Nosy Crow’s Managing Director and Founder Kate Wilson. Photo: Dominic Turner

Book publisher and app developer Nosy Crow has the best fairytale apps on the market today. Though many app developers lean heavily on the fairytale stories because they are in the public domain and therefore free to use, Nosy Crow is truly innovative in their use of mobile device capabilities and they truly use those special features to move the story forward, not just distract with bells and whistles.

Tune in to episode #4 of the App Fairy Podcast to hear an interview with Kate Wilson, managing director and founder of Nosy Crow.  You’ll find out the story behind their name and cute crow logo, learn how they test their apps and discover Kate’s (secretly) favorite app!  Be sure to also visit the website at www.appfairy.org to see photos and videos from Nosy Crow and get a link to the Nosy Crow dog’s own Twitter feed (yes, the office dog has it’s own social media account—so much cuteness!).

Learn more at joinkidmap.org

Creating inclusive children’s media is a lot like creating a beautiful garden. It requires research, planning, and mindful effort.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is pleased to announce our partnership with the Kids’ Inclusive and Diverse Media Action Project (KIDMAP), formerly known as Diversity in Apps. This collective, made up of media creators, producers, researchers, educators, and parents, is committed to putting all kids on the digital media map. They’ve just launched a new website, www.joinkidmap.org, and are spearheading a number of initiatives that support the creation of diverse and inclusive children’s media through research, best practices, and collaboration.

• The Diverse and Inclusive Growth (DIG) Toolkit will equip creators of children’s media with a roadmap to creating products that are more equitable, diverse, and inclusive. It is organized around nine milestones in the production process, from hiring a creative team to marketing a final product.
• The DIG Checklist was designed to help reviewers, researchers, parents, librarians, and educators identify and recognize high-quality, inclusive children’s digital media. Use the checklist as a rubric for evaluating or rating children’s media. Producers and creators can use the checklist as a guide to  producing high-quality children’s media that is inclusive, equitable, and accessible.
• Join Kabir Seth and Amy Kraft for the Diversity Sauce Podcast. Each week, they discuss the current topics of diversity and inclusion in the news and interview key players in the children’s media space. Guests have included Cooney Center Senior Fellow Vikki Katz, CommonSense Media Director of Research Michael Robb, and Tech with Kids founder Jinny Gudmundsen.

And be sure to sign up for the KIDMAP newsletter, which features a weekly roundup of the latest news and research on equity, diversity, and inclusion across children’s entertainment.

Stay tuned for more news about these intiatives in coming weeks, and in the meantime, please check out the KIDMAP website to learn more about the great work they are doing to promote the creation of more inclusive media for all children.

Imagine these everyday scenes: A father and his two-year-old are in their library’s bookmobile, checking out electronic and print picture books they just enjoyed at story time. Kindergartners select photos and drawings for their school’s annual multimedia slideshow. A grandmother and teacher share a laptop, clicking on videos that demonstrate Spanish-language word games for school and home. Each day, parents, caregivers, and children are building language and literacy skills for the 21st century, perhaps without even realizing it.

Every community in the United States has the potential to transform itself into this kind of ecosystem that supports families and promotes digital inclusion. But to do so, community leaders will need to take purposeful steps toward modernizing their family engagement and early learning plans. Too often, they risk chasing after the new shiny object without a clear path for prioritizing efforts and ensuring they are effective.

Today, New America’s Education Policy Program and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop are releasing a new report to guide city and community leaders. Our report, How to Bring Family Engagement and Early Learning into the Digital Age, is designed to help these leaders and other policymakers examine what is needed and update their plans by taking integrated approaches to the use of libraries, schools, multimedia spaces, and through home-based Internet connectivity services.

Promoting early learning through the support and empowerment of families—especially those who are under-resourced—has become an imperative for education leaders nationwide. In 2014, New America published Envisioning a Digital Age Architecture for Early Education to help leaders visualize success in this media-infused environment. Since then, New America and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop have joined forces to document initiatives using digital tools to connect with vulnerable families and improve educational outcomes. Interactive tools such as on-demand video and text messaging are being used to inspire and reassure parents, to share learning materials between formal and informal settings, and to bring parents closer to their children’s learning. Some communities are also taking steps to prepare educators as media mentors to help families and children be choosy about media and learn how to use digital tools for learning.

But so far, these efforts are sporadic and fragile. Very few are fully sustainable or ready to scale up. Community leaders need a plan. Our hope is that this report will generate that planning. Think of it as a companion to existing guidance, such as the Building Blocks for Success framework from the Center for the Study of Social Policy and the National League of Cities, which is already helping communities to build early learning communities. It is also designed to be complementary to the work of the 200+ communities that are part of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and other collective-impact efforts around the country.

The report describes four actions to help community leaders prioritize: take stock, develop professional learning programs (including corps of media mentors), invest in physical infrastructure, and create a cycle of continuous improvement.  Over the coming year, with support from the Joyce Foundation, which provided the support for this report and previous work on our Integrating Technology in Early Literacy mapping initiative and corollary analysis, our two institutions will continue to provide resources and tools for policymakers and decision-makers at all levels.

To learn more, and to see examples of communities that are already embarking on the report’s four steps, read the full report.

My kids and I recently downloaded a game for all three of our smartphones. Ever since, competition in the house has been fierce. The game is called Forest and the premise is simple. You plant trees to grow a forest. But trees only grow when Forest is the only app running. If you switch to another game, reply to a text, or check social media, the tree dies.

