Category Archives: Commentary

In our first post, we provided an overview of Newsweek’s coverage of America’s creativity crisis, which highlighted the crucial need for creativity and innovation in solving real-world problems. We began to explore skills and processes that have been associated with creativity and appreciate how your comments added to the discussion. In this post, we’ll discuss specific learning and creativity theories that provide a foundation for designing media that fosters children’s creativity. Divergent thinking is our cognitive ability to think outside…

In today’s difficult job market, which candidate is most appealing, the one who received a perfect SAT score, or the one that can offer the most creative solutions to a complex problem, such as stopping the spread of oil along the Gulf Coast?   The July 10 Newsweek magazine cover story, “The Creativity Crisis” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman, featured new evidence that American creativity has been in significant decline over the past two decades. These findings come at a…

Reprinted from the Huffington Post, July 28, 2010, with permission from the author, Ellen Galinsky. A front-page story in the New York Times today (July 28) by David Leonhardt is provocatively titled “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers”. In what is described as an “explosive” new study, Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues have shed new light on the importance of quality early childhood teaching. The researchers examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who were part of…

Reprinted from Huffington Post, July 5, 2010. Written together with Esther Wojcicki, Creative Commons Board Chair America is celebrating. The Fourth of July is a time for parades, parties, BBQs, fireworks—we certainly have much to be thankful for here in America, the most innovative country on earth. But one area of American life that is consistently resistant to innovation is our education system. On our nation’s birthday–a cause for celebration of our founders’ audacity, independence, courage and innovation skills– we…

  Check out Esther Wojcicki and Michael H. Levine‘s Huff Post on Teaching Literacy in a Digital Age. Add your comments to the blog post or right here!  

TechDrawl‘s Dave Walters interviewed our Executive Director, Michael H. Levine on May 19, 2010: View video & read more!

Reprinted from Gary’s Blog, May 2010. Gary Knell is Sesame Workshop’s President & CEO. Earlier this month, the USDA and First Lady Michelle Obama opened entries for their Apps for Healthy Kids competition.  Via the competition, the USDA is offering a $40,000 prize pool for leveraging USDA nutritional data to create software which encourages children “to make more nutritious food choices and be more physically active.” We’re delighted to have Michael H. Levine, Executive Director of the Cooney Center, as…

Reprinted from Gary’s Blog, May 2010. Gary Knell, Sesame Workshop’s President and CEO reports on his visit to the FCC: It’s not every day you get to go to the FCC. But today, Elmo needs a chaperone. In February of 2009, Congress passed a bill which authorizes the FCC to create a National Broadband Plan which aims “to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability.” Today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Elmo, and I, will…

Reprinted from the February 2009 Cooney Center Bits Newsletter: I had the pleasure of attending my first TED conference earlier this month in its new Long Beach, CA venue. I have watched TED talks over the years, but before founding the Cooney Center had not thought much about participating in the meeting, which seemed more about invention and technology design than education or children. Technological, Educational, Design wonders from TED’09: Elizabeth Gilbert on creative genius RWJF’s Pioneers Luncheon MIT’s Siftables —…

This post originally appeared on the Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age blog. A new high school is being built near my office. The old high school had served its function well over time, but in recent years the level of maintenance necessary to keep the school functioning translated into diminishing returns. School committees, planning committees, state and city officials, community members, and advisory groups came together to define a new future for the students of this city. Their passionate…