You’ve probably seen studies showing that high-quality media can teach children new information. Two new studies from EDC and SRI Education tell us something more: Well-designed media can also teach children how to get information.

Molly of Denali is a popular new PBS KIDS series focused on informational text.

To succeed in school and life, children need to know how to get information, whether it’s reading a map, watching a how-to video, looking something up in an index, or identifying a trustworthy news article. These are examples of informational text—oral, written, or visual text designed to inform. Young children need more opportunities to use and learn about informational text; they often have greater access to narrative stories than informational text both at home and at school.

That’s where a new PBS KIDS series, Molly of Denali, comes in. The main character, Molly, uses and creates informational text in her everyday life, like vlogging about her life in an Alaska Native village, or following a recipe for nivagi (a type of ice cream). Molly of Denali has received critical acclaim, including a Peabody Award, a Television Critics Award and a Kidscreen Award. It has a television reach of over 42 million people and over 450K users on PBS KIDS digital platforms each month. Molly of Denali is co-produced by GBH and its animation partner, Atomic Cartoons, in association with CBC Kids. Funding for Molly of Denali is provided by a Ready to Learn Grant from the U.S. Department of Education; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and by public television viewers.

Two rigorous studies put Molly of Denali to the test.

Our research team at EDC and SRI Education conducted two rigorous, randomized controlled experiments to explore how much children learn about informational text from Molly of Denali. Children in the studies were 263 first-graders from low-income households across the country. Every child received an internet-enabled tablet. We randomly assigned each child to one of two groups: children assigned to the treatment group got Molly of Denali videos and games on their tablets, and children assigned to the control group got tablets that blocked access to Molly of Denali videos and games and other apps about informational text. We tested each child’s ability to use informational text to answer questions at the start of the study, then again nine weeks later to see how much they learned. For example, we asked children to do things like use an index to find a specific topic in an informational text and choose the right terms for a web search.

Molly of Denali worked… twice! 

Here’s what we found: After nine weeks, children who had Molly of Denali on their tablets knew more about using informational text to solve problems than children without this access. This difference was statistically significant, which means it is unlikely to have occurred by chance.

And we didn’t find this just once! We conducted two separate studies with different kids in different locations. Both studies found that children who had Molly of Denali videos and games on their tablets learned more than children who didn’t. Repeating the same study to see if the findings hold is an important part of the scientific process, but it’s rare in children’s media research because of the time and money required.

Screen time can be educational.

We think children can get similar benefits from watching Molly of Denali videos or playing the games at home. Children in our studies benefitted after using Molly of Denali videos and games for only about an hour a week, on average, over nine weeks. That’s about as long as children might use educational media if left to their own devices (pun intended). This is great news, because many educational interventions require a lot more time to show benefits.

While we found that even a little Molly of Denali exposure is effective, we also found that more is better. Children in our studies who used Molly of Denali videos and games for more time showed greater learning benefits. Despite concerns about screen time, engagement with well-constructed educational media, within reasonable limits, can help kids learn.

For more on this study, including the executive summary, detailed journal article pre-print, press release, and Native News Online article, visit the EDC website.

 

Claire Christensen is a senior education researcher at SRI Education. She researches the design and impact of educational media for young children. She earned her Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

 

Joy Kennedy is a Research Scientist at EDC. She studies language and literacy development with a particular focus on increasing equity. She earned her Ph.D. in applied developmental psychology from NYU.

The new documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is here! Chronicling the first 20 years of the show, the filmmakers interweave archival footage and interviews with the original creators and cast of Sesame Street (including our founder Joan Ganz Cooney). The film features clips from the show’s early days, evoking a sense of nostalgia for those of us who grew up watching the show. But it also highlights how the show’s original mission remains as relevant as ever. 

Street Gang tells the story of how Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett spoke at a dinner party about the possibility of harnessing the power of television to teach children. Sesame Street is often called the beginning of educational television and media as we know it, but as Street Gang reminds us, it was wildly experimental at the time. No one knew if it would work and it took a staggering amount of work to succeed.  

