So often the digital world of children is stated in binaries – on or offline, good or bad actors, opportunity or harm – but the lived reality of children is more complicated.  Where on and off can be seamless and simultaneous, too much of a good thing can be bad, or something meant for one purpose can be hacked for another, sometimes with harmful outcomes and sometimes joyous.

On November 4, 2021 the Digital Futures Commission will launch its new report, Playful by Design.

The report calls for an ambitious redesign of children’s opportunities for play in the digital world. It identifies the qualities of free play that could and should be enriched and expanded to make play online more supportive of children’s needs, voices, and rights.  It highlights acts of play such as Zoom hide-and-seek or tag.

A vision of free play online necessarily involves identifying the features of the online world that support or, too often, routinely intrude on or jeopardize the possibility of free play. The authors of Playful by Design are clear that play online, just like play offline, can and probably should be a mixed economy – the specter of play as a narrow range of pre-determined commercially driven outcomes is disheartening.

Event attendees will hear from children and young people how they view play in the digital world and what it means to them. In response to their views, Baroness Beeban Kidron – 5Rights Foundation, will then chair a discussion with:

• Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE – LSE, DFC lead researcher and report author
  Sonia is a professor in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has written 20 books on children’s online opportunities and risks, including The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age and Parenting for a Digital Future. Sonia has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe and other national and international organizations on children’s rights, risks, and safety in the digital age.

• Professor Mimi Ito, University of California – Irvine
  Mimi Ito is a cultural anthropologist, learning scientist, entrepreneur, and advocate for connected learning. She is the director of the Connected Learning Lab and Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning at the University of California, Irvine. She is also co-founder of Connected Camps, a non-profit providing online learning experiences for kids from all walks of life. Her co-authored books include Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out. Having designed communities for youth collaboration, learning, and play, Mimi will share what has she found from her theory and practice that can help design free play in a digital world.

• Dr Tim Gill, Rethinking Childhood, Author of Urban Playground
  Tim Gill is an independent scholar, writer and consultant on childhood, and a global advocate for children’s play and mobility. Tim’s book Urban Playground: How child-friendly planning and design can save cities was published by RIBA in 2021, and he is also the author of No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society. Tim is a Design Council Ambassador and a former director of the Children’s Play Council (now Play England).Tim will offer his views on how free play can be designed into the everyday physical world and consider what those designing the digital world can learn from the experiences of the adventure playground movement.

• Dr Sangeet Bhullar, Executive Director, WISE KIDS
  Dr Sangeet Bhullar is the founder of WISE KIDS, a non-profit company that has worked with thousands of young people, parents, teachers, other professionals and community groups to develop their digital literacy and competence, sense of agency and wellbeing so they can thrive in a connected world. She believes that online access, digital citizenship education (which promotes critical thinking and positive online participation) and wellbeing is vital if society is truly to harness the benefits of a connected world.Sangeet will speak to some of the opportunities and risks of the digital environment – what are her priorities for policy and education, and where does play fit into children’s digital lives?

The event will be followed by a Q&A with attendees.

We hope you’re able to join us.

Sign up for the event here.

Read more about our work on play here.

Al Mik is Communications Manager at 5Rights. Al has a long history of working on human rights issues, and prior to 5Rights, Al worked in Brussels as Campaigns and Networks Director for an international criminal justice NGO. Al has a Law degree and a Masters in International Relations from the University of Nottingham.

Since the pandemic began, we’ve witnessed unprecedented changes in how we work and live, changes that have had a tremendous influence on the early childhood space. We’ve seen a country at war with an unrelenting virus, tremendous economic hardship, an overdue reckoning with racism and discrimination; we’ve seen the disruption of child care services and school, and we’ve seen so much of what we had taken for granted become much more difficult and time-consuming.

We’ve also seen tremendous room for opportunity. As Winston Churchill once said, “never waste a good crisis,” and there are a number of non- and for-profits in the early childhood space that have stepped up to meet the moment and innovate in healthcare equity, childcare workforce development, early education, and so much more. We believe it’s our responsibility to support the organizations and individuals driving meaningful change in the space, especially at this moment,  and it is for that reason, for the second year in a row, Sesame Workshop and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center partnered with Promise Venture Studio and Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child to host the Promising Ventures Fellowship.

