The Joan Ganz Cooney Center has officially welcomed the first six edtech partners into the Cooney Center Sandbox for Literacy Innovations. Supported in part by the Walton Family Foundation, the Sandbox aims to foster edtech design informed by the science of learning and the creative spark of children. 

The six partners, introduced below, are working on a wide range of new literacy tools to help kids both in and outside of classrooms, from an octopus reading buddy to “beasties” hungry for new words, to a friendly blue yeti guiding young writers.

According to Allisyn Levy, the Cooney Center’s senior manager of partnerships and planning, the Sandbox chose partners targeting multiple literacy challenges—from phonics and decoding to vocabulary and verbal reasoning. Importantly, she added, the partners also “demonstrated an openness to making changes, not only to their products, but to their design process.”

After an initial product review and assessment, the Sandbox team will conduct consultations with each partner focused on the science of literacy, universal design for learning (UDL), and learner variability (LVN) followed by co-design sessions with children throughout the spring.

“We are thrilled to be working with this incredible, diverse group of partners who are committed to designing literacy products aligned with the latest pedagogy and ensuring that children are central to the design process from the get-go,” said Levy. “We hope this work will have a meaningful impact for the broader field and inspire others designing media for kids to do the same.”

Edtech developers interested in participating in the Cooney Center Sandbox should stay tuned for an open call for applications later this summer. (Interested? Click here).

 

E-Line Media

“We are passionate about harnessing the power of games and interactive media to engage, empower, and inspire a generation of digital natives,” said Jason Everett, E-Line’s vice president of production for mobile games. 

For instance, their BAFTA and Peabody-winning cooperative action game, Never Alone, was inclusively developed with a pioneering Alaska Native tribal organization. Players of their Beyond Blue series discovered the mysteries of ocean ecosystems through the eyes of a deep-sea scientist and explorer.  This commitment to creating stories with impact is what led Jon Waterhouse—the visionary for a groundbreaking new reading app—to trust E-Line with its development.

RiSi (Read It, See It) is a patent-protected, voice-activated app that animates a book’s illustrations when a child correctly reads the accompanying text aloud. An octopus book buddy named RiSi is always there to provide gentle correction and encouragement or even to read the whole book to the child. “RiSi was born out of Jon’s own experience of never being read to as a child and his subsequent reading challenges when he started first grade. I’m so proud of him for transforming that early frustration into a joyful, empowering tool for early readers,” said Mary Marshall-Waterhouse (Founder of RiSi’s parent company, OctopusPrime Inc).

While E-Line is well-versed in playtesting games, using co-design to inform product features for an early childhood literacy application will be a new experience for them, and they’re thrilled to work with the Sandbox to perfect RiSi’s unique features and capabilities. According to Everett, “It’s invaluable to spend time with kids while your software is still early in development and very mutable, to understand how they’re experiencing it, what they love, and what might be frustrating,” he said. “This will help us realize the goal for RiSi, which is to create a lifelong love of reading.”

 

LeapFrog

For more than two decades, LeapFrog has helped kids learn to read and write with interactive books, educational toys, and learning games. Innovations like the original LeapPad and LeapReader feature a smart stylus that children can use to scan words and passages for read-aloud support and phonics activities. Now, the company has introduced a new digital “Reading Library” of storybooks to their online learning destination, LeapFrog AcademyTM. The challenge they’ll be taking on with the Sandbox team is to translate best practices in reading instruction and support into the digital e-reading space and to test new features that a digital format makes possible. 

“We really want to leverage the digital format in a more meaningful way,” said Dr. Ben Miller, LeapFrog’s executive learning designer, such as combining visual and auditory displays of blending letter sounds to form words. 

They’ll also be eager to try out more customizations, such as letting kids choose the colors for block highlighting words as they are read, and the narrator’s pace and volume, providing personalized feedback for developing reading skills. 

“The software could also help caregivers and teachers keep tabs on a child’s reading skills,” noted Miller. “And e-reading gives us a lot of flexibility to tailor support to each learner’s needs,” he said.

The LeapFrog team wants to make a fun and engaging digital reading experience that gives kids the right balance of support and autonomy as they practice their growing skills, and they think co-design will be an invaluable tool for achieving that goal.  