We all know that Sesame Street used the ABCs and 123s as a starting point for children’s learning, but as Street Gang shows, a focus on social change and positive, relevant experiences for young audiences has been key to the show’s mission from the beginning. From the outset, the show’s producers started by considering and respecting the audience. Finding out what kids needed, really listening to them to keep improving, and helping otherwise underserved kids feel seen and represented shaped the process for creating the show, and still does today. 

One thing that comes across clearly in the documentary is how much fun the creators were having despite the stress of a busy production schedule. Behind-the-scenes footage with puppeteers Jim Henson and Frank Oz performing Bert and Ernie, and of director Jon Stone and the cast working together, show the joy and camaraderie of the whole experience that shines through in the show itself. Joan Ganz Cooney talks about how she realized how essential play was for young children’s learning and let the show be about that. In a time where the approaches seemed radical to some, she valued creativity and gave the team freedom to experiment. 

Here at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, we continue to explore the landscape of educational media today. We still ask questions about what kids need, how they use media, and how to make learning playful. While some things have changed, some things are very much the same. Solutions that got us to Sesame Street can still make an impact now. For anyone working in this space with children, media, and learning, Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is a must-see film, both to celebrate how we got to where we are today, and consider how to keep moving forward. 

 

 

Like many of you, we’ve been thinking a lot about the future. What do we want to take with us from the time before the coronavirus? What’s best left in the past? How do we want to live as we stagger, sore-armed, back into society?

If we’ve learned anything from the past year, it’s that collaboration carried us through. Working together is what kept kids learning when the pandemic sent them home. It’s what developed vaccines faster than ever before. Again and again, in almost every way, collaboration served us better than the cutthroat competition that we once considered “normal.”

Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with competition. It’s often how we push ourselves further, learn to cope with disappointment, and celebrate our successes as athletes, artists, and scientists. But when life itself becomes a contest, competition quickly grows toxic. The idea that one person’s success can only come at the expense of someone else, for example, breeds anxiety on one end of the spectrum and violence on the other. You only have to look to a given day’s headlines to find the latest tragic example.

So here’s a proposal for our post-pandemic future: Let’s follow the lead of two television luminaries.

“The press just wanted to create a rivalry between us,” Joan Ganz Cooney once said of Fred Rogers. Their respective programs had debuted just a year apart and had long been lumped together. Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood were both hailed as groundbreaking innovations, but also criticized for their differences. While some called Sesame Street too fast and frenetic, others dismissed the Neighborhood as touchy-feely “psychobabble.”

Kids, of course, loved them both. And so their creators made an agreement. “[Rogers] and I just made up our minds that we would lock arms” and work together, Cooney explained. That agreement led to one of the most delightful crossovers in television history.

In May 1981, Rogers visited Sesame Street, where he judged a footrace between Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus. Though Big Bird won handily, the victory came with concern: What might the outcome do to Snuffy’s self-worth? Here, Rogers offered some timeless advice:

 

The scene’s message is that no competition should stand in the way of friendship — that no matter who wins or loses a contest, we’re all part of a larger human (or puppet) family. And it’s essential that we treat each other accordingly.

As we detail in our book, When You Wonder, You’re Learning: Mister Rogers’ Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids, there’s mounting evidence that this message matters. In 2008, Google launched Project Oxygen, a multi-year effort to determine which behaviors make great managers. Though Google had long assumed that the most successful programmers would also be the best bosses, Project Oxygen shattered that assumption. In fact, the company’s researchers found that the three most important behaviors among top managers were 1) being a good coach; 2) empowering other team members; and 3) creating an inclusive team environment that shows concern for other people’s success and wellbeing.

Imagine what we could do for young people by prioritizing behaviors like these in our homes, classrooms, and out-of-school spaces. What if, like Cooney and Rogers, we led by example, showing children that working together is more valuable than winning? Research suggests a powerful effect: “[When] people work together for group goals, there are a number of desirable effects on people’s feelings for one another,” write Rachel Lotan and the late Elizabeth Cohen in their book, Designing Groupwork. “When groups engage in cooperative tasks, they are more likely to form ties, to trust one another, and to influence one another than when the task stimulates competition among members.”

