CSforALL Summit 2019
2019-10-21 - 2019-10-23
The CSforALL Summit is a multi-day convening focused on rigorous, inclusive and sustainable computer science for all US students. There will be two plenary sessions where you will hear from both local and national stakeholders impacting systems change within CS education and highlighting their 2019 commitments. This year’s event takes place in Salt Lake City, Utah from October 21-23, 2019.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s Executive Director Michael Preston will lead “Leveraging Public Media to Inspire All Kids to See Themselves in Tech,” a fireside chat with Debra Sanchez from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Milton Chen, senior fellow and executive director emeritus of the George Lucas Educational Foundation during the Systems for CS session on Tuesday, October 22.

View the full agenda

FOSI 2020 Annual Conference
2019-11-21
The Family Online Safety Institute’s 2020 Annual Conference theme is “2020 Vision: The Future of Online Safety.”

Leaders from industry, government, law enforcement and non-profits will come together in Washington, DC to collaborate and innovate new solutions to Internet safety challenges. There will be keynotes, plenary panels, breakout sessions, alongside exhibits and a networking reception.

Michael Preston, the Cooney Center’s executive director, will participate in a panel on designing for children.

Learn more and register for FOSI 2020 here

2020 NETA Conference & CPB Public Media Thought Leader Forum
2020-01-26 - 2020-01-30 | Arlington, VA
The NETA Conference and CPB Public Media Thought Leader Forum is dedicated to the foundational cornerstone of Public Media: Education. Attendees represent station leadership, education, community engagement, marketing, promotion, production and content to learn from national thought leaders and engage in hands-on discussions. This year the conference will explore the future of education and media, with a focus on the following areas: Media in the Classroom, Content, Community Engagement, Station Management, and Youth Voices.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will share highlights from our Families Learning Across Boundaries (FamLAB) Project with representatives from PBS SoCAL and Idaho Public Television, who were on project teams that were recipients of our Spark Grant awards.

Future of Childhood Summit
2020-03-03 - 2020-03-05 | San Francisco, CA
Event postponed

After much deliberation, the Future of Childhood Summit has been postponed. The planning team at Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Google are disappointed not to be able to host the Summit this March.We will share more details as soon as we are able to do so.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and Google will convene a Summit aimed at realizing our most positive visions of childhood in this tech-saturated age. This invitation-only event will bring together leaders from industry, research, education, and advocacy to create a unified vision of the future of childhood, in which all children grow up in a world where their interactions with media and technology enrich their learning, wellbeing, and safety. The summit will kick off on the evening of March 3 with an opening session and reception followed by two days of conversation and hands-on planning. We will reflect on how to nurture, empower and protect children while building new skills. The summit will be an opportunity to engage in discussion across industries and disciplines, and also develop a shared agenda for the decade ahead.

New York Academy of Sciences Webinar: COVID-19: Screen Time and the Developing Brain
2020-07-22 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Online
During COVID-19, children are spending more time in front of screens than ever before, with virtual school, video streaming, social media, and multiplayer games. Given that kids’ brains are still developing, should parents be concerned? What are the long-term effects? Is there such a thing as too much screen time? What will happen to kids and teens in a post-COVID world? How will they adjust to a life with less screen time? This panel will bring together experts in pediatrics, education, and digital media to discuss the effects of extensive screen time on the developing brain.

Speakers: Michael Preston, PhD, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop; Sonia Livingstone, Dphil, The London School of Economics and Political Science; Jenny Radesky, MD, University of Michigan Medical School; and Michael Robb, PhD, Common Sense Media.

The event is free for NYAS members and $10 for non-members.

Learn more about the webinar and register here.

Parenting for a Digital Future
2020-07-29 12:00 - 13:00
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET / 5pm BSTPlease join the Joan Ganz Cooney Center in celebrating the release of Parenting for a Digital Future, a new book by Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross that offers a balanced, in-depth exploration of the realities of parenting today. The authors will be joined by Anya Kamenetz, an education correspondent for NPR and author of The Art of Screen Time in a conversation hosted by Michael Preston, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.

