Category Archives: Conferences and Community Events

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve submitted two panel proposals to SXSWEdu. We’ve lined up some great speakers, and can’t wait to share their insights with you.

For four glorious days, industry mingled and held hands with research at the 2013 Interaction Design and Children’s Conference, which took place from June 24-June 27 in New York City. This year, Sesame Workshop co-hosted the conference with The New School, a strategic move that further extended the conference’s efforts to bring together industry and research. I had the pleasure to attend the conference this year, where I saw four prominent themes: We can be friends As mentioned, researchers and…

If the investment in digital technology and gaming in schools is going to continue to grow, it is up to game developers and companies to do a better job sharing information about what games work and for what kind of learners. That was the message from the deputy director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who oversees investment in what the foundation dubs the next generation of K-12 education in the U.S. last week. Stacey Childress said the coming…

On Wednesday, a panel of education professionals, teachers, and tech-savvy students took the stage for the final day of the 10th annual Games for Change Festival held at New World Stages in New York City. Moderated by Forbes blogger, Jordan Shapiro, the panel participants discussed their experience with the National STEM Video Game Challenge, a national program founded by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and E-Line Media that encourages youth in grades 5-12 to create playable video games that utilize…

During some recent spring cleaning, I decided to part with an unwieldy knot of academic and media industry conference nametag lanyards, amassed over the past three years of my Ph.D. program.  Upon returning home from each conference, I would hang them from a particular doorknob in my apartment, a pile that grew more dusty than decorative.  Before tossing the badges though, I took a quick glance at each.  The details of some conferences were easier to recall than others. One…

If games and learning is a topic that sets your creativity reeling, then block your calendar for June 17—19th and make your way to New York City for the 10th Anniversary Games for Change Festival.  The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop has curated a selection of speakers and panel discussion on a wide range of games & learning topics, ranging from an investigation of Common Core standards and the goals of 21st-century skills development, role-playing in video games…

Following Jessica Millstone’s adventure at SXSWEdu, I had the opportunity to attend SXSW Interactive (SXSWi), which united 27,000 individuals hailing from a variety of industries including advertising, gaming, journalism, and aerospace (!). This crowd is extremely diverse compared to when SXSW first started as a music festival and even to several years before, which focused more on software and application development. Not only did the attendees vary, but so did the hundreds of compelling sessions, workshops, keynotes, and networking events…

Like many people attending the jam-packed SXSWedu event in Austin, TX last week, I found that so much information was exchanged that I had to divide it all into categories.  At the end of four days of conference sessions, informal meet-ups and parties, product launches, and personal introductions, a few trends emerged. So with no further ado—here are the Top 5 topics of conversation at SXSWedu related to our research and teacher development work here at the Joan Ganz Cooney…

Cooney Center fellow Christina Hinton is moderating a panel at the Digital Media and Learning (DML) Conference called Getting Global With It: Youth Global Participation in the Digital Age With an internationally interdependent economy, unprecedented levels of migration, and a continuous stream of information circulating the planet, children are growing up in a globalized world. In this era of globalization, children need to develop intercultural understanding. Modern digital technologies provide exciting new avenues for helping children gain this important skill.…

Last month, the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub, made possible by grants from the MacArthur Foundation, published a research report on the findings of the Connected Learning Research Network, a group led by scholars such as Mimi Ito, Sonia Livingstone, S. Craig Watkins, and Katie Salen.  The Connected Learning Research Network, according to the report, is “an interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers, designers, and practitioners to advance an evidence-driven approach to learning, the design of learning environments, and educational reform…