Choose a seed, set the timer, and wait.  Longer sessions grow bigger trees. The more often you play the more trees you plant. Each tree also comes with coins that you can spend to unlock new kinds of plants. My youngest is trying to build a mushroom forest. I’m going for diversity. It’s all a competition to see who can make the coolest, biggest, most awesome forest.

The app sells itself as a way to beat procrastination. Ironically, it’s positioned in opposition to screen time. “Be Present. Put down your phone and focus on what’s more important in your life,” the website says. When I first mentioned it to my kids, they told me they weren’t interested.

Can you blame them? These days, children’s greatest source of shame is the touchscreen. They are constantly berated for spending too much time with games and gadgets. Adults send them crazy mixed messages. We buy them devices. Then, we complain that they use them too much. They see us engaged with our smartphones and laptops constantly. But when they do the same, eventually we always scold them. How are they to reconcile constant anti-screen rhetoric with the fact that parents model always-on connection as the epitome of hard work?

Moreover, have you ever thought about what it must be like for kids to hear us describe their playtime using the same language we use to describe cigarette, drug, and alcohol abuse? They must wonder why grownups would give them toys that are so unhealthy, toys that we consider to be addictive.

Of course, there’s still no good research that shows screen addiction is a real thing. Sierra Filluci put it nicely in a post she recently wrote for Common Sense Media: “Certainly, studies show that kids feel addicted, but whether many are experiencing the symptoms of true addiction—interference with daily life, needing more to achieve the same feeling—is still up for debate.”

Nevertheless, I hear parents say, “my kid is addicted,” all the time. Perhaps it’s because grownups feel guilty that we don’t spend enough time with our kids and therefore, we take out our shame on the devices that do. C’mon, admit it! Deep down, we all know that the anti-screen rhetoric has always been much more about grown-up’s insecurity than about children’s wellbeing. And sadly, this is precisely the kind of thing that cultivates a lifetime of stress and anxiety for your children. Mine too. I’m certainly not the perfect dad.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised that my boys resisted playing a game that claims to be about avoiding screen time. Forest App likely sounded stressful to them. “Doesn’t it just turn off all of your notifications?” My oldest asked, “I’m not doing that.” But ultimately, they were both excited about the prospect of playing with me. So, they agreed. Even in a world where technology seems to be changing things in enormous ways, kids are still kids. They will always crave their parents’ attention.

We downloaded the app, and it was immediately clear to me that this is a perfect game for families to play together, but not because it promotes less screen time. If you’ve read my stuff, you know that I’m a big fan of family screen time—of any activity that helps grownups teach kids how to think about the world in which they live. Forest App does just that: it makes my kids be mindful about when they are using their phones and when they’re not.

“I’m going to set it for a 30-minute tree while we eat dinner.”

“How about 10 minutes while I shower?”

The game probably won’t change any of my kids’ habits, but that’s not the point. I like it because it makes them consider the habits they’ve already formed. I support anything that encourages people to give thought to the things that they’re doing. And these days, most of what we do, most of our interactions with the world—social, commercial, informational, political—are mediated through software, apps, and games.

Smartphones and tablets make it so that even what feels like a simple communication is now a subtle engagement with media and/or entertainment. And today’s children (as well as many adults) rarely have enough objective distance from their gadgets to recognize that their experiences are produced and designed like a video game. Are your children cognizant of the user-interface decisions that have been made by engineers, entrepreneurs, and powerful corporations? Do they realize that Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Gmail, Photoshop, and even Microsoft Office all bake their for-profit agendas into every swipe, tap, and click? Probably not. But they should.

For better or worse, our devices demand ritualized engagement. They encourage us to think in certain ways. Yet few children receive any adult mentorship that teaches them not to surrender, blindly, to prescribed digital actions. Few get the support they need to cultivate some level of critical media literacy for the 21^st century.

Kids shouldn’t feel guilty about interacting with the tools that will continue to shape their lives, but they do need to develop a perspective that helps them make informed and thoughtful choices about how to contribute to the hybrid virtual/tangible world in which they live. It requires a level of awareness that Forest App seems to be encouraging.

In the part two of a roundtable discussion on teaching with games, Sandhya Nankani talks to Paul Darvarsi and Aleksander Husoy about what teachers look for in learning games and explore some of the qualities that make the teaching games successful. See part 1 here.

Teachers on games for learning

Sandhya: A recent study found that 91 percent of children in the United States ages 2-17 play video games! What an opportunity they present as a tool for learning, right? It makes sense, therefore, that so many organizations and media companies that create children’s content will at some point explore the possibility of creating a learning or classroom game.

I’ve created history games, STEM-education games, literacy games, and social impact games over the last several years. As a content creator and narrative designer of learning games, one of the things I’ve struggled with most is understanding how the games that I’m helping to create will eventually fit into the busy classroom of today. My challenge, over and over again, is to help game designers who want to deliver a fast-paced, engaging game to create a narrative rich in content that supports learning outcomes and educational standards. Sometimes, I’m brought into a project late in the game or after the mechanics have been determined. Other times, I’m asked to create a curriculum or lesson plan to support a game’s use in the classroom without much information about how the game will be marketed or who the core audience of educators using it will be.

I agree with you both about the value of games, but there are times that I worry that game-based learning can be the future if and only if games are created in a spirit of collaboration with teachers, with educational outcomes in mind, and can provide flexibility of use. As teachers in the trenches and as gamers yourselves, what are the core benchmarks that you think game creators, publishers, and developers should be thinking about when creating “games for learning”? 