Together, they will discuss the challenges facing parents as they grapple with a digital age that is full of both opportunity and risk. What does a child’s growing independence mean in terms of digital technology, when the risks of online activity may be eclipsed by the public health dangers of the pandemic? Where do parents of tweens go for advice?

The event is free and open to the public.

Register here»
Learn more about Parenting for a Digital Future here »
Learn more about The Art of Screen Time here »

Speakers:

Sonia
Livingstone
Alicia
Blum-Ross
Anya
Kamenetz
Michael
Preston

FOSI 2020 Annual Conference
2020-11-18
This year’s Family Online Safety Institute’s Annual Conference, “Building Resilience,” will cover the many changing elements of online life, for ourselves, our families, and our world. The inherent obstacles and vast benefits of the digital world have become apparent to all of us now more than ever, and we look forward to the new challenge of examining these issues against the backdrop of a quickly changing social and cultural landscape.

Join Cooney Center Senior Fellow Mary Madden in a fireside chat with Facebook’s Antigone Davis at 1:15 PM ET.

For more information and to register, visit https://www.fosi.org/events/2020-annual-conference

Reframing Education for the 22nd Century
2021-04-07
2020 was a year unlike any we have experienced before … until 2021. We have witnessed the “hoaxification” of the COVID-19 pandemic, massive civic unrest in response to long-tolerated systemic racism and injustice, continued denial of climate change in spite of an increasingly inhospitable natural environment, and most recently, a violent insurrection seeking to disrupt democracy and encourage authoritarianism.At the root of these issues is more than a conflict between change and the status quo: it’s the difference between equitable and sustainable societies and life-threatening imbalances in power and privilege.One critical challenge is that our education systems are fundamentally designed to advance individualistic goals over collective success. Even “21st century skills,” such as collaboration and communication, are implemented in ways that fall short of their goals. As educators, we have a moral imperative to rethink our work so that children are prepared to bend, if not upend, the arc of history toward progress for the common good.Education should foster in each and every child an egalitarian mindset — a positive sense of oneself as a worthy individual rooted in valued cultural traditions, able and disposed to construct a view of reality from multiple perspectives and act in collaboration with others toward the common good. To develop an egalitarian mindset, we might consider these questions:
School climate and culture: What features of present-day school structures and cultures should students never or rarely experience?

Pedagogy, Curriculum and Assessment: What about current teachers and teaching, curriculum, and assessment should students never or rarely experience?

Technology: What should be the normative experience of every child with regard to technology, including AI? What should they never or rarely experience?
How would these changes lead to egalitarian mindsets?The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and the Center for Global Education at Asia Society invite you to participate in a series of provocative conversations with the goal of reframing the purpose of education as the foundation for a social movement toward equality and sustainability. We hope that you will join us.Dates: Wednesday, April 7, 14, and 28 (Skipping April 21)
Time: 1 PM US EDT for 75 minutes
Format: A weekly series of salons encouraging the free flow of ideas around how to build an education system for the 22nd century focused on the common good. In partnership with

The Missing Middle: Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media
2021-05-25 13:00 - 14:00
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
1:00 PM ET

Today’s tweens and teens feel they have outgrown the programming offered by public media as they begin to discover a world of information and entertainment at their fingertips. Yet even though they have access to an abundance of options for watching, listening, playing, and communicating, they are often underserved by quality content appropriate to their developmental stages and needs.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have partnered to better understand how young people are engaging with media today. As part of our By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences project, we spoke with 50 tweens and teens across the U.S. about how they spend their time, what they find interesting, how they find new shows, apps, or videos, what issues are important to them, as well as what misconceptions adults have about youth. We asked them for their advice about what media producers should do if they want to engage with people their age, and we talked about how their lives have changed during the pandemic.