“We’re excited about co-designing with kids,” said Miller, “because it’ll be much more of an even playing field in which we have some ideas and they have some ideas, and we’ll  see what we generate together.”

 

Lirvana Labs

Yeti Confetti is an AI-powered personalized learning and teaching co-pilot launched in 2023 by Lirvana Labs. The friendly blue Yeti character guides children through lessons in early numeracy and literacy skills, gives dynamic oral instruction, hints, and encouragement in 28 languages, to build learner confidence and resilience, and links with other AI-agents to help teachers create personalized lesson plans and act on student progress. 

Now, Lirvana Labs is partnering with the Sandbox as they prepare for a new goal—helping kids in grades four to six learn to write with agency and joy, and critically, how to incorporate feedback and revise. 

“When we think about writing, we’re talking about critical thinking, verbal reasoning skills, your ability to empathize with your audience and drive an opinion,” said Christie Pang, co-founder of Lirvana Labs. “This new role for Yeti is to be a facilitator of the review, feedback, and revise process.” 

The new product is currently a prototype, and Pang is eager to work with the Sandbox on Yeti’s interfaces for both students and teachers to boost the collaboration at the heart of good writing. The goal, she said, “is to make sure that whatever we build at the end of it really empowers the learner to feel like writing is an expression of their voice. We partner with teachers across three continents, and they are not only asking for better tools to teach writing craft—they’re urgently seeking ways to motivate students to embrace revision, build writing stamina, and develop deeper critical thinking skills, especially in the AI era.”

 

LitLab

LitLab was founded by teachers who believed reading practice can and should be both fun and aligned to the evidence underpinning the “science of reading.” According to Drew McCann, the company’s head of learning, the cofounders focused on the foundational reading skill of decoding, because they “heard over and over from teachers and advisors that existing decodable books were not joyful, culturally relevant, engaging, or motivating to students.”

Their solution was a platform of short, vibrantly illustrated books with diverse characters and social-emotional plotlines geared toward specific decoding skills, such as vowel combinations or how common prefixes like “un” change the meaning of words.  Paired with a large library of these books is an AI-story generator that teachers and their students can use to create new stories for practicing particular skills, and that’s where LitLab wants to focus during their partnership with the Sandbox.

For instance, the platform can record students reading aloud so that their teachers can assess their progress and target instruction, but kids seem reluctant to use the recording feature. McCann and her colleagues have sought advice from the Sandbox literacy experts on strategies, such as partner or small-group reading, to build up student confidence and willingness to record themselves reading. 

Before joining the Sandbox, LitLab’s feedback from kids mainly came second-hand, through their teachers. “We have great relationships with teachers and a ton of teacher feedback,” noted McCann, “but one thing we were lacking was that student voice, and I hope that changes going forward.”

Piknik/Sago Mini

A few years ago, the educational video game makers at Piknik (creators of Sago Mini) started hearing from parents and teachers about a growing group of kids in desperate need of support, motivation, and confidence—reluctant readers. Pandemic school disruptions meant more students had fallen behind their peers and were struggling to catch up, partly because they’d outgrown early-reading instruction made for younger kids. 

Their answer is a collection of games designed not only to teach phonics but to motivate kids to keep playing in order to build up their confidence along with their literacy skills. 

“These games are filled with characters like baby burglars, surfing chickens, zombies, and other wild, imagination-fueled fun,” noted Stephanie Lemoine, Piknik’s senior director of design. While the company has play-tested the games frequently with kids, she said, “the concept of co-design, in terms of working directly with kids as design partners, is pretty new to us and it’s something we’re very excited to learn more about.”

With the Sandbox, they plan to tap the team’s literacy expertise as they massively expand the games’ curriculum and try to balance the use of supports like their kid-friendly reading assistant tool. Meanwhile, the co-design sessions will harness kids’ imaginations to brainstorm bigger stories, enhanced powers, and even wilder possibilities for both the players and the world of characters they encounter, to not only motivate gameplay, but to spark an intrinsic motivation and love of reading when the games are finished.

“The games are rich in jumping off points for great storytelling,” said Lemoine. “We hope to build up characters and a world that kids are curious to learn more about.” 

 

Sesame Workshop

Sesame Workshop is a global nonprofit and leader in informal education, and as the media landscape shifts, the Workshop is shifting with it and looking for new educational opportunities in unexpected places like the incredibly popular gaming platform, Roblox. 