What do you think potential game creators need to consider before beginning or committing to creating educational games?  What do you think educational games are missing today? 

Aleks: I think you are spot on regarding the importance of quality collaborations between the different parties taking part in the development and distribution of learning games. From my point of view, as a teacher who has never taken part in the development process of any game, many ed-games suffer from the same basic limitations:

1. A costly educational game needs to appeal to a wide target audience in order to justify their cost. Often this leads to games where the content is too complex for younger learners, while gameplay isn’t sufficiently challenging for older learners.
2. Game developers are not sufficiently conscious of the context in which the game should be used. If you are making a game to be played by a child at home independently, in partnership with a parent, or in a specific type of classroom context, then you need to make widely different design choices.
3. Games are often designed with a very specific curricular goal in mind, with little room for flexibility. This limits teachers’ options in designing a game-centered unit that caters to the unique needs of their class.
4. The various parties that take part in a game development process do not understand each other’s fields well enough. It seems to me that in many cases, organizations will commission a game without sufficient knowledge of possibilities and limitations in game design, game designers will have a limited understanding of pedagogy, and teachers are often unfamiliar with various game genres. Though all parties are well intentioned and experts in their own field, a successful ed-game requires extensive collaboration early on in the game design process.

I am optimistic that the quality of educational games coming out is improving, but at this point in time there are few ed-games that can compete with commercial games for consideration in my classes.

Paul: Like Aleks, I generally look to commercial video games for my classroom because they tend to be more engaging and complex than games specifically designed for learning. With many educational games, the gameplay is secondary to the learning goals, which puts the cart ahead of the horse. Chess can teach strategy, analysis, foresight, planning, etc., but it wasn’t designed with those goals in mind. It was made to challenge and entertain, and learning naturally follows. An ed-game should be a “good game” first and foremost. Determining what qualifies as “a good game” is not easy, but if it’s challenging and fun to play, you’re probably on the right track. The good news is that the industry has matured, the technology improved, and game designers are becoming more savvy. Consequently, there are more dedicated learning games being developed that are genuinely engaging. A good recent example is Dragonbox, which kids find entertaining, but also helps them develop a basic understanding of algebra.

Dragonbox is an example of a successful game because it is fun to play while students learn algebra.

Aleks: Dragonbox is a star example of an educational game that does things right. In addition to the point raised by Paul that it’s genuinely entertaining in its own right, Dragonbox has succeeded in one core area where many ed-games fall short. In many learning games, there is a weak link between game mechanics and learning objectives. Very often the educational component of the game is presented through quizzes, text boxes, and cut-scenes that function as obstacles that must be breached to get back to the fun stuff. In Dragonbox the learning objectives are finely interwoven in the game mechanics and close to every action the learner takes is directly related to the concept (algebra) that is meant to be taught.

Games don’t have to be digital

Sandhya: It’s nice to talk about the value of digital games but we must recognize that opportunity does not exist for all, as this research from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center shows. In our inequitable world where many homes and classrooms remain low-tech, I’m often thinking about how games can still be integrated. I think the Quest to Learn schools in New York and Chicago, which are based entirely on game principles, are a great model. There, 90% of the games used in the classroom are board games or physical games. What are your thoughts on how game-based learning can be integrated into schools that do not have digital resources? 

Paul: The digital divide is certainly a problem in contemporary education, but game-based learning is not wholly dependent on technology. Video games are a good addition to the classroom repertoire, but learning can occur through a game created from bottle caps and an egg carton. Creative use of available resources can help leverage the principles of game-based learning without technology.

Video games have taught us a great deal about engaging players, including the use of choice and agency, accommodating individual skill levels, the importance of balancing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and achieving success through challenges and failures. Can these lessons be used to inspire changes to traditional teaching and learning systems in schools and classrooms? We must continue to work towards creating more equitable access to resources, however it’s important to think not only about using games, but also adopting game-mindedness to more broadly improve education.

Aleks: Though most of my career in education has been spent in technology-rich environments, many of the principles that we apply to digital games can also be applied in low-tech classrooms. Though as Paul states, unequal access to technology expands the educational divide between the haves and the have-nots, games and playful learning are not wholly dependent on electronic gadgets. My “gateway drug” to using video games in my classes was an interest in roleplay and simulations, which in many cases can serve the same purpose as digital games in the classroom.

Aleks uses Democracy 3 as a backdrop in a unit about parliamentary democracy.

For classrooms that have some access to some technology, one should also be aware that students do not necessarily need separate copies of games and devices. This year, I’m running a unit on parliamentary democracy where we use the game Democracy 3 as a backdrop. The game, which is essentially a simulator of the political decision-making process, serves as a backdrop for a primarily “non-digital” model parliament session. The same kind of thinking can be applied to a range of games, keeping in mind that though games may facilitate learning, the most important interactions are those that take place between learners, not between learners and the game. Regardless of whether one has 1-to-1 access to devices, a single computer, or no access to digital technology whatsoever, creative teachers can always find ways of using games or game principles in their teaching.

Getting games into the classroom

Sandhya: What kinds of games would you like to see created that would be super useful to you as educators for today’s kids? 

Aleks: I’m going to highjack this question to answer something somewhat related, yet completely off-topic.

