Have you ever believed something and then found out it wasn’t true? It happens to all of us, even when we have the best intentions! In fact, while curiosity about something often leads us to learning, it can also expose us to misinformation and unreliable sources that may lead us into conspiratorial thinking. This is increasingly true in our current digital environment, where innocuously clicking on an interesting video or link can lead to recommendations that draw users into an endless flow of content. As we continue to explore, we can be drawn down “the rabbit hole,”  quickly accelerating us into polarizing beliefs. 

Named after the famous rabbit hole from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the rabbit hole effect has its origins in digital information overload caused by social media and platforms such as YouTube and Wikipedia. Children are especially vulnerable to the rabbit hole effect, as their cognitive abilities are still developing. This makes it essential for the younger generation to build resilience against misinformation in an increasingly digital world. 

Yet, there is increasing evidence that misinformation is not only an issue of “false news” or “bad facts”, but also as an issue of misaligned collective sensemaking. This means that as people fall into the misinformation rabbit hole, it isn’t just a matter of teaching them to identify what is true or false, but encouraging them to reflect on the ways that our identities and social experiences inform how we come to understand the information placed in front of us. It is about building empathy, understanding, and being open to listening to others.

Typically, many approaches to misinformation literacy and resilience focus on helping kids to verify facts and sources. Though certainly an important skill, if misinformation also arises from collective sensemaking, it stands to reason that helping kids practice understanding misinformation together is also important. Therefore, with this as our foundation, our team at KidsTeam UW, along with support from Foundry10,  spent two and a half years co-designing a game with youth to help children reflect on the social aspects of the misinformation rabbit hole. 

Starbound Secrets: A Co-Designed Social Misinformation Game

Imagine you are speeding through space! You are hoping to find a cure for the Space Pig Flu that your best friend Missy caught when trying to save a puppy on another planet. Luckily, you hear about the Dragon Tear, a mysterious gem said to be able to cure any sickness. The only problem is, the gem is said to be on an abandoned StarCorps ship… With your trusty AI companion Bomi by your side, will you find the cure and find out the fate of the ship’s crew? Or will you become another lost soul aboard the ghost ship?

 

Check out our Game’s intro video

 

These are the questions we ask players to consider as they explore an abandoned ship in our game, Starbound Secrets. The game is a live, interactive event played by teams of 2-3 players with a game host.  As mentioned above, the game emulates a “rabbit hole effect” related to misinformation, where the first pieces of evidence are believable but become more outrageous over time. There are three parts to the game, each to facilitate reflection for the players:

The Minecraft World

The first part of the game is the Minecraft world, where players get to explore the abandoned ship. While exploring, they solve puzzles and search for clues about what happened on the ship. They also meet a cast of characters who they also need to decide if they trust or not. The game culminates in the “tipping point,” where players must make a choice based on the information and characters they meet.

The Trustworthiness Activity

As players explore the ship, piecing together the mystery, they also work together outside the digital world to reflect on the characters and information they come across during the game. This is done through placing cards on a line of least trustworthy to most trustworthy. This activity, designed by three of our child co-designers, helps to prompt players to slow down, ask themselves what they are encountering, and acts as a scaffold to help them explore why they make their choices at the tipping point.

 

The Debrief

After completing the game and making a choice at the tipping point, players engage in the debrief, where they are asked to think about their attitudes, emotions, and decision-making processes regarding their choices in the game. Players first reflect on the reasoning behind their choice during the game in their teams. Afterward, all players compare their reasoning and make broader connections to the rabbit hole effect in their everyday lives.

Building Misinformation Resilience through Social Reflection

Although the game provides a fun environment to explore, the real magic happens when kids step away from the screen and talk with each other, questioning why they think certain ideas about the characters and the misinformation. Allowing them the space to discuss leads to conversations about how trustworthy Missy is (a common belief among the kids has been that Missy is faking her space pig flu) and reflections on why a classified document is or is not more trustworthy than a message from the captain of the ship let them learn from one another and practice seeing how others ideas also help them to interpret information. Many of the children in our testing discussed how feelings, trust, and apathy lead them to make quick assumptions about the characters and information encountered in the game. 

Through co-designing and testing our game, it became clear to us that one of the most important ways to help kids build resilience to misinformation is to encourage them to talk with one another.  In particular, offering kids time to reflect together, discuss, disagree, and change their minds while in a team allows them to better understand the ways in which our social experiences also impact how we come to interact with the growing information environments we live within. Starbound Secrets seeks to help kids practice these skills within the setting of a game, where conspiracies of aliens and corporations run wild, but the same practice can happen in everyday life. Our work suggests that if you want to help kids build resilience to misinformation, try talking with them and reflecting together on the ways we make assumptions. 

If you want to try out the game on your own or with the kids in your life, you can download the game for free at lokisloop.org (along with other cool games like misinformation escape rooms)! Our Misinformation Play Pack, which is aimed specifically for kids 8-15, includes two other curricula to help kids think about misinformation. AI (Mis)Adventures is a set of six play-based activities designed to support children’s understanding of AI by helping them reflect on how AI works, the role of bias, and the ways that people use AI to share and spread misinformation. The Reel Deel, a set of six interchangeable modules, is designed to help children unravel the complexities of how videos serve as both carriers and amplifiers of misinformation. 