In 2022, Sesame Workshop launched a successful STEM-focused exploration game on Roblox featuring characters from the animated series Sesame Street: Mecha Builders.  Now, with the help of the Sandbox team, the Workshop is developing a new Roblox game focused on literacy skills for kids aged four and up.  The game is populated by well-known Sesame Street characters, and players care for and teach “beasties” that don’t yet know how to speak. 

“The most important thing you can do for your beasties is to teach them words,” explained Michelle Kaplan, Sesame Workshop’s director of curriculum and learning design.  To do that, children navigate through a world of letters, collecting enough to spell simple words to teach the beasties. Players can also earn points by completing various literacy-infused mini games, which the designers hope to refine and augment through their Sandbox partnership.

Kaplan recalled their first co-design session in which kids played an early build of the Roblox game and then used arts and crafts materials to brainstorm new ideas for it.

“They came up with really fun ideas,” she said, “some of which we may be able to incorporate into this game for launch, some we might save for an update post-launch, and some we might just put in our pocket for future game design.”

 

The Cooney Center team is excited to collaborate with these partners and the children in the co-design sessions this spring. Stay tuned for case studies, and to learn more about our upcoming call for proposals.

We invite you to learn more about the Cooney Center Sandbox and follow us on LinkedIn. Please sign up for the Cooney Center newsletter for more updates.

 

 

 

Together with our friends at Young Futures, and with support from Niantic, Pivotal and Susan Crown Exchange, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to announce that the Here Comes the Fun Challenge, a $1M funding initiative designed to promote the well-being of pre-teens and teens through playful digital experiences is now open for applications!

From video games to creative coding, digital play fosters creativity, connection, and emotional resilience—yet too few solutions prioritize youth wellbeing. This challenge seeks to change that by funding innovative, youth-centered solutions that:

• Align with the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) research-backed well-being outcomes (safety, autonomy, relationships, and more)
•  Embrace the Four Freedoms of Play: freedom to fail, experiment, embody identity, and engage with effort
• Are co-created with teens to meet their developmental needs

Grants of up to $100,000 will be awarded to up to 10 organizations (nonprofits, including fiscally sponsored projects) with standout ideas. Grantees will also join the Young Futures Academy, a five-month program to scale their impact.

Key Dates:

📅 Applications Open: April 23 – May 9, 2025
💡 Info Session: May 1, 2025 (Register here)

Eligible solutions may include:

🎮 Games or digital experiences designed for well-being
🛠️ Toolkits fostering inclusive, safe play
🤝 Programs bridging intergenerational or peer connections
⏱️ Tools promoting healthy digital habits

Out of scope: Workforce development, early-stage research, or classroom-focused ed-tech. 

Ready to bring more play into teens’ digital lives?

👉 Review the RFP | Apply now | Join the info session

The Cooney Center’s new initiative matters for kids and teachers

Early in my education career, I taught ninth-grade English in a small public high school. My vivacious, curious students came from all over San Francisco for our school’s strong community, youth leadership focus, and promise of college readiness. I was an enthusiastic and capable young teacher, excited to read and discuss compelling books with students and to coach them to find their voice and clarify their ideas through writing. My teacher education program had prepared me with these skills. And while my instructional approach made for a rich learning community for many of my students, I could see my classroom wasn’t working for all.  

At first, I thought it was about engagement. If I just strengthened relationships with students, designed lessons better, or incorporated more relevant content, they’d surely thrive. But I soon came to recognize that I faced a hurdle I didn’t know how to overcome: while most kids read proficiently (enough), a sizable number of my students did not. In fact, reading scores revealed ranges from second through 12th grade levels, together in a single class. I was wholly unqualified to address the gaps in reading for those at the lower end of the range. 

Over each academic year, I’d try different strategies to support struggling students–lunch time office hours, calls home when they were off task or missing work, and meetings with families to encourage more independent reading or systems for staying on top of assignments. But these strategies didn’t get to the root of the problem. I’d watch as kids would disengage further and further, not just from my class, but from school and from their identities as students and community members.

All too often, these were the kids who were not on the stage four years later at graduation. 

