you’ve read it with a child. We want parents to have that same experience with our apps.

We pay a lot of attention to the elements that typically get in the way of a good experience for the youngest children. We forego instructions, formal rules and assessment. We put the child in control of the experience, and we don’t try to force the child to use our apps in a single, specific way. Finally, we care about the execution. Building smooth, responsive software is a complex engineering challenge. Take Ocean Swimmer as an example. The art team created nearly 4,000 frames of artwork for the project. The app took nearly a minute to start up, and it wouldn’t even run on older devices. The motion was choppy and there would be a few seconds delay randomly during game play. It took weeks of effort by the developers to get it to a point where everything was quick, responsive and could be played on all our supported devices. So much of the quality comes down to the execution.

How did Sago Sago come into being?

The idea was hatched over lunch with Bjorn Jeffery, the CEO of Toca Boca. At the time our team was dividing itself between work for clients and our own projects. Toca Boca had found amazing success with their apps and as we spoke it was clear we shared a lot of the same basic principles. We founded Sago Sago as a sister studio to Toca Boca’s team in Stockholm. We work on our own products with our own roadmap, but share a lot expertise.

Is the work of Sago Sago influenced by a particular line of research or educational philosophy?

We are heavily influenced by the philosophy of Maria Montessori. We feel strongly that kids are natural learners and the role of parents and educators should be to provide a framework and set of materials for kids to teach themselves. But more than any theory, I think we’re inspired by Marie Montessori’s passion, commitment and pragmatic approach to learning through direct observation. Nothing is more instructional than time spent with children.

How much play testing with real kids do you do during the process of making an app?

Spending time with kids is essential to our process. We hold play testing sessions roughly once a month. In the course of development, an app has typically been in front of 20-30 kids. The primary focus is on addressing usability issues, but it’s also really important to help inform our design decisions in a more general sense.

With Friends, kids have the opportunity to go on “play dates” with the different characters, and interact with different activities. It’s also fun for kids to play either alone or together with a parent. Can you share a little bit of the background behind this app, and some of the choices and possible challenges that you encountered in the design and production process?

We are always looking for themes for our apps that children can relate to and trying to get at the heart of how kids see them. For example, the greeting at any play date is often a high point in my own daughter’s visits with friends. It doesn’t matter if her friend is already at the door, she needs to ring the doorbell (many times). She will greet a friend she hasn’t seen for a few days as if she hasn’t seen them in years. So we built that into the app. We also look at ways that kids can exert a level of control they sometimes can’t in real life. In the case of Friends, they choose who to pair with and then guide the character to their friend’s house just as a parent would.

The co-play component of the app is important, but it emerged very naturally out of the design. In other words, we didn’t set out at the start to create a co-play experience. We build all our apps to support as many fingers working away on the screen at once as possible. In the case of Friends, we love that two kids or a child and parent can take on the role of each of the characters. This is one of those happy indicators we see in play testing—when kids start to talk as if they are the characters and act out various scenarios. We saw this early and often with Friends and it was a sign we were heading in the right direction.

The challenge in Friends was finding the right balance in control. Some of the activities have a logical end point (such as eating). But others (such as the trains) don’t. At one point we had the train drive off screen when it was assembled. But in play testing we would see it drive off just as the kids were acting out a story with it. So we had to try to a few things until we arrived at the solution of an inactivity timeout.

What are some of the challenges and successes that your company has faced in terms of marketing/distribution your apps?

Distribution is easier than at any time in the past. Nearly anyone can get an app published on one of the major app stores. But discoverability is a huge challenge both for app developers and the families buying apps. Many developers underestimate the amount of work it takes to get any sort of visibility in the app store ecosystem. A large part of our success lies in mapping our a multi-year strategy and just sticking to it. Each app is a new chance to introduce ourselves to parents. The Friends app proved to us that we are winning them over. It is coming up to 18 months and 10 app launches since we published our first Sago Mini app and only now are we really hitting our stride.

Jason Krogh serves as CEO of Sago Sago, a Toronto-based Toca Boca Studio focused on developing digital toy apps for children five and under. The apps build on children’s natural curiosity and creativity.  Sago Sago’s releases include apps such as Sagi Mini Friends, Sago Mini Forest Flyer, Sago Mini Sound Box, and Sago Mini Bug Builder.

Jason has a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from the University of Guelph and made the transition into new media when he began developing online media for the Vancouver Aquarium and Science World. Jason established himself as an expert Flash developer, trainer and author and has presented at international conferences including the Annecy Animation Festival, FlashForward and FlashintheCan.

Forty five years ago today, the first episode of Sesame Street aired on PBS. As we celebrate the many ways that our friends Grover, Big Bird, and the rest of the gang have changed the landscape of children’s media for so many generations, all of us at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center would like to salute our founder, the woman whose dedication and determination has made such a tremendous impact on the lives of children all over the world.

Joan Ganz Cooney with Bert and Ernie

From the beginning, Joan Ganz Cooney believed in the importance of rigorous research not just to inform the content of the show, but to measure the impact that it has on real kids who watch it. A true visionary, she understood that television could be used as an effective way to engage children in learning at the same time that they were being entertained. (Read her landmark study on the potential uses of television for preschool education.) More than four decades later, we are incredibly proud to work with amazing colleagues who truly believe in the potential of children’s media to make a real difference in the way young children learn—not just the fundamentals that will give them a head start in school, but about the importance of being smarter, stronger, and kinder.

All of us at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center are honored to continue our founder’s work by evaluating how the technologies of today and tomorrow can be harnessed to help children reach their best potential. We are working to engage developers, researchers, policymakers and educators to understand how digital media can help improve literacy skills, particularly among underserved populations; examining the possibilities for leveraging children’s interest in video games for education; and studying the way families are using media together. We know that the power of digital media can be harnessed to influence children’s media in the years to come. And we thank Joan Ganz Cooney and Sesame Street for helping to pave the way!

If you are in New York and haven’t had a chance yet,  stop by the exhibit at the New York Public Library to learn more about the history of the show.