Please join us as we discuss our findings to be published in our forthcoming report, The Missing Middle: Reimagining a Future for Tweens, Teens, and Public Media on Tuesday, May 25 at 1pm. This event is free and open to the public.Learn more and register here»

Speakers:

Monica Bulger, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop

Mimi Ito, Director, Connected Learning Lab, University of California, Irvine

Mary Madden, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop

Michael Preston, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop

Debra Sanchez, Corporation for Public Broadcasting

Studying Youth and Family Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic at Connected Learning Summit 2021
2021-07-12 14:00 - 15:00
As schools around the United States were forced to turn to remote learning methods last spring, research teams around the country mobilized to study how families were adjusting to the pandemic. Join the Cooney Center, Stanford University, the University of Washington, and the University of Michigan at the Connected Learning Summit for a discussion about family learning as aided by technology during the pandemic, as well as how we as researchers can study such learning remotely. The symposium will take place on 2pm ET on July 12, 2021.Studying Youth and Family Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Learn more about the Connected Learning Summit

The Augmented and Virtual Reality Policy Conference
2021-10-21
In the last decade, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) have evolved from niche tools for enthusiasts and high-tech industries to more widely adopted communications technologies that have the potential to transform the way people communicate, collaborate, and learn. As AR/VR solutions gain traction across sectors, they will raise important policy considerations-some of which are already a part of broader tech policy discussions, while others will be unique to these technologies. Through a series of expert talks and panels, this half-day virtual conference organized by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the XR Association will explore the role of policy in AR/VR innovation and identify priority areas for policymakers to consider as these technologies continue to expand.
JGCC Executive Director Michael Preston will be speaking beginning at 1:25 PM EST on Thursday, October 21st, as part of the Lightning Round: Priorities for an AR/VR Policy Agenda panel.

Register for the conference here.

Learning at Home While Under-Connected and the Role of Public Media
2021-10-26
Learning at Home While Under-Connected: Lower-Income Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic follows up on 2016’s Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families to uncover the perspectives of lower-income parents with children ages 3 to 13. In March and April 2021, researchers Vikki Katz and Victoria Rideout led a national survey of more than 1,000 parents. The report delves into the experiences that these families had while many children were learning at home during a time when many school buildings were closed. It provides timely, pointed, and thought-provoking insights on the challenges of being under-connected when trying to support young students at home without adequate devices and internet connections.From the earliest days of the pandemic, public media organizations around the country mobilized to address the needs of their communities. This panel will explore the role that local public media stations can play in diagnosing community needs and sharing learning resources for all children and families.

The webinar will take place on Oct. 26, 2021 at 12:00 PM EST.

ASU+GSV Summit 2022
2022-04-04 - 2022-04-06 | San Diego & Virtually
Started in 2010 with a collaboration between Arizona State University (ASU) and Global Silicon Valley (GSV), the annual ASU+ GSV Summit connects leading minds focused on transforming society and business around learning and work. Their north star is that ALL people have equal access to the future.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop are presenting a number of sessions:

TIP OF THE SPEAR: EARLY CHILDHOOD (IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SESAME WORKSHOP)TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2022 11:00 am – 11:40 am COVID, Innovation, and the Future of Early Childhood Education 2:10 pm – 2:50 pm Playtest with Kids, a New Free Online Resource from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center 3:00 pm – 3:40 pm The Growing Importance of Social & Emotional Development and Learning 3:50 pm – 4:30 pm Co-design with Kids: Enabling Meaningful Child Participation in the Private Sector in a Digital Era 4:40 pm – 5:20 pm Kids Media Confronts the “New Normal”: What Blended Learning Will Look Like Post-Pandemic WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2022 10:10 am – 10:50 am Early Childhood AI and Voice WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2022 11:00 am – 11:40 am The Edge of Early Childhood Education

The conference will be held simultaneously virtually on HopIn and in-person in San Diego, CA, from April 4-6, 2022. To register to attend virtually, click here. To register to attend in person in San Diego, click here.