Rogers himself put it another way. “What really matters is helping others win, too,” he once said, “even if it means slowing down and changing our course now and then.”

As Big Bird could tell you, Mister Rogers was right. Let’s make “helping others win, too” our mantra as we build our post-pandemic future.

 

 

Gregg Behr is executive director of The Grable Foundation and founder of Remake Learning. Ryan Rydzewski is an award-winning science and education reporter. Their new book, When You Wonder, You’re Learning: Mister Rogers’ Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids, is now available from Hachette. Learn more at whenyouwonder.org.

 

 

 

In March 2020, schools, libraries, and businesses all over the country closed their physical buildings as we began the long effort to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. But community leaders rallied to bring their services to children and families at home, adapting to new circumstances with new technologies. Claudia Haines shares how the Homer Public Library  transitioned from in-person to remote programs to keep families engaged throughout the pandemic. 

 

Just about a year ago, my library closed the building because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is the story of a program I co-designed with a colleague at a local early childhood organization to support families in our community from a distance. There have been a lot of tears, frustration, and even anger during the last year, but this program has been a triumph. It represents the many community partnerships I’ve been part of in the past year—with both organizations and individuals—and reflects the library’s place in a web of organizations and institutions that support families.

The virtual Little Makers program for 3-6-year-olds premiered in the Fall of 2020 as an experiment and we will be hosting our third iteration of it, Little Makers Spring Edition, in the coming weeks. Families were and are eager for learning experiences hosted by our two organizations and we are happy to connect with families.

Our shared goals for the program:

• support early learning
• introduce key media literacy and computational thinking concepts and skills
• foster family engagement
• maintain and even grow families’ relationship with the library and the community partner

Platform

Zoom was the obvious choice for our needs, especially considering our weather here in Alaska between September and May. When we launched the idea of a virtual Little Makers on Zoom, enough time had passed during the hunker down period that many families were well-versed in using Zoom, or at least familiar with the idea of using videoconferencing for everyday meetups. Families joined with laptops, tablets, and cell phones.

Materials

Before the series of meetups began, registered families picked up a kit of materials funded by our Friends group and other Foundation support. I applied what I had learned from my summer experiment with Activity to Go! kits and included almost everything a family would need for the program – supplies and supporting information – organized and labeled for each of the four weeks. We didn’t assume families had glue sticks, for example. This way families could pull out a bag just before each week and be ready to go. For example, one week in the Winter session, we read Big Bed for Little Snow by Grace Lin. We then made a comfortable bed for Little Snow- one that wouldn’t burst – from materials including a paper plate, white and blue tissue paper, a coffee filter, pom poms, feathers, tape, and a tape measure. Some kids decided the bed was for a stuffy they had at home and found the tape measure especially useful for making sure the bed was the right size.

We included suggestions about how to make the virtual experience a successful learning experience in the supporting information, as well as details about the books we would share and prompts for making. (The image above shows what materials were included in each families’ kit for the Winter session). In the event that a family missed a week, or needed to leave early for whatever reason, families could make it at home with the information and supplies provided.

Timeline

The routine for each of the four meetups in each session looked very similar so kids and families knew what to expect. We met for 30 min each week which was just the right amount of time. Kids were engaged and excited for the next week.

Welcome (2-3 minutes): We provided tech reminders as families entered the meetup from the waiting room including “Change your screen name to your child(ren)’s name” so we can call kids by name and “Before Claudia begins reading, we’ll ask you to mute your audio so everyone can concentrate on the story.” (This reduced at least some of the distractions we all experience.)

We also made time for hellos, calling kids by name, and introducing ourselves to make sure everyone knew our names.

Opening song (1 minute): “If You’re Ready for a Story” (This is the same song I sing on my weekly Radio Storytime program.)