The games that are super useful to educators do already exist. Teachers with an understanding of the potential of using games in education already have an enormous library to select from. Getting quality games into classrooms is remains a challenge. While there are systems in place for schools that want to purchase text books, literature, films, and many other learning supplies, teachers interested in using games not initially intended for use in education need to navigate a bureaucratic, logistical, technical, and legal maze in order to get games for their classroom. What would be super useful to me would be a distribution channel that allowed me to buy and get started using a game quickly, and thereby afford me more time to develop better pedagogy.

Sandhya: Where do you find the learning games that you use?   

Paul: I find games in all sorts of places. Many of the games I’ve used in the classroom I’ve discovered through social media. I follow GBL educators, game developers, game scholars, and various game culture sites, which keeps me somewhat up-to-date on new releases and potential classroom uses for existing games. Organizations like Common Sense Media curate extensive game review sites for parents and teachers, and YouTube shows like Extra Credit have done valuable work examining the intersections of games and education.

Aleks: Though there is a growing movement within the teaching field towards using games in classroom, most schools have a limited number of “gamer teachers”. Both Paul and I have drawn great benefit from our “expanded teachers’ lounges” on social media. In Scandinavia we have a large Facebook community related to games, education, and playful learning, which has generated a trove of ideas for both developing games and (more importantly) various approaches to using games. The Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education, an agency of the Department of Education, also publishes quality guides to games for use in school.

Paul Darvasi teaches high school English and media studies at Royal St. George’s College in Toronto, Ontario and is a game designer and PhD candidate in York University’s Faculty of Education. He has recently authored How Digital Games Can Support Peace Education and Conflict Resolution. 

Aleksander Husoy teaches English and Social Science at Nordahl Grieg Upper Secondary School in Bergen, Norway and is a teacher-instructor and advisor for the Norwegian Centre for Information and Communication Technology in Education.  

Sandhya Nankani is a children’s media producer who has created content and narrative design for “educational” games, including the recently launched World Rescue, inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.  

I recently met Paul Darvasi and Aleksander Husøy at the annual UNESCO Forum on Global Citizenship Education in Ottawa, where we were on a panel hosted by the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development.

The subject of our panel was a debate on the topic, “Innovative pedagogies for ESD and Global Citizenship Education: Is game-based learning the future?” Both Paul and Aleks use games in the classroom often when they’re teaching and I’ve been creating them for the past nine years, so frankly, there wasn’t all that much debate on the stage about whether games in the classroom could be a valuable tool for learning!

The real questions we grappled with were: How can games be best created as tools for learning? and Can we convince more educators to use games as a tool to foster global citizenship education? We’ve been continuing our conversations post-conference, and are excited to share the discussion here. The first part of our conversation focuses on how Paul and Aleksander use games in their classrooms to inspire global citizenship and build relationships.

Inspiring understanding and empathy through games

Sandhya: During our panel, we talked about how games are a robust new medium that, when combined with literature, art, VR, and primary sources, can truly bring a curriculum to life. We talked about how they can take children and youth on digital excursions to better understand how other people live, serving as windows, doors, and mirrors for today’s youth. 

You both use digital games in your classrooms to promote intercultural understanding, social responsibility, and global citizenship. How and why do you think games are an ideal medium for doing this?

Paul: Video games can transport players to other spaces, bodies, cultures, and time periods—all which involve shifts in perspective. Walking the proverbial mile in someone else’s shoes, whether a Nepalese farmer or a Kurdish refugee, provides insights that can encourage positive social attitudes and behaviors. Books, films, and other traditional media formats offer us views of other people and places, but each medium has unique advantages and disadvantages in how they transmit perspective. Film and TV are spectatorial, while video games are participatory in that they invite players to make choices, and their actions activate tangible consequences in the game world. This type of interactive engagement can more deeply invest players emotionally and cognitively in the content and, ideally, lead to changes in their attitudes and behaviors.

Aleks: Compared to many students elsewhere, our students in Norway are fairly privileged. They live in a safe and stable country with access to education, health care, a generous welfare state, and a range of other benefits that they can take for granted. Though students are generally conscious that their own fortunate circumstances are not universal, it is difficult to understand the mindset of people whose lives are distant from their own.

Through games, players have the opportunity to put themselves into the shoes of others. My students get to experience the consequences of war and the breakdown of society from the perspective of a civilian. They can feel the emotional pain of refugees pleading to cross the border to safety in Papers, Please. Or they can witness the effects of parental neglect on a young child in Among the Sleep.

Emotional or compassionate learning, as I facilitate through games in my classroom, is not new to education. The experiences I want my students to have are not unlike what we strive for when reading fiction or watching films. When teachers assign novels like Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, they do so to give students access to an inside perspective on indigenous Igbo culture. Films like Schindler’s List and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas can provide proximity to the subject matter that I doubt is possible through even the most brilliantly written textbook.

As Paul raised, games have additional value that traditional media lacks– interactivity. While books and movies are passive, games place significant weight on the player. When reading, one might feel strongly about the choices characters should or should not make, but they cannot compel the story to change direction. When playing a game, the player is personally responsible for the choices that are made, which creates a stronger bond between the medium and the media consumer.

In This War of Mine, which is one of my favorite games for use in Social Science, the player takes on the role of a group of civilians caught in the middle of a conflict-ridden city. The player is directly responsible for their survival and needs to make a series of choices that challenge their personal views of right and wrong. Similar narratives exist in novels and film, but the feeling of real personal responsibility for the characters that the game evokes cannot be replicated by spectatorial media. These types of experiences are the reason why digital games in my mind have a place in the classroom.