The Promising Ventures Fellowship is a fellowship program that provides best-in-class entrepreneurs and leaders in early childhood development with intensive support to make progress against ambitious goals to scale their programming and grow their impact. This year’s fellowship kicked off in early September and we’re thrilled to announce the members of the 2021 Promising Ventures class:

• Birth Detroit, a nonprofit  that designs, operates, and scales Black-led birth centers and midwifery clinics to provide safe, quality, loving care through pregnancy, birth and beyond (Leseliey Welch)
• Duolingo ABC, a venture that offers fun, free virtual lessons to help kids ages 3-8 learn to read! (Daniel Falabella)
• Family Engagement Lab, a national nonprofit that catalyzes equitable family engagement and student learning by bridging classroom curriculum and at-home learning  (Vidya Sundaram and Dr. Elisabeth O’Bryon)
• HealthConnect One, a nonprofit that collaborates with Black, brown, and indigenous communities to ensure birth equity through community-based doula and breastfeeding support programs (Dr. Twylla Dillion and Zainab Sulaiman)
• The Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation, an academic institute that trains early educators in entrepreneurial leadership and studies systems to support impact at scale (Dr. Anne Douglass and Amanda Lopes)
• The Hunt Institute, an early childhood education policy support to state elected and administrative policymakers (Dr. Dan Wuori)
• Kiddo, the first career marketplace for the early childhood education industry  (Melissa Tran and Emma Harris)
• La Fuerza de Familias Latinas, a nonprofit that inspires and supports Spanish-speaking families to promote their children’s early learning and social-emotional growth with research-based tools and content in language and in culture  (Michelle Lopez and Anthony Tassi)
• TrainingGrounds, a free drop-in center for families in Orleans Parish that provides quality learning experiences for parents, caregivers and children from birth to age 5 (Melanie Richardson and Christine Neely)
• Raising a Reader, a nonprofit that engages caregivers in a routine of book sharing with their children from birth through age eight to foster healthy brain development, healthy relationships, a love of reading, and the literacy skills critical for school success (Michelle Torgerson and Michelle Sioson Hyman)

Over the course of the fellowship, fellows will work with coaches and mentors from the Sesame, Promise and Harvard teams to refine their theories of change, learn from the communities they hope to serve, identify new markets, and so much more. They’ll not only consider what their individual ventures can do; they’ll also explore what is collectively possible by forging new partnerships and identifying new opportunities for connection and development. We believe that these ventures are not only capable of having great impact, but that their work will influence the conversation in early childhood for the remainder of the pandemic and beyond.

Please join us in congratulating the Promising Ventures fellows!

Like many digital learning products, Sago Mini provides tools to engage parents in their child’s play experience. However, unlike most similar products, you won’t find a single chart, graph, score, or badge that measures your child’s success. 

It’s well-established in the industry that while parents often express an interest in having dashboards that track their child’s learning, very few actually use them. With that in mind, it was with some caution that we began to explore the idea for a dedicated parent app. We were convinced that we had to step away from the existing approaches and try something new.

Screenshots from Sago Mini’s app for parents

We started with a holistic view of how kids and parents engage with our products in real settings. Our products are just one slice of the busy and stressful reality of preschool parenting. So we started by envisioning the moments we wanted to create between parent and child, and worked back from there.

We imagine the moment when a parent asks their child about a drawing they created, or when they share a family story that provides context to something their child saw in a book. We imagine the pride the parent has in their child’s work, and in turn, the joy this brings the child. We think of the time a parent “clues in” to a child’s new interest, and introduces them to new material that encourages their child’s budding passion.

With this as our starting point, we mapped out our parent app. The result is an app where you find the work of your child, contextual conversation starters, off-screen activities, and bite-sized parenting tips. We aligned around the idea that the main purpose of the app is to prompt a conversation between parent and child. It’s a simple approach, which is striking for just how rare it is.

Why do we as an industry continue to create tools which reduce learning down to a linear journey to be assessed on a linear scale? One answer might be that it’s how we remember being taught. Many of us grew up in settings where performance was measured, results were broadcasted, and how well we tested became a reflection of who we were.

Perhaps it’s because of the mindset of the builders of these tools. From developers to technical product managers, much of our professional experience involves breaking down very complex problems into code optimization, scalability, and KPIs. Since it serves us well in our day-to-day, perhaps we can’t help it from spilling over into the product experience.