 

Michele Newman is a doctoral candidate in the Information School at the University of Washington advised by Dr. Jin Ha Lee and Dr. Jason Yip. She is also a member of the UW Gamer Group and the Digital Youth Lab working with KidsTeam UW and KidsTeam SPL. Her research broadly explores how the design and use of software can support creativity and aid in the creation, transmission, and preservation of cultural heritage and knowledge.

Each March, the brightest minds in education, technology, and media gather in Austin, TX for SXSW EDU to explore what’s next in learning. Here at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, we love everything about it – we learn so much from all of the incredible leaders who take the stage and share their experience and wisdom, we love sharing our own work, and meeting up with friends old and new.

This year, the Cooney Center is proud to share two proposals that spotlight the future of learning and edtech. We’re diving into some of the really big questions around AI and literacy: how can we harness the potential of this incredible technology to support children’s writing and learning— across subject areas? And we are proposing a hands-on workshop about co-designing edtech with kids in order to create learning experiences that truly empower them AND improve the products. 

But in order for these conversations to take the stage, we need your help! Please take a minute to vote for our sessions below – it’s free and easy to create an account in the SXSW EDU Panel Picker platform, and each vote makes a difference. Community voting is open now through August 24, 2025.

We hope to see you in Austin!

Panel: Beyond Basics: AI, Writing & Literacy Across the Curriculum

Writing is often overlooked in literacy instruction — yet, it’s critical for learning across disciplines. In this session, we’ll explore how AI can support writing instruction without sacrificing student voice, creativity, or critical thinking. We’ll explore if and how AI tools can scaffold writing, enrich vocabulary and syntax, and support disciplinary literacy in subjects like history, science, and math. Join us for a practical conversation about human-centered AI that amplifies, not replaces, teaching and learning. Moderated by Medha Tare (Joan Ganz Cooney Center), with Jahira Alonso (New York City Department of Education), Angelica DaSilva (Joan Ganz Cooney Center),  and Julia Wilkowski (Google).
VOTE HERE

 

Workshop: Co-Designing Edtech with Kids

This interactive workshop introduces the Co-Design with Kids Toolkit—a research-informed resource that empowers edtech developers and educators to involve children and families in the design process. Learn about practical tools and methods to move beyond user testing into real co-creation with your target audience. Whether you’re building the next big learning app or innovating in the classroom or in afterschool settings, you’ll gain actionable strategies and hands-on experience to create more inclusive, engaging, and effective learning technologies – with kids, not just for them. With Mona Leigh Guha (Joan Ganz Cooney Center), Azi Jamalian (The GIANT Room), and Allisyn Levy (Joan Ganz Cooney Center).
VOTE HERE

 

And we are also delighted to be part of several other proposals!

Please cast a vote for the following sessions as well. 

 

Play-Based Literacy in a Screen-Heavy World

With students immersed in digital environments, early reading tools must evolve. This panel highlights how animation, play, and story can make foundational reading more accessible and joyful, with insights from design, education, and developmental psychology. Panelists will explore what it takes to design digital learning tools that compete with entertainment apps while remaining grounded in cognitive science and literacy research.
VOTE HERE

 

XR in Education: What Students Want, What Schools Need 

New research from the XR Association shows over half of teens are using XR in the classroom. But what do they think about it? As AR, VR and AI converge to reshape how students learn, young people will be key to how these tools are designed, adopted and integrated. XRA’s survey reveals teens are excited about immersive learning, yet knowledge gaps in access, transparency, privacy and agency remain. This panel, brought to you by the letters X and R, will explore what youth-centered, equitable immersive learning can look like — and how to build tech that reflects the next generation’s needs.
VOTE HERE

 

Level Up! Role-Playing Games for Well-Being in the Classroom

Discover how tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) can support social-emotional learning and mental health through an interactive, hands-on workshop. Grounded in the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) well-being framework, participants will explore case studies, play through a TTRPG scenario, and leave with free, classroom-ready resources to bring the power of play into their schools.
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AI Tools to Advance Literacy and Student Agency

What happens when AI tools are designed by teachers and students? In this session, we’ll explore how two public school districts, one in NYC and one in rural Kentucky, used an AI storytelling platform co-designed with students and educators to build literacy, creativity, and agency. Students made gains in writing, critical thinking, and reading, becoming published authors through scaffolded, identity-affirming programs. Panelists will share lessons from responsibly integratingAI in elementary classrooms, offering equity-focused strategies and models that lead to positive student outcomes.
VOTE HERE

 

From Advisory to Agency: Youth Insights Into Decisions

Youth advisory boards are a meaningful first step but real impact comes when youth move from advisors to decision-makers. In this session, we’ll unpack how In Tandem and partners like the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Owl Ventures, and Young Futures made youth co-design a strategic advantage. Hear how youth insights led to scrapped features, new program criteria, and funding pivots. We’ll share hard-won lessons, privacy and consent protocols, and tools to turn youth insight into action. Walk away with case studies to turn youth insight into action.
VOTE HERE

In the Cooney Center’s Sandbox for Literacy Innovations, E-Line Media is creating a reading app that aims to helps kids discover the joy of reading. RiSi (Read It, See It) brings digital storybook illustrations to life as children read aloud—encouraging fluency, engagement, and confidence. But the origins of the app trace back to the deeply personal journey of one man.