Promoting digital collaboration across borders

Sandhya: The two of you had never met in person but the conference was like a reunion, because you’ve been collaborating around games in education for four years! Together you’ve developed a strategic approach to using games as literature and carried out programs where your students have collaborated closely through the use of tools such as Facebook, video calls, and shared documents. Can you tell us more about your collaboration?

Students in Paul and Alek’s classes play Gone Home and participate in a series of group projects that combine members from both classes..

Paul: For the last three years, Aleks and I have run a collaborative unit between our classes in Canada and Norway. Our students play a narrative-rich video game called Gone Home and then undertake a series of transatlantic activities in response to the gameplay experience. We set up a private Facebook group where students introduce themselves with ice-breaking activities, and share their views and insights on the game. At the end of the unit, students have the option to participate in group projects that combine members from both countries. Despite the time differences and geographic separation, they have produced memorable final projects including zines, machinimas, video presentations, and podcasts. It’s not only a meaningful way to unpack themes and ideas about the game text— it’s also a valuable exercise in managing online international collaborations, a crucial skill in an increasingly globalized world.

Aleks: For my students, who are not native English speakers, having the opportunity to work with Paul’s classes is a great experience. In addition to the value of international collaboration Paul described, my students are afforded the additional benefit of taking part in productive communication with native English speakers. Though our students have never met in the flesh, the level of collaboration between some of our groups is at least on par with what I’ve seen from students who’ve travelled on short term (physical) cultural exchange programs.

What also strikes me about this project is how simply the logistics can be arranged. Though our project is centered on a game-based unit, I see few barriers to other schools running similar “digital exchange programs” on any topic with very little hassle. With Internet access increasingly available in schools worldwide, I hope to see many more similar projects elsewhere. Not all students have the opportunity to take part in cultural exchange programs, but through digital collaboration, many of the same benefits can be achieved.

Putting game-based learning in context

Sandhya: Both of you agree that games, by and of themselves, have no magical or miraculous properties and instead propose that their value comes from the context in which they are used. What has led you to believe this and can you each share an example from your classrooms to help us better understand what you mean?

Paul: Digital games are complex and dynamic systems that can produce a variety outcomes. Like all text, games can be interpreted in diverse ways. It’s important to contextualize gameplay in order to achieve specific learning outcomes. For example, I’ve used Total War: Rome II in a history class to study Caesar’s first battle in Gaul. Rome II is a sprawling strategy game that requires players to manage economics, policy, civics, military deployment, diplomacy, etc. It spans decades and spreads across huge geographic areas. However, for the purposes of this unit, we focused on a tiny slice of the game that features the earliest part of Caesar’s campaign in what is today the south of France.

Before playing, students read Caesar’s own account of the battle from his Gallic Wars and watched a short documentary on the topic. This helped fill-in background specific to the event and ultimately added to their understanding of the game. The goal of the unit, aside from learning about the historical event itself, was for students to think about how different sources represent historical events in contrasting ways. Students had the opportunity to examine and think critically about how books, films and games each have unique affordances and constraints in how they transmit history. This learning outcome was not determined by the game, but by the context. Most digital games can be used in any number of ways, so the context must be shaped to direct the learning, whether through discussions, additional readings, videos, or assignments.

Aleks: It should be obvious by now that both Paul and I are excited about the potential value of bringing games into the classroom. I do however see a disturbing trend, where developers of educational games peddle their products as near-mystical artefacts that will turn kids into the next Einstein or Mozart. As an instructor on the use of games in education, I’ve seen many classrooms where students are plopped in front of a game with the assumption that the game in and of itself is the key to mastery. My strong belief is that games should not be viewed differently than any other medium. Learning does not happen first and foremost through interaction between the learner and the game, but instead through interactions between the learner, the teacher, their peers,and other learning materials.

Games like Among the Sleep can offer players experiences that can be difficult or impossible to replicate in the real world.

In Among the Sleep, which I have been using with students studying health and social care, the player takes on the role of a young child experiencing neglect and child abuse. Though the game itself delivers a powerful message, the most valuable part of the learning process is when students discuss their experiences from the game, contextualizing them with other parts of the curriculum as well as their experiences from work practice. Games can offer experiences that are difficult or impossible to replicate in the real world, but in the same way that teachers would follow up an excursion to a museum with additional activities, materials, and reflection, the activities that take place during and after a game-based unit are at least as important as the game itself.

There are a wide variety of games available, and an even greater variety of perspectives on how games should be approached in the context of education. Some games are designed for a learning process that happens primarily through interaction between the game and the player. However, in my mind, if a teacher uses class time on a game where interaction with peers or the teacher is irrelevant, they are not making good use of class time—or the opportunity for digital collaboration.

The conversation continues as Sandhya, Paul, and Aleks discuss the need for collaboration between teachers and game developers in Part 2 of their roundtable discussion.

Paul Darvasi teaches high school English and media studies at Royal St. George’s College in Toronto, Ontario and is a game designer and PhD candidate in York University’s Faculty of Education. He recently authored How Digital Games Can Support Peace Education and Conflict Resolution.

Aleksander Husøy teaches English and social science at Nordahl Grieg Upper Secondary School in Bergen, Norway and is a teacher-instructor and advisor for the Norwegian Centre for Information and Communication Technology in Education.

