Category Archives: Research

How did I become a researcher on children, families, and digital media? In September 2013, I started as a Cooney Center Research Fellow, trying to find my way in the world. I was just completing my Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park and had done a dissertation on the development of science ownership in children as they engaged in social media use for science learning. One of the insights from my doctoral work was that the families in my…

Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture brings together insights from several years of work by a multidisciplinary team of scholars who comprise the Families and Media Project (FAM). As members of FAM as well as co-editors of the volume, we’re delighted to have been a part of this project and to have helped bring this book to fruition. We feel that the book, and the work of the FAM researchers as a…

My kitchen counter has changed a lot over the last six years. What used to be dedicated to a bowl of fruit, a coffee maker, various papers, and mail that I hadn’t gotten around to throwing away yet has since become a mess of wires coiling back to one put-upon outlet. A rotating set of smartphones, tablets, Bluetooth speakers, and headphones have made their way to the counter as well, pointing to a broader set of changes in the house.…

Promoting early learning through the support and empowerment of families—especially those who are under-resourced—has become an imperative for education leaders nationwide. In 2014, New America published Envisioning a Digital Age Architecture for Early Education to help leaders visualize success in this media-infused environment. Since then, New America and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop have joined forces to document initiatives that use digital tools to connect with vulnerable families and improve educational outcomes. This project culminated in a public, interactive map which uses data…

What do sippy cups have to do with STEM learning? Definitely more than you might think, says Elisabeth McClure, recent Cooney Center fellow and lead author of STEM Starts Early, a 2017 report produced by New America and the Cooney Center. Every day, early learners lay groundwork for more advanced science, technology, engineering, and math skills by engaging in impromptu experiments through trial-and-error interactions with the objects around them. Enter the sippy cup: a notoriously gravity-prone accessory that’s front and center in the daily life (and…

When we think of apps for kids, we often think of games for either entertainment or learning. But apps aren’t limited to just games or books—they can also provide important social, emotional, and physical experiences too. In Family Time With Apps, we explore how to find the best apps to fit your child’s needs, provide tips on how (and why!) to use apps together, and highlight resources to make the process of selecting apps less overwhelming, and more fun. To help you…

In April, the White House hosted an Early STEM Learning Symposium with the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and Invest in US to discuss the importance of active science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning for our youngest children. Just a few months later, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and New America convened leaders from research, policy, philanthropy, and practice to follow up on the White House symposium and create a national action agenda for early…

In their recent report, Opportunity for All?, media and policy expert Victoria Rideout and Rutgers University scholar Vikki Katz explored the current uses of digital technologies to help promote educational opportunities for all through a national survey of nearly 1,200 low-income parents of school-age children and in-person interviews with lower-income, Hispanic families in three communities located in Arizona, California, and Colorado. We compiled a scannable, shareable infographic to illustrate some of their key findings. Download the infographic

A Collaborative Experiment On January 23, 2015, researchers, educators, and digital media professionals spent the day at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka the d.school) to imagine how to better support the needs and interest-driven learning of families with children through digital media. The “Designing Media for Underserved Families” event, funded by the National Science Foundation’s Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies program, continued in the cross-sector collaborative spirit of the LIFE Center and the Families and Media consortium, in…

National and local efforts to get low-income families online have emphasized that without consistent, quality connections to the Internet, families are missing out on important opportunities. Children’s learning, both in and out of school, increasingly requires developing digital skills. For parents, the Internet can help with finding information on everything from advice about raising healthy children, to finding a job. As more and more resources migrate online, broadband connectivity and meaningful engagement with digital technologies are being recognized as key…