Category Archives: Conferences and Community Events

Every February, children’s entertainment professionals from around the world converge in New York as the overlap of Toy Fair, Engage Expo and KidScreen Summit turn the city into a veritable stomping ground for those of us in the kids business. And every year, I can hardly wait to hear about the trends and see the products that will entertain children throughout the year ahead. This year did not disappoint! Surprisingly, the product that most interested me this year came from…

Occasionally, those of us who work in digital media can get so caught up in the excitement of exploring the “new literacies” that make up our 21st century educational landscape, that it can be easy to lose sight of the fundamental problem of not being able to read. The truth is, for both children and adults, illiteracy is still a major issue worldwide. According to LitWorld, “nearly 1 billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or…

On December 14, 2010, Michael Levine participated in Generation Mobile, a panel discussion hosted by the FCC in Washington, DC. Watch the video from the panel discussion:     (This video will begin with the “Ask the Experts About Generation Mobile” panel. View the full video on YouTube.)  

If you are in New Haven on Friday, February 11, we invite you to attend the Zigler Center’s weekly social policy lecture series. Michael Levine will present a preview of Always Connected, a collaboration with the Sesame Workshop that will be published this spring, and The Impacts of Media Multitasking on Children’s Learning and Development. He will discuss the results of some recent studies about the constant flow of media that kids are consuming — often simultaneously — and the…

Becky Herr Stephenson is a Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. She attended the Kids@Play Summit at CES 2011, which focused on the way technology is changing how kids learn and play. She shares some highlights with us here: The Kids@Play Summit at CES reaffirmed for me that the best technologies are those that are obviously disruptive — technologies that challenge our expectations about what learning and schooling should look like, about who can participate in creation and…

If you are attending the Consumer Electronics Show this week, be sure to check out the Kids at Play Summit on Saturday, January 8. Michael H. Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, will be speaking on a panel with Sara DeWitt, Vice President of PBS Kids Interactive and Robert Bole, Vice President of Digital Media Strategy at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The panel will take place at 11:40 a.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Check…

On Tuesday, December 14 the FCC is hosting Generation Mobile, a forum that will bring together teenagers, parents, educators, and experts to discuss the many opportunities and challenges around the way kids use mobile technology today. The event takes place from 10am until 1pm at McKinley Technology High School in Washington, DC. The forum will feature remarks by FCC Chariman Julius Genachowski and a presentation of findings from a Pew Internet and American Life study on kids and mobile phones.…

This post originally appeared in New Media Literacies on October, 25, 2010. I recently attended Digital Hollywood, a digital media trade conference in Los Angeles for executives in the film, television, computer, music, and telecommunications fields. As a Ph.D. student in Communication at USC Annenberg, I attended four panels relevant to my research interests in children and media. These panels were organized around the following themes: immersive touchscreen media, mobile apps, crossmedia content reinvention, and one specifically on children in…

The past few weeks have been big for our industry — conferences from EdNet to Engage, the expansion announcement of E-Rate, a stellar New York Times article on Learning by Playing, the release of Waiting for Superman, and NBC’s Education Nation. Guest blogger, Ellen Galinsky, offers her perspective on Education Nation (reprinted from What It Will Really Mean to “Put Children First”–Reflections on NBC’s Education Nation in Huffington Post): Many of this nation’s movers and shakers in education gathered this…

The Fred Rogers Center recently announced an exciting fellowship opportunity for early-career producers, animators, technologists, writers, artists, musicians, educators, and others, interested in creating exciting, high-quality media inspired by the legacy of Fred Rogers. Through the ECF program, the Fred Rogers Center acts as a catalyst for innovation in media- and technology-based work that advances early childhood development and learning. Download application and other information