Sandhya Nankani is a children’s media producer who creates content and narrative designs for educational games, including the recently launched “World Rescue”, inspired by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. 

This post originally appeared on Common Sense Education and appears here with permission.

Watch a group of preschoolers working in a garden. It’s cute, right? But it turns out they’re learning more than you’d think. According to our new NSF-funded report, STEM Starts Early, co-published by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and New America, there’s growing evidence that very young children from all backgrounds — even children from birth to age 8 — learn important science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills and habits of mind from everyday play and early learning activities. For example, by growing their own fruits and vegetables or even building forts and stacking blocks, children collect data, begin to develop strategies, solve problems, and learn to adjust their approach when things do not go as expected. These activities, when facilitated well, aren’t only laying a foundation for future STEM learning; they’re allowing kids to actually be scientists, here and now.

Who knew that such young kids were capable of this kind of scientific inquiry? There are lots of common misconceptions about how young children engage in STEM learning — and that’s important, because adults’ attitudes about STEM learning profoundly influence children’s own beliefs about STEM learning, as well as their abilities. Take a look at these four facts everyone should know about early STEM learning, and consider what you can do about them.

1. STEM benefits all children, regardless of their innate abilities or backgrounds.

What the research says

It’s a common myth that STEM is only for certain kinds of kids — those who are naturally gifted or driven in STEM subjects. But in fact, the research shows that STEM is important for all children and for all subject areas. Think of it this way: As we learn new skills, our brains weave skill strands into ropes we can use to solve problems, meet challenges, and, in turn, acquire new skills. STEM skills are vital in many kinds of skill ropes: When kids have opportunities to collect evidence and solve scientific problems, they build strong ropes that can be used in many ways, both now and later in life.

Take, for example, the profound ties between STEM and language learning: Early STEM instruction results in higher language and literacy outcomes, and the reverse is true as well. For example, exposure to more spatial language during block play in infancy and early childhood increases children’s spatial abilities when they’re older. Furthermore, math skills and reading skills at kindergarten entry are equally predictive of reading skills in the eighth grade; and background knowledge about the world and how it works (much of which falls within the realm of STEM concepts) is critical for reading comprehension once children are able to sound out the words they encounter.

What you can do

If, like many teachers, you find yourself wondering where you could possibly find time to add a STEM block to your full schedule, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Remember that you can weave STEM into almost anything you’re already doing. There are curricula available for this — for example, research has shown that using the IDEAS model, an integrated science-and-literacy instruction block, leads to better reading and science scores (and more positive attitudes about both) than using traditional, separate literacy and science blocks.

If you don’t see yourself or your school adopting new teaching models or curricula anytime soon, consider how you can casually weave STEM into everyday situations in the classroom. For example, let’s say a child is trying to get something she can’t reach. Instead of reaching it yourself and handing it to the child, talk her through a problem-solving scenario: “Hmmm, let’s stop and think about why you might not be able to reach it. Oh, you’re not tall enough? What can we do to make you taller?” Support the child as she works through the problem herself, encouraging her as she communicates and tries some different solutions and offering suggestions if she becomes frustrated. In these simple ways, you can foster independence, critical thinking, STEM and oral language development, and more.

2. Children are born scientists and need adult support to realize and expand their natural STEM capacities.

What the research says

Many people believe very young kids can’t do real STEM learning and should be focused on learning the “basics” first. But, as one researcher we interviewed put it, the reality is “[y]oung children are quite capable of doing, at a developmentally informed level, all of the scientific practices that high schoolers can do. They can make observations and predictions, carry out simple experiments and investigations, collect data, and begin to make sense of what they found.” In fact, researchers have documented children conducting systematic experiments as early as the first year of life!

For example, babies, only hours after birth, experiment with cause and effect as they realize that putting their own thumbs in their mouths makes them feel better; toddlers push their sippy cups off the edges of their high chairs over and over and over again to test the limits of gravity; and preschoolers are eager to understand why their clothes no longer fit (life sciences) and are obsessed with the fair distribution of communal snacks (math).

What you can do

Children need adult support to both realize and expand their natural capacity for STEM. Think back to the example of a child trying to get something that’s out of reach. By simply scaffolding the child’s critical-thinking process during this challenge moment, you’re encouraging math by comparing heights, science by encouraging experimentation, technology by helping her think about tool use, creativity in imagining a solution, and engineering by letting her make her imagined solution into a physical reality. And, on top of all of this, you’re giving her great practice in executive functioning skills such as self-control and sustained attention. It’s STEM and so much more.

Adults can encourage children’s STEM engagement by noticing when it’s already taking place, realizing that the child is not only capable of attaining the goal (getting the object) but also of meeting the challenge (solving the problem) with your support, and then taking advantage of that opportunity by engaging the child in an interaction that encourages their scientific inquiry. STEM learning moments aren’t only for special activities; they happen all the time, everywhere. Our job is to draw out that inner scientist, give them the tools they need to make important connections, and encourage them to keep trying and not give up.

3. Children need STEM immersion as early as possible to gain STEM fluency.

What the research says

A common misconception is that “real” learning happens in the classroom, as opposed to informal settings such as museums, libraries, and summer camps. However, the research shows that just as people need to be immersed in a language to become fluent, children, too, need to be given many opportunities in many different settings to become fluent in STEM subjects. You can think of STEM learning opportunities like charging stations that power up kids’ learning. If we increase the number of STEM charging stations in kids’ environments, we will see more interest and fluency in STEM. Our current system is patchy; this explains why some children never develop STEM fluency, which has significant consequences for their overall learning.