By/With/For Youth Workshops: Promoting Teen and Tween Collaboration with Public Media
2022-04-26 - 2022-07-13
As part of our By/ With/ For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences initiative, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop invites you to mark your calendars for an upcoming series of capacity-building workshops about collaborating with youth in public media. Designed for producers, directors, and others committed to growing youth participation in public media, the workshops will highlight research-backed best practices for engaging tweens and teens. Attendees will leave each virtual workshop with examples of youth engagement work from outside of the public media ecosystem and will hear from program leaders and youth about impactful approaches. Each workshop will be 90 minutes long. During the first 30 minutes, researchers from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and panel guests will share research and related program examples. Participants will then take part in working sessions with break-out groups to reflect and consider how to apply insights to their contexts. Please join us. More details regarding speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Workshop III: Content and Platform Innovation with Youth /July 13, 2022, 1:00 pm EST
Now more than ever, youth are looking for opportunities to use media in creative, interactive ways. Whether creating videos, spearheading social media campaigns, or sharing original artwork, today’s youth are proficient content creators and sharers. In order to reach youth audiences, public media creators are finding innovative ways to engage youth as not only viewers, but as co-creators as well.Drawing on research about youth-adult collaboration, and insights from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s Next Gen research, this workshop will provide content creators with effective strategies for engaging in collaborative projects with youth.Dr. Yalda T. Uhls, professor at UCLA and founder of The Center for Scholars and Storytellers, will join as a featured speaker, along with members of the Center’s youth engagement team. They will share insights about ways in which adults and youth can co-design innovative media projects.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s youth fellows will also share their areas of expertise, providing creators with ideas for ways in which they can engage with youth who have diverse technical and creative skillsets.

Previous Workshops:

Models of Youth-Adult Collaboration for Public Media / April 26, 2022
Ben Kirshner, Professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development at the University of Colorado Boulder, will discuss his work with CU Engage, a center at the University of Colorado that works with community groups to address complex public challenges through academic courses, research projects, and creative work. Ben will discuss his experiences developing equity-oriented partnerships with youth organizations and his approach to youth-adult partnerships.
We’ll also hear from Molly Josephs, the founder of This Teenage Life podcast, and youth crew members about what it takes to create an authentically collaborative experience for young contributors.

Understanding Youth: A Prerequisite for Creating Programs By/For/With Tweens and Teens /May 26, 1:00 pm EST
Public media stations know young children well, informed by decades of work and research. Work with tweens and teens, on the other hand, is new for most. Learning about this Next Gen audience requires relationships and connections– with youth themselves, with others doing this work, and with research– in order to generate insights that inspire experimentation and innovation. Drawing from the Cooney Center’s upcoming research brief, Understanding Youth: A Prerequisite for Creating Programs By/For/With Tweens and Teens, this workshop will help stations consider strategies for deepening understanding about youth. Dr. Jason Yip, associate professor of digital youth at The Information School at the University of Washington and Director of KidsTeam UW, will join as a featured speaker. Dr. Yip will share insights on participatory co-design of new technologies with youth, including equity-based strategies for relationship-building and adult roles of facilitation and support. Participants will engage in small-group breakout sessions to share approaches for centering youth needs and building connections with t(w)eens, partners, and research in order to strengthen work and innovate new approaches.

WNET Virtual Event: The Role of Media & Technology in the Future of Education
2022-04-28
How have teachers, parents, and students adapted to effectively teach and learn in the face of the growing digital divide?

What resources, innovations, and solutions have emerged that could help us strengthen and transform our education systems going forward?

Join preeminent experts in the field to examine these questions and more, as we look to a brighter, more equitable future for education.

Moderated by award-winning journalist Hari Sreenivasan, the panel will include:

• Jean-Claude Brizard, President and CEO, Digital Promise

• Dr. Angela Haydel DeBarger, Program Officer, Education, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

• Michael Preston, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Executive Director, Joan Ganz Cooney Center

• Ron C. Smith, Ed.D., Senior Director, Education Initiatives, Salesforce

• LaVerne Evans Srinivasan, Vice President, National Program, and Program Director, Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York

This free virtual event takes place at 5:30 pm ET. Register here.

Games for Change 2022
2022-07-13 - 2022-07-16
For nearly two decades, the Games for Change Festival has been a destination for developers, educators, researchers, students, and other game-changers who want to make an impact through video games or immersive media. This year, the Festival is back in person in New York City on July 13-14, and then online from July 15-16.