Tech solutions proliferate, yet proficiency still lags

Fast forward to today, middle and high school teachers are still working to offer instruction to a wide range of readers. The 2024 NAEP results show that fewer than one-third of fourth graders read proficiently. And because fourth grade is a critical point in academic development, at which instruction shifts from teaching kids how to read fluently to relying on kids to read and comprehend independently for subsequent teaching and learning, these results can have ripple effects for years to come.  

While gaps in achievement remain entrenched, in other ways, schools have changed dramatically in the last decade. Technology is an omnipresent force shaping kids’ lives and teachers’ workflows, with an edtech industry projected to reach $7.3 trillion in 2025 and kids accessing, on average, 45 different platforms over a school year (Instructure, 2024). Teachers today must juggle all I managed, plus a dizzying marketplace of “solutions,” very few of which are created in partnership with kids or teachers or can demonstrate efficacy (Kucirkova, 2024).

Guidance from experts to launch a new Sandbox for Literacy Innovations  

In this context, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is proud to launch the Sandbox for Literacy Innovations with a commitment to supporting the creation of new tech-enabled solutions, designed in collaboration with kids and guided by the expertise of teachers and scholars in literacy development. 

To kick off the project, we hosted an all-day advisory meeting with experts from education, developmental and cognitive psychology, and human-interaction design to guide early findings and recommendations for the project and the edtech development teams with whom we would be partnering.  

The full report of the advisory meeting, From Big Ideas to Big Readers, is available now, detailing insights from the science of literacy and its current application in edtech. 

Recommendations for edtech developers

Coming from the advisory meeting, research presentations and literature review, and a series of expert interviews, the Sandbox launches with the following seven recommendations for edtech developers seeking to build products that contribute positively to children’s literacy development. 

• Articulate a logic model tied to the science of literacy
  From the outset, articulate a logic model to inform the development process and clarify aims. Scarborough’s Reading Rope is recommended as a conceptual, evidence-based framework to guide the logic model for products focused on reading comprehension. Logic models can shape the product roadmap, including journey mapping, design features, assessment processes, and other points of interaction.

 

• Embed co-design in the development process
  Using co-design or other participatory design methods early in the development process can help to test theories and collaboratively build approaches that work for kids, families, and/or teachers.
• Design for and measure motivation
  Motivation and confidence are central to efficacy; they depend on culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate content. Use extrinsic motivators (e.g., points, wins, streaks, badges) judiciously and determine ways to boost and measure intrinsic motivation for reading.
• Complement social learning
  Design tools to work in tandem with children’s social learning environment, complementing existing efforts by teachers, parents, or other caregivers to support children in developing into fluent, enthusiastic readers. Think creatively about ways that technology might encourage dialogue, co-engagement, or shared experience among kids and adults.
• Round out the edtech ecosystem with new tools focused on language comprehension and writing
  Language comprehension depends on depth and breadth of knowledge, on extent of vocabulary, and on capacity to infer and interpret meaning. At present, the edtech ecosystem lacks products focused on the broad suite of skills that comprise literacy development. Products focused on language and writing skills, including for multilingual and older students, are especially needed.
• Design with a key audience in mind
  Many products today are designed with a general audience in mind, yet specific audiences of children and youth have particular needs and motivations that technology could help bridge. Embedding adaptive features and personalized supports– supporting Universal Design for Learning– enhances efficacy for targeted students while strengthening the value of the product overall (Tare & Shell, 2019).

• Leverage AI thoughtfully
  While the research base for AI-enabled edtech tools is still emerging, it is important to remember that fluent reading comprehension is rooted in language development, which is inherently social, so AI should be designed to support and deepen the efforts of teachers and parents. Promising applications include:

• • Responsively adapting content and instruction
  • Providing specific, just-in-time feedback tailored to age, preferences, language, and other factors
  • Coaching students through strategies for effective reading and/or writing
  • Offering translingual support to help a student access background knowledge or vocabulary from their home language
  • Offloading teachers’ cumbersome or time-intensive tasks (e.g., individual assessments, analysis of assessment results) to free them up to engage in social learning with children

Thanks to our advisors

We are grateful to the nine advisors who joined the project kickoff. The insights shared above, and elaborated in the full report, emerge from wisdom gleaned from their research and writing, their work with children, and their dialogue:

• Jahira Alonso, Secondary School Coach, New York City Public Schools 
• Alvin Irby, Founder and Executive Director, Barbershop Books 
• Natalia I. Kucirkova, Founder, International Centre for EdTech Impact
• Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez, Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University
• Susan Neuman: Professor, New York University 
• Rachel Nugent, Instructional Specialist, New York City Public Schools 
• Rebecca Silverman, Professor, Stanford University
• Kimberly Smith, Chief Inclusive Innovation Officer, Digital Promise
• Jason Yip, Associate Professor, University of Washington 

Join us as we bring recommendations to life

Over the next few years, at least 25 new literacy products will be part of the Sandbox for Literacy Innovations. Their product teams will continue to learn from research experts and kids as they bring new ideas to life.

We invite you to stay tuned to learn more about the project on LinkedIn or by signing up for the Cooney Center newsletter. And if you have a product that might be a good fit for the Sandbox for Literacy Innovations, we’d love to hear from you.

Generative AI is here to stay—so how can we help children understand what it is and how to use it responsibly? On March 3, 2025, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center was thrilled to participate in a panel at SXSW EDU exploring how AI can enhance, rather than replace, the student-teacher relationship.

Moderator Lisa Guernsey, Director of the Learning Sciences Exchange at New America, opened the conversation by highlighting AI’s potential to reshape literacy and computational thinking. She emphasized that AI-powered tools can introduce young students to new ways of interacting with and understanding the world. But the critical question remains: Can we design these tools to support human interaction and agency, fostering an environment where technology enables learning?

Redefining Literacy and Computational Thinking

AI literacy goes beyond simply knowing what AI is. It requires understanding how AI works, recognizing its limitations, and evaluating its impact critically. Laina Vlasnick Yip, Senior Program Officer of the Learning & Technology Fund at Robin Hood, stressed the importance of helping students understand that AI can make mistakes. Much like computational thinking lays the foundation for problem-solving across disciplines, AI literacy prepares students to navigate a technology-driven world thoughtfully and responsibly.

Azi Jamalian, CEO and founder of The GIANT Room, described computational thinking as “the thought processes that go into formulating problems and designing solutions.” She noted the importance of teaching students to persevere through iterative processes—research, ideation, brainstorming, tinkering, and creating—while collaborating with others to build prototypes.

Medha Tare, Senior Director of Research at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, discussed co-design as a participatory process in which children work alongside educators and developers to create tools that meet their educational and emotional needs. This inclusive approach ensures that students’ voices are embedded in the design process, resulting in more meaningful and effective learning experiences.

Azi shared examples from a partnership between The GIANT Room and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, supported by Robin Hood, involving second and third graders in under-resourced New York City public schools. Students created imaginative avatars and worked with AI chatbots to design animals connected to their science curriculum—blending creativity with tech fluency.

Medha added that these sessions helped students build both language and literacy skills as they crafted stories and images that reflected their own interests. The students then published their work as books, proudly sharing them with their families.

Why Start Early? Challenges and Opportunities

Why teach AI literacy to young children? Laina pointed out that many are already engaging with AI through tools like Siri and Alexa. Early education is key, she said, because “it’s easier to learn new things than to unlearn misconceptions.” She also emphasized the importance of helping children understand that AI isn’t magic—it’s something they can shape and influence. “Your words, your description can actually change the output,” she said. “That’s when they begin to develop healthier relationships with these tools and more thoughtful ways of using them.”

While the promise of AI in education is vast, the panel acknowledged its challenges—including bias in AI systems, ethical data use, and unequal access to AI-powered tools. Robust teacher training and clear policies are essential to address these concerns and ensure AI is used responsibly in classrooms.

To fully realize the potential of AI and educational technology, collaboration among educators, technologists, and policymakers is essential. As Laina noted, equitable access must remain a top priority to avoid exacerbating learning gaps. Transparency, comprehensive AI literacy programs, and learning environments that foster both creativity and critical thinking will be crucial for preparing students for the future.

By prioritizing inclusivity, transparency, and innovation, educators can harness AI to equip the next generation with the skills they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital world. As we move forward, cross-sector collaboration will be vital in building an educational system that is both forward-thinking and fair.

An audio recording of the session is available here.