What you can do

To bridge informal and formal learning, educators can encourage parent and family engagement in STEM learning. Parents, as long-term influences in children’s lives, can help them make connections between in-school and out-of-school STEM learning, as well as among their learning experiences over time. Parents can activate a child’s in-school learning by engaging in related activities at home or outside the home, such as taking trips to a STEM museum or to a library with STEM resources or enrolling the child in STEM-relevant after-school activities (e.g., Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts or a coding club). This kind of parental support has a strong, positive effect on children’s participation in math and science activities.

Teachers can encourage this involvement by sharing local STEM resources — library events, museum experiences, and educational technologies — with parents and encouraging them to charge up their children’s STEM batteries at multiple locations outside school. Communicate to parents what supporting their children’s STEM learning really looks like: They don’t need to do massive science fair projects at home every night or be experts in STEM topics. They can radically support their children’s STEM development by connecting STEM throughout their lives, by engaging in these out-of-school experiences or simply by showing curiosity in daily situations by asking their children the “wh” questions: who, what, when, where, why?

4. Parent and teacher attitudes are incredibly influential for children’s STEM outcomes.

What the research says

We often hear people say things like, “I can’t support a child’s STEM learning — I’m not a STEM person!” Both teachers and parents can feel intimidated by STEM topics, and many feel anxious about supporting children’s STEM learning. Almost one-third of parents, for example, do not feel confident enough in their own scientific knowledge to support hands-on science activities at home. But parents’ and teachers’ beliefs about STEM have a profound effect on young children. When they believe that it’s too hard or it isn’t as important as other topics, children pick up on this and come to believe it themselves.

The good news is that supporting children’s STEM development doesn’t mean you have to be an expert. In fact, one of the most important things adults can do is model genuine engagement and curiosity about the world around them. By asking questions and demonstrating wonder, by taking the role of co-learner and guide, and by encouraging children’s own curiosity, you are instilling in them the motivation to explore and experiment. Ask lots of questions — and instead of feeling pressured to have the answers, just be willing to learn alongside them and participate in trying to figure out the answers. This is the foundation of the scientific method.

What you can do

Support your own and parents’ confidence as STEM guides by taking advantage of some of the free resources available online. Common Sense Education has reviewed a number of terrific tools for early STEM learning, which they’ve collected in their list Best Picks for Early Childhood STEM Learning.

In addition, two of my favorites that do a great job of guiding parents and teachers in leading STEM activities also have great research support. BedTime Math helps families introduce math as a fun part of their daily routines, as easily as reading bedtime stories. Research is showing that using BedTime Math at home significantly boosts kids’ math performance and is especially helpful for children whose parents are anxious about math, even when it’s used as little as once a week. For teachers, STEM from the Start is a free curriculum resource for teaching STEM content to students in grades pre-K–2. It blends animated adventures with guided activities and is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Preliminary research is showing that the lessons are engaging and effective, and they’ve had remarkable success engaging English-language learners and students with attention challenges.

When parents or teachers believe these common myths about early STEM, those attitudes transfer to children. So spread the word: STEM is great for all children, it starts early, kids need opportunities to explore across all aspects of their lives, and you are completely capable of supporting their STEM progress. Be confident STEM guides, and have fun exploring the world around you with your little ones!

For more information about early STEM learning, see  STEM Starts Early from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and New America.

Both Minecraft and YouTube are ubiquitous in today’s children’s media culture. And like millions of other children, my six-year-old son loves to watch Minecraft videos on YouTube. He frequently watches Grian’s how-to-build-it Minecraft videos. He enjoys the silly antics from Pat and Jen of Gaming with Jen, the husband-and-wife team who produce PopularMMOs. And he loves Stampy Cat—but more on Stampy later.

Minecraft-themed YouTube videos are definitely a different genre from the children’s television that I grew up watching!

Wonder Quest

As is the case with all media, some of these videos are more appropriate for young children than others. As parents, we do our best to monitor the YouTubers our son watches. For our family, digital media is not a babysitter. We are strong proponents of the idea that educational programming is more effective when children share what they are learning about and parents help their children make connections from the screen to real life. This is known as coviewing, a notion long championed by PBS, as well as by the Cooney Center. And while some may say YouTube allows children to go down a rabbit hole of questionable content, it can also be a great opportunity for coviewing while encouraging children to be independent, selecting content to view based on their interests.

Exploring Coviewing Through Wonder Quest

One evening, my wife overheard a deep discussion about the properties of magnets in the Minecraft video my son was watching. As it turned out, he was viewing Wonder Quest, a wildly popular YouTube Kids series that Maker Studios, a division of Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, describes as a spin-off of Stampy Cat, a YouTube channel with more than 8.3 million subscribers.

I contacted Wonder Quest’s Adam Clarke, voice of the show’s “Wizard Keen” character, via Skype to learn more about the series and its underlying pedagogy. Wonder Quest is one of several YouTube channels that feature Stampy Cat, who can be found heading out on adventures with friends on his own channel or engaging in friendly Minecraft building competitions with iBallisticSquid.

Now in its second season, Wonder Quest is a scripted educational show set within Minecraft. “Generally, we’re inviting parents in via their children’s interests,” Clarke explained. “We encourage parents to sit with their children and watch the videos together,” Clarke said. “Especially because it connects to school.”

