Highlights from ASU+GSV

The Cooney Center team was honored to collaborate with our colleagues at Sesame Workshop to produce —and participate— in some panels at ASU+GSV that were full of rich insights into timely issues around early childhood, innovation, and equity. We’re grateful to all of our friends and partners who participated in our sessions and shared their expertise, and to the team at ASU+GSV for their partnership— and for these videos! If you weren’t able to attend the conference in person, you can still follow along with some very thoughtful discussions.

 

Playtest with Kids, a New Free Online Resource from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center
Playtest with Kids is an online toolkit designed to enable teams to create great products by conducting meaningful research with children. Moderated by Megan Huang (Google) and Maya Sussman (Parent Powered), the session featured Mariya dey Roy (Amazon), Jennifer Kotler (Google),  Kiley Sobel (Duolingo), and Cathy Tran (multiple companies) who shared best practices for playtesting with children.

 

Co-design with Kids: Enabling Meaningful Child Participation in the Private Sector in a Digital Era
This panel brought researchers and producers together to discuss the imperative of including children as stakeholders throughout the entire development process. Moderated by Michael Preston, the panel discussed examples of how research and industry partners have teamed up to  put learning, wellbeing, and DEI at the center of their products, and highlighted an upcoming report that makes the case for meaningful child participation in how companies design, develop, and deploy their digital products, services, activities, and initiatives. The session featured Jason Yip (University of Washington), Kim Foulds (Sesame Workshop), Rebecca Stringer (Kids Know Best), and Sarah Jacobstein (The LEGO Group).

Raising Our Collective Media Consciousness
As children make sense of the world around them, books, social media, pictures, videos, and games are all available at their fingertips, telling them stories about where they come from and who they should be. Kids are constant consumers of implicit and explicit messages that influence their identity development. Moderated by April Montgomery Goble (KIPP Chicago), this panel features a conversation with leaders across the field who are developing tools and practices to help adults raise their own awareness about what’s shared with kids and to help kids build the skills to engage with media consciously. With Michael Preston (Joan Ganz Cooney Center), Linda Burch (Common Sense Media), Brittany Jones (KIPP Chicago), Manjeet Sareen (Natterhub), and Marc Brackett (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence).

 

 

More videos from ASU+GSV 2022 are available here.