Story (10-12 minutes): Each week I read one picture book and included one early learning, computational thinking or media literacy tip for grownups. As I read, I asked questions that kids could answer with a thumbs up, a nod or head shake, or a smile. These questions took into consideration the Zoom platform and the need to have audio muted for this portion of the program, but encourage engagement. I also asked questions with slightly longer pauses than you might expect, leaving space for caregivers to repeat the question at home and discuss with their little makers or siblings could talk about together. This was done in a way that didn’t disrupt the flow of the story.

Note on reading stories on Zoom: During the first meetup, I tried sharing a story using an iPad as a document camera connected separately to the meetup. For those on a mobile device, it was hard for them to see both my face and the book pages. With all of the different device types, different comfort levels with Zoom, and some people having updated versions of Zoom and some not, it worked more smoothly to share the book on my computer only with the pages close up to the camera while I read the text and then moving my face into the view when I was asking questions about the story, observing the illustrations, etc.

Making time (10-12 minutes): This part of the program was similar to the second half of preschool storytime in the library before the pandemic. The activity aims to help the little makers explore ideas in the book we shared, practice vocabulary that might be new to them as they play with the materials, and express their creativity. We invited grownups to turn on their video if it was off, change their Zoom view to “gallery” and turn on audio so we could all see and talk with each other for the remainder of the program. We then invited little makers to open their bag of materials as we announced the week’s creative prompt. The prompt presented a “problem” and families used the provided materials to make something that helped solve that problem. One week it was a bed for Little Snow. During a later session, we used ingredients similar to those found in the book Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal to make edible, no-bake play dough. Some of the materials from one week’s bag could be incorporated into another week’s making. This models repurposing and encourages creativity in problem-solving.

Regardless of the activity, we encouraged families to incorporate materials they had at home into the project. To get their creative juices flowing from the start, we played games like a color scavenger hunt in the first meetup (find something yellow like the colors of both Claudia and Red’s sweaters) or bring a stuffy to storytime today (and then make a fort or den for them in the activity portion of the meetup).

We also made sure to notice when families were doing something a little different and asked what they were up to and helped make connections to our activity if applicable. For example, while some of us were making fort prototypes with craft supplies after reading The Little Red Fort by Brenda Maier and Sonia Sanchez, one family made a fort out of couch cushions. The whole group talked about the fort as the family gave us a video tour and then we discussed where else we could build a fort – in the snow! We asked questions that encouraged the makers to tell us the fort’s story.

We anticipated that families would continue making beyond the time together on Zoom. We invited families to post pictures of their projects on a Padlet. Families could connect with each other and with us through the posts on the program-specific Padlet. We talked about the images during the following meetup. These photos were not shared on social media and the program was not recorded.

Closing (2-3 minutes): At the end of the meetup, we invited little makers to share and talk about what they were creating and what they might do next.

General Thoughts

We slowed down the pace of reading, asking questions, and talking with families. What might be a normal pace for adults talking with others on Zoom or how we might talk in person, isn’t the same in this type of program. We keep in mind that families had different internet connection speeds which cause delays in what they see and hear, kids need a little time to get used to what they were seeing on the screen and young children often process and respond to information more slowly than adults.

We talk about the technology, the parts of the book, and the maker materials so that kids learn the names of things and what they can do. This is an important part of media literacy.

Fifteen families have registered for each session we’ve offered, the maximum we set. Within each session, there has been lots of variation in terms of who registered and almost all registered families have participated in every week. The number of families is determined by the funds we have for materials and a good size for the Zoom meetup. This group size allows us to have conversations with individual families within the allotted time.

We encouraged caregivers to play alongside their children and most households had a child or children attend alongside a grownup. But not in every case. And in some households, the caregiver never appeared in the screen. The prompts we designed took into consideration that an adult might not be right there.

It was very helpful to have two people on hand to share the facilitation roles and the tech troubleshooting, even if we were partners codesigning a program. While I am sharing the book, my partner was answering questions, welcoming families from the Zoom waiting room if they were late, and noticing if something was amiss. While she was introducing the maker activity, I was doing the same.

Two Lessons We Live by in This Program

 

This post was originally published on Never Shushed and appears here with permission.