Category Archives: Commentary

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Join forces with public health to demand investment in family supports. Ralph Smith is Managing Director of the Campaign for Grade Level Reading, an initiative that seeks to disrupt generational poverty by focusing on ensuring early school success for children from low-income families.  Healthcare professionals, while…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Make ethical design mandatory. S. Craig Watkins is the Ernest S. Sharpe Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Digital Edge and Don’t Knock the Hustle. Since the COVID-19 global pandemic has taken hold, our use of screens and…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Want to stay meaningfully connected? Take it from your teens. Debra Sanchez is Senior Vice President for Education and Children’s Content for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On March 15, 2020, my family made a commitment to our community and our nation’s health. We adopted this…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Close the homework gap—Internet access is a right! Karen Cator is President and CEO of Digital Promise, before which she served as Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.  Every day, the inequities that exist between students, teachers, communities, and…

For Part 1 of the Voices on the Future of Childhood series, we asked experts, “What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?” Click the thumbnails below to read what our experts had to say:   Voices on the Future of Childhood: An overview by Lori Takeuchi Part 1: One thing that must be…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Awaken our social and emotional relationship with media. Jenny Radesky, MD, is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, at University of Michigan Medical School. Parents and children’s relationships with technology have been brought into stark relief with the coronavirus. We now are distinctly aware of what we need…

When the Cooney Center published D is for Digital over 10 years ago, our goal was to insert the positive potential of kids media into the national conversation around children’s learning. One thing I can say with certainty is that we never imagined that a global pandemic would push digital media into the forefront of that conversation. Yet, here we are. This sudden insurgence of demand for informal educational technology (by that I mean educational technology products for the home,…

Today’s children were born into relative peace and prosperity, however unevenly distributed. But now we are collectively encountering a world of disruption, uncertainty, and anxiety. All of us are figuring out how to cope with rapid change and maintain as much normalcy as possible, while caring for ourselves and each other. We also expect that our society’s inequities will be made significantly worse by the crisis across all aspects of our lives, not just in terms of our health and…

As if any of us needed a reminder, the last few days showed us how quickly things can change. A month ago—or even a week ago—no one knew quite how different our day-to-day lives would be. Suddenly, kids are out of school, parents are working from home, and the way we socialize and interact with each other has seismically shifted. Now more than ever, families need to feel confident in their technology—which has been helping us stay connected when we…

On Thursday, March 12, 2020, PBS SoCal, KCET and the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest district in the nation, announced a plan to provide Pre-K–12th grade educational programming throughout the daytime on PBS SoCal, KCET, and KLCS channels. This partnership has the potential to serve more than 600,000 students across Southern California. This multi-platform initiative includes robust digital resources, created in collaboration with KQED in San Francisco, through our online platform, PBS LearningMedia. Public television has long served…