Over the course of his life, Jon Waterhouse was many things—global explorer, Navy veteran, environmental steward, Native American scholar, and educator. Before any of that, however, Waterhouse was a reader. He had a voracious appetite for books that was partly fueled by his struggles to read as a child.  Those early reading challenges also inspired his vision for RiSi. A key feature of this app is an animated octopus reading buddy who is always ready to provide the sort of help and encouragement that Waterhouse lacked as a child.

Sadly, Waterhouse died unexpectedly in November 2022, before seeing RiSi become a reality. But his wife, photojournalist and writer Mary Marshall-Waterhouse has dedicated herself to bringing RiSi to life.

“He was never read to at home as a child,” Marshall-Waterhouse said of her late husband, whose father’s role in the US Army kept the family moving from place to place and school to school. The constant upheavals contributed to Jon’s lack of early reading support until his fourth-grade teachers discovered his lack of literacy and arranged for tutoring.

“He felt inferior to his classmates. He was angry about it, and that anger stayed with him for a long time,” she recalled. “I think that’s what drove him throughout adulthood to look for solutions so other kids could avoid the same struggles he faced.”

According to E-Line’s vice president of production for mobile games, Jason Everett, “When Mary brought the concept of RiSi to us, we immediately fell in love with the idea of developing a product that could help kids become avid readers and create a lifelong relationship with reading and stories.” 

This past spring, RiSi has been further refined in the Cooney Center’s Sandbox, with the help of literacy experts and the intuitive expertise of kids in co-design sessions. Everett credits the partnership with helping E-Line align their storybooks to different reading levels, incorporate vocabulary learning, and ensure the reading experiences are entertaining and engaging without being distracting. 

Marshall-Waterhouse attended RiSi’s co-design sessions. “It was an amazing experience,” she said. “The folks at the Cooney Center were incredible – as were the kids who participated. They were so focused and detailed with their feedback, which allowed us to really dig deep in understanding how young readers respond to our sweet little book buddy, as well as the overall RiSi experience.”

 

 

“It amazes me when I think of the long road that’s brought RiSi to where we are now”, recalled Marshall-Waterhouse. She met Jon in 2000, when they were both living in Anchorage, Alaska. A few years earlier, he had retired as a chief petty officer after  a 20-year career in the Navy.

“Jon had been an avid reader for many years. I mean, he just devoured books,” she said. “When we got together and I first saw his apartment, I noticed he didn’t have a TV. He had a radio, a desk, a futon for a bed, and books–stacks and stacks of books.”

Waterhouse’s literary taste reflected his itinerant upbringing and his subsequent love of travel and a globe-spanning naval career. He enjoyed experiencing different cultures and reading about adventurers and explorers doing things like mapping the Amazon or trekking across Antarctica.  

Marshall-Waterhouse recalled the day almost two decades ago that her husband first proposed what would become RiSi. “One day, he picked up his iPad and said, `What if a child could read a book on this device with a little character to help, and illustrations would animate and come to life when the child read the accompanying text aloud, activated by voice recognition?” 

Thus began a years-long effort to secure a patent on the idea for RiSi, which the couple finally acquired in 2020. Beyond literacy, Waterhouse, who was part Native American, devoted himself to environmental advocacy. He was active with the Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council, a group of 70 tribes and First Nations from the U.S. and Canada dedicated to protecting the health of the river and its watershed, that are so integral to their cultures and livelihoods.

The council’s elders asked Waterhouse to “take the pulse of the river,” which Waterhouse did by organizing a “Healing Journey” canoe expedition along the 2,000-mile river in 2007 with a team of scientists, environmentalists, and nonprofit backers, including the National Geographic Society, which supported Waterhouse as a National Geographic Explorer. The canoes had submerged scientific sensors in tow, capturing and uploading real-time data on everything from temperature and turbidity to nitrates and algal blooms, to create both a map and searchable database of Yukon River health.

The success of the first Healing Journey led to additional river-monitoring trips and cleanup efforts led by Waterhouse, who became the Watershed Council’s executive director. He expanded his mission to help indigenous people around the world use similar technology to gather data on their water and environmental quality.  Waterhouse was also a National Geographic Education Fellow, visiting schools, speaking about environmental stewardship, and working to interest more Native American students in the study of science. In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Waterhouse to the Joint Public Advisory Committee working with experts across North America focused on protecting environmental health.

Waterhouse began having health issues in 2021, and his commitment to advocacy and education was unfortunately cut short at the age of 66. But Marshall-Waterhouse is determined to fulfill his vision of helping young readers.

“After Jon’s passing, I knew RiSi needed to be my focus,” said Marshall-Waterhouse. “I knew I had to create this legacy for him.”