Category Archives: Policy

A Communique on the Horizon Project’s Recent Communique. Many of you may have heard of the annual Horizon Report, the report put out by the New Media Consortium that tracking the most important trends technology for education over the last decade. To celebrate ten years of producing what has become a vital indicator of social change,this past January the report’s organizers brought together 100 international leaders from academia and industry. Putting their heads together, these experts identified 28 megatrends that…

When people ask me what I write about, my answer is that I discuss the positive potential of new and emerging forms of media. I fundamentally believe that media has the potential to play a positive role in children’s lives, am obsessed with Sesame Street, and feel honored to work for an organization that is named after a woman who believed that television could make a difference in the lives of children. I tend to stay away from writing about…

I wasn’t going to blog about the American Academy of Pediatrics recent update to its 1999 policy statement, which discouraged media use for children under the age of 2.  Why not?  Because numerous experts much more knowledgeable than I already provided excellent commentary on the report.  Both Warren Buckleitner and David Kleeman effectively summarized the statement’s inadequacies.  Moms with Apps did a nice job interpreting the report into usable tips for parents.   And Sesame Workshop’s Jennifer Kotler and Rosemarie Truglio…

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) has just published a policy brief authored by Michael Levine, the executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, and James Paul Gee, the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. Reed an excerpt of the brief below and download the full PDF here.   Almost 30 years after the landmark study A Nation at Risk, and the subsequent hundreds of billions spent trying to ramp-up children’s mastery of basic…

A few weeks ago I blogged about Fisher Price’s new iPhone case, a plastic case that protects the devices from the poking, prodding, and sticky fingers of young children. I commented on how we’ve figured out how to protect the device from sticky fingers, but questioned who’s protecting those sticky fingers from the device. Well, it seems like Apple has taken one step in the right direction. Recent accounts of children unknowingly racking up thousands of dollars through in-app purchases…

Why most U.S. school reformers are on the wrong track, and how to get our kids’ education right for the future What President Obama said: “We need to out-educate.” What Obama should have said: “We can’t win the future with the education of the past.”   This is an unprecedented time in U.S. education, and awareness that we have a problem has never been higher. Billions of dollars of public and private money are lined up for solutions. But I…

A funny thing happened at a Capitol Hill Caucus Event in  D.C.  last month–a moment of bipartisan agreement!  The sighting of this rare bird seems well worth noting–everyone who has been following the debate over painful budget cuts has been wondering if and when consensus might ever break out. So I was delightfully surprised to be a part of a discussion of one issue that could, perhaps, be an important bridge across the political chasm: the role of digital technology–especially video games– to…

Reprinted from Huffington Post. As President Obama discusses our State of the Union with a much needed focus on innovation, education and investment in America’s future, let’s focus on one area that is ripe for radical change: how digital media can be used for education and hands-on, lifelong learning beginning right from the start. We need to focus more attention on the potential long-term effects of a major investment in the early years, especially in building an entirely new learning…

The final version of the National Education Technology Plan was unveiled on Tuesday, outlining the transition from digital classrooms to other platforms–long overdue.  Read Fred Belmont’s HuffPo piece, Obama’s New Digital Learning Plan: A Killer App. A few excerpts are shared below:  Education Secretary Arne Duncan unveiled the final version of the National Education Technology Plan on Tuesday — proposals to use social networking, data collection and multi-media to get U.S. kids to learn more. According to Duncan, the plan…

Reprinted from Huffington Post This teacher bashing must stop! It is an unwise diversion from what matters most: teaching children to love learning and be creative right from the start. As an unabashed ally in the moral outrage that animates Davis Guggenheim’s powerful film “Waiting for ‘Superman’ “, count me as a skeptic of the proposed prescriptions advanced by the movie. Brent Staples of The New York Times gets it just right: “the many complex problems that have long afflicted…