Most likely, it’s just a case of giving our customers what they want. As a parent, I can relate to the need to just have someone tell me my child is on track. It feels like I should aspire to help my child achieve better results, and to learn new skills earlier and faster. The promise of a tool that enables this is attractive, even if I know it’s probably an illusion.

However, there are indications that this way of thinking has changed. Parents’ priorities are shifting. They are concerned about social-emotional learning, promoting mindfulness, and encouraging a growth mindset. Technology is evolving as well, with a more holistic and nuanced approach to how we apply these tools. I’m encouraged by all of these trends and it gives me hope that we might shift away from the illusory charts and graphs and toward creating meaningful moments with our children.

Jason Krogh is the founder and CEO of Sago Mini, an award-winning company devoted to play. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Sago Mini makes apps and toys for preschoolers that seed imagination and grow wonder. Jason has a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from the University of Guelph and made the transition into new media when he began developing educational media for the Vancouver Aquarium and Science World. Jason has more than 20 years of experience developing interactive media for children including the Emmy-award-winning Zimmer Twins and has worked with partners such as Sprout, Disney Jr, National Geographic Kids, Vancouver Olympics, and the Toronto Public Library.

The effort to find creative solutions to reach our under-connected, undercounted, underrepresented, and underserved neighbors, especially children, families, and seniors, during a global pandemic can inspire changes in the way we work. This time in which we live is issuing a challenge to us— to reach into the digital divide as much as we hope to reach across it.

“Internet infrastructure is, of course, an essential element of the divide, but infrastructure alone does not necessarily translate into adoption and beneficial use. Local and national institutions, affordability and access, and the digital proficiency of users, all play significant roles — and there are wide variations across the United States along each of these.” —Bhaskar Chakravorti, Harvard Business Review 

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Nothing has illuminated the challenges of digital inequality more than the quick pivot to online learning during the pandemic shutdown. Images of school children doing their homework in the parking lots of fast-food restaurants with free wifi brought the issue of digital poverty into a larger conversation for parents, the general public, and politicians everywhere. In September 2020, the Pew Research center published a report stating that 59% of U.S. parents with lower incomes say that their child may be facing digital obstacles in schoolwork. Common Sense Media developed Teaching Through the Digital Divide, a tool that highlights statistics and educators’ stories around digital equity issues around the country.

Mobile data limits are a common barrier to access. How do we help families access engaging content if they don’t have broadband access at home? Educators, librarians, caregivers, and advocates sought analog spaces to make safe connections as their facilities closed their doors. They stocked sidewalk lending libraries with fresh material, aligned bookmobiles with free-lunch distribution sites, and produced story walks around their sites and in public parks. They also used widely available, low-cost digital tools to produce video storytimes and other engaging programming to post online, shared podcast recommendations for parents seeking less screen time, and implemented, re-implemented, or refreshed services that use digital tools to provide analog services like radio storytimes and dial-a-story.

As the national conversation around digital equity continued to expand, outreach practitioners discovered new and rewarding ways that community members were engaging with their content. Librarians at the Kansas City Public Library were surprised to find that a power outage and a glitch one weekend made it possible for patrons to leave almost 400 voice messages to their dial-a-story recordings. “Children said, ‘I really like this.’ You could hear Spanish television in the background or sometimes the voice of a senior citizen,” said children’s librarian Nancy Stegeman in The Pitch KC. “It’s not just children—people are using it to help their English.”

As an audio content creator passionate about reading stories to kids and fostering access, I also searched for and found ways to increase analog access to our podcast for kids through telephone dial-up. “Thank you for doing that, because we don’t have unlimited data, and now C. can listen on the bus,” a parent from my son’s school told me.  And, as a contract librarian, I worked on developing a catalog of stories for a digitally managed, low-cost dial-a-story service. In both instances, we used new technology to improve and deliver analog solutions.

Practitioners are reaching in and across the divide by reassessing and developing our emerging digital and traditional analog toolkits, working as a community together on creative strategies, and always looking for more ways to bring stories to the people, especially those experiencing barriers to access (digital or otherwise.) For every neighbor, there is a story—to be heard and to be shared, where they are now.

Phoebe Owens was the head librarian/archivist for the global creative ad agency Weiden+Kennedy for 10 years and is now a freelance librarian/archivist, writer, branding and social media lead for Kids Listen, and a kids & families podcaster living in Portland, Oregon. She also worked to develop content and strategy for a dial-a-story service in 2020.