Wonder Quest episodes are narrative-driven, following the adventures of Stampy Cat and Wizard Keen. Halfway through each episode, the pair encounter a problem they need to overcome—that’s where the educational content comes in. “Some of my most successful videos have been designed specifically for coviewing, almost like bedtime stories, and can be watched again and again,” Clarke explained. “Those episodes have calls to action within them, and they’re meant for a dual audience.” I Took a Ghast for a Walk is an example of a digital bedtime story Clarke produced (It’s a parody of the Carolyn Curtis’ board book, I Took the Moon for a Walk.)

In one Wonder Quest episode, Stampy and Keen get stuck inside a room. But Keen has a magical spell that can cause rain to fall, thus filling the room with cubic meters of water (each Minecraft block is 1×1 cubic meter). “Ultimately, Stampy and Keen need to float to the top of the room to grab a lever,” Clarke said. “So in the video, we work out how much water is needed to get to the top, counting the blocks at the bottom, side, and width to calculate the volume. Then we use the magic spell to create enough rainwater.” Other adventures take place around the solar system, and in another video, Stampy and Keen even get to meet Thomas Edison to learn about his inventions.

Pairing Wonder Quest With Classroom Curriculum

I Wonder is now in its second season

There are actually two versions of Wonder Quest episodes: one is created in Minecraft, and the other is more like a traditional cartoon series. Called “I Wonder,” each animated episode is just over 3-minutes long, and can be used alongside other fact-based video content, like BrainPOP Jr. There are 12 episodes in each season, and they’re filled with information, vocabulary, and science experiments. For more, check out the YouTube playlists for Season One and Season Two. I Wonder is a terrific addition to any early education classroom, or household.

So what makes Minecraft videos so engaging? Perhaps it is the platform. As Marshall McLuhan famously wrote, “The medium is the message.” When children build in Minecraft they, too, are telling a story. That makes viewing other’s stories immediately more relatable. “It is unintimidating for children, and it is authentic for them as a medium,” Clarke said. “They feel like they have agency and ownership in it, which is not seen very often in anything else they experience.”

Matthew Farber, Ed.D. teaches social studies at Valleyview Middle School, in Denville, New Jersey. Dr. Farber is an Edutopia blogger and cohost of Ed Got Game, on the BAM! Radio Network, and is a BrainPOP Certified Educator. He was a recipient of a Geraldine R. Dodge Teacher Fellowship and a Woodrow Wilson HistoryQuest Fellowship. Look for the new, expanded edition of his book, Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning — Revised Edition (Peter Lang Publishing, 2017). To learn more, please visit matthewfarber.com.

View the full two-pager here.

In 2013, 25 per cent of public school children in the U.S. were Hispanic-Latino, and this number is expected to grow to 29 per cent by 2025. Within this vibrant and diverse population, many students, particularly those from immigrant families, face challenges in school. Many are tasked with mastering a new language, and their parents often struggle to understand an education system that is completely new to them. But Hispanic-Latino families can bring enormous strengths to school communities. How can educators help forge these home-school connections?

A recent survey shows that the majority of Hispanic-Latino families now own at least a smartphone, if not other digital devices, and are connecting to the Internet regularly. Case studies of Latino immigrant families have shown ways that families are already using technology in innovative ways to learn. For example, parents who speak primarily Spanish often use translation apps such as Google Translate to understand children’s homework assignments in English.  But while many families are already finding ways to use technology to improve learning at home, many have expressed that there is a lot more they would still like to learn about finding resources to support their children.

Our newest Research2Practice guide, “Digital connections to link home and school” offers some research-based ideas for how educators can harness technology to engage with families. Finding ways to engage parents using tools they are already comfortable with is a powerful way of building trust and helping families feel more empowered about their children’s learning. For instance, text messaging is already a primary way that families communicate, and can be an effective way for educators and community leaders to engage parents. Studies of text messaging efforts have shown high rates of parent engagement and positive outcomes for middle school students as well as for preschoolers. Online videos also may make it easier for families with different language needs to explore and learn together— Hispanic-Latino families in our Families and Media studies have reported using YouTube to learn everything from recipes and hairstyles to English lessons, and some used it to follow up on academic topics.

We hope this guide offers professionals some practical tools that they can use in supporting the Hispanic-Latino families in their communities.  By stepping into the role of “media mentors,” educators, librarians, and community leaders can play a powerful role in helping families understand more about the digital media and tools that are available to them, and finding the effective ways to use these technologies to improve their children’s learning.

On March 29, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, New America, and the Erikson Institute presented a webinar on integrating STEM into early childhood education to the STEM Ecosystems group at TIES, The Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM. TIES focuses on STEM school design, STEM curriculum, and instructional support for schools. As our country’s leading STEM innovator, TIES brings STEM design services to districts, states, private philanthropies, corporations, federal agencies and many more. The STEM Ecosystems Initiative is made up of nearly 40 communities of practice around the United States and seeks to nurture and scale effective STEM learning opportunities for all young people. The selected sites from across the United States have demonstrated cross-sector collaborations to deliver rigorous, effective preK-16 instruction in STEM learning.

This webinar featured a lively discussion of STEM Starts Early as well as Early STEM Matters: Providing High-Quality STEM Experiences for All Young Learners by the Early Childhood STEM Working Group. We are pleased to share a recording of the webinar, courtesy of STEM Ecosystems at TIES. Access the presentation slides and additional resources here.

Download STEM Starts Early

Learn more about Early STEM Matters and download the report.