When I was a kid, one of my favorite parts of the week was the recurring Friday night game session at my house. It usually consisted of my dad stoking the fire, my sister watching TV, and my mom and me embroiled in a fierce competition of Chinese Checkers or Othello. There may have been times I fumed while resetting the board pieces (I was not a good loser), but I always enjoyed those game nights and still hold onto those memories today.

Now, with a family of my own and three kids with busy schedules (much busier and more jam-packed than mine ever was!), weekly game nights have unfortunately never become an official event. And the definition of gaming has changed quite a bit, too. There will always be a good ol’ fashioned game of Checkers to fall back on, but when you weave in the digital world, with video games, apps, online games, and even VR, there are almost limitless ways to play together.

It’s interesting to see how families are playing these days. According to a recent infographic by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, 93% of families with 4 to 10-year-olds still play board games with their kids. Hooray for Life! Which also happens to be one of the iconic board games that families are now playing in digital form, along with other familiar titles like Monopoly, Uno, Risk, and Scrabble. Even for families that like to whip out the board games on occasion, 51% are choosing to play together digitally more often than with traditional board games.

Thinking about my own family’s gaming habits, we seem to fall into the smaller group of people—the 32% who play board games more often than digital games. My kids love when we break into a spontaneous game of Apples to Apples or Family Trivial Pursuit, and will never turn down a game of Uno, but they also like to bust a move during a family Just Dance challenge. There’s nothing cuter than watching little kids mimic those dance moves.

I try to insert myself into my kids’ screen time wherever I can, because I know it gets harder as kids get older and become individual tech silos. I love playing Toca Boca apps with my 3-year-old because not only are they really fun, they also allow me into her digital world. Those interactions teach her that screen play can be a shared activity.

Despite the power of the screen and how easy it is for everyone to just be on their own gadgets, it’s nice to know that in this highly digital age, lots of families are still taking the time to game together. Whether you’re playing online or offline, the most important takeaway is to keep the family gaming game strong (excuse the pun).

As much as tech is entrenched into my life—it is my job after all—I’m still a sucker for rolling a pair of dice and moving pieces on a board. I think I know what we’re doing next Friday night.

See the full infographic here and learn more about the series here.

Jeana Lee Tahnk is a family tech expert and mom of three who is also navigating a new world of digital parenting. She is a regular contributor to Mashable, The Huffington Post, Cool Mom Tech and more, and is often sought out for her commentary on the intersection of parenting and technology.

As part of our Families and Media Project, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted a survey of nearly 700 parents whose 4-13-year old children play video games. We are pleased to present this data as a series of infographics, each featuring a particular facet of video games and family life. Here, we explore the mix of board/card games and digital games that families play together. Stay tuned for more installments of this series over the next few months.

Click to view full infographic.

The Cooney Center’s second installment of the “Reframing the Digital Divide” infographic series presents lower-income parents’ responses to classroom technology use. Eighty percent of surveyed parents think technology improves the quality of education, but significant groups of parents—particularly those who belong to historically marginalized groups—don’t know how much time their child spends using digital devices at school. And even though most parents (85%) whose children use classroom technology think that doing so helps students prepare for important tests, many also worry that the teacher knows less about their child’s individual needs due to class time spent with technology. Three in four immigrant Hispanic parents have this concern, compared with one in four White, Black, and U.S.-born Hispanic parents.

View the complete infographic (click to view a Spanish-language version here) to learn more about our findings and our suggestions for educators committed to incorporating classroom technology in ways that are responsive to parents’ hopes and concerns.

Save

Click to view full infographic.

Click to view in Spanish.

Welcome 2017!  For the Joan Ganz Cooney Center team, this is a very special year.  In December, we will celebrate our tenth year as an organization dedicated to advancing learning for children in the digital age. For those who follow our work closely, you will recall our first report—an analysis of the rapidly evolving digital landscape of educational toys, software and games called D is for Digital which found that the marketplace was full of products that may have had good intentions, but fell short on evidence of impact.  Shortly thereafter in May 2008, we officially launched the Center’s operations at our first public forum with a report that channeled our founder Joan Ganz Cooney’s original process for planning Sesame Street. In 1966, she traversed the country speaking with academic experts, practitioners, and policy experts to seek new strategies to harness the power of television—the ubiquitous medium of the time—to help young children learn.

Our report, The Power of Pow Wham!: Children, Digital Media and Our Nation’s Future  focused on our own research review and the advice of over 50 of the digital media and learning field’s top experts. That blueprint urged the Center and the field to focus on three priorities: first, to build a coherent R&D effort that would focus on both the opportunities and risks attached to digital media in promoting the healthy development of children; second, to rethink what “literacy” means in the digital age; and third, to advance digital equity. Those priorities are still fresh and urgent today, and are reflected in our project mix—from ongoing initiatives zeroing in on technology, family engagement, and early literacy; a focus on early learning and STEM competencies; game-based and intergenerational learning—the Center has tried to keep its focus on both innovation and impact rather than chasing the “shiny new objects” that continue to dot the digital learning landscape.  In doing so, it has been our privilege to lift up the work of many pioneers in the field by opening up our research projects, forums, and communications work to new leaders.

Later this month, we will release the National Science Foundation-supported report STEM Starts Early, a research and action blueprint that makes the case for much more focused R&D and professional reforms that will allow children to gain critical pathways to essential knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and math.  The report follows up on the first ever White House Symposium on Early Learning and STEM which took place last spring.

In the months ahead, we are preparing for an exciting new initiative on
learning across boundaries with partners at Stanford and NYU, and a communications research initiative on how best to engage public understanding of digital media and early learning with FrameWorks Institute.  We will also soon launch an ambitious national campaign, powered by creative leaders in Hollywood, that will study and deploy media to promote socio-emotional and conflict resolution skills, with colleagues at the Harvard Center on Media and Child Health. Stay tuned for details!

We remain dedicated to being a collaborative organization, and deeply appreciate the many contributions that we receive to this blog and our projects from both pioneers and emerging voices in the field.  Please let us know if you would like to contribute to our work, we always welcome suggestions!  Please send us your ideas.

We are grateful for your interest and active engagement with the Center’s work and look forward to a healthy, happy and productive New Year.

Save

Save

Save