Please join the Cooney Center for our panel on XR and learning!
XR’s Potential for Student-Centered Learning
Date: Thursday, July 14
Session Time: 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM EDT
Location: The Microsoft Technology Center (11 Times Sq, New York, NY, 10036) Immersive media is relatively new to the classroom but has the potential to inspire and empower students and educators. Our panel of teachers, developers, and researchers will explore XR’s potential for engagement and impact, immersive media experiences that support student-centered learning, and the results of the XRA’s recent survey of teenagers on their understanding and use of XR technologies. Michael Preston, ED, Joan Ganz Cooney Center
Peirce Clark, XRA
Idris Brewster, Movers and Shakers NYC
Ellen Flaherty, Unity
Kevin Merges, Rutgers Prep Learn more and register.

Public Media Development and Marketing Conference 2022
2022-07-19 - 2022-07-21
The Public Media Development and Marketing Conference (PMDMC) is public media’s largest conference devoted to issues surrounding revenue generation, marketing, and management. This year’s conference meets in Chicago.

Cooney Center Senior Fellow Elizabeth Rood will speak on a panel on July 20 at 3:30 pm to share findings from our Next Gen Public Media research:

New Platforms & New Audiences: Engaging Gen Z for Long-Term Sustainability
Public media stations across the country are launching projects and initiatives to engage a long-neglected audience – the Missing Middle or Gen Z tweens/teens who have graduated from PBS Kids programming. Stations are experimenting with new production models to meet these younger audiences where they are – on TikTok, in podcasts, and other non-traditional content platforms. How can stations use these new initiatives and platforms to “patch” a leak in our audience and (eventual) donor pipeline for long-term sustainability?
With:
Kay Coz, Director of Institutional Giving, The WNET Group
Amanda Granger, Director of Community Engagement, The WNET Group
Anne Guttridge, Associate Producer | Twin Cities PBS/TPT
Elizabeth Rood, Senior Fellow, Joan Ganz Cooney Center
Learn more

All Tech Is Human: Youth, Tech, and Wellbeing Panel + Mixer
2022-08-17
All Tech Is Human and the Australian Embassy in DC are teaming up for a mixer + panel gathering for researchers, designers, advocates, technologists, academics, and more that are working at the intersection of technology, wellbeing, and youth. This will be a 2-hour panel + mixer for 75 org leaders, researchers, youth advocates, Trust & Safety professionals, academics, designers, entrepreneurs, and more!

Speakers include the Cooney Center’s Senior Director of Research Medha Tare, PhD, Zoom’s Counsel on the Trust & Safety team Chanel Cornett, and Arielle Geismar, an organizer around mental health, social media wellbeing, and women’s & LGBTQ+ rights.

Learn more.

2022 NETA Conference and CPB Thought Leader Forum
2022-09-18 - 2022-09-22
The NETA Conference is dedicated to providing public media professionals with meaningful and relevant connections to the people and ideas that are at the heart of our mission to educate, engage, and entertain. This year’s event is a hybrid conference, taking place September 18-22, 2022, in Charlotte, NC and online.

The Cooney Center is pleased to present “A Seat at the Table for Tweens and Tweens in Public Media: Lessons from Established Youth Programs,” featuring some early results from a field study conducted with public media stations across the country. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data gathered from over 200 public media stations, this study aims to create a baseline understanding of where the field is at in 2022 when it comes to tween and teen programs, content, and engagement. Following a presentation of findings, the session will invite participants to think together about its implications: What do they want to see happen to support greater impact when it comes to youth audiences? Where do they think the field should go? And how do they want to be a part of it?Learn more and register for the conference here.

Group Chat: Teens and Adults in Conversation at Media Literacy Week 2022
2022-10-25 - 2022-10-27
As part of U.S. National Media Literacy Week, please join the Cooney Center and NAMLE for a “premiere” presentation of three conversations between experts and youth around topics in youth digital culture, moderated by educator Dwight Dunston. Together, adults and teens explore issues like what kids are watching online, where they get their news, how they maintain a sense of well-being in the digital world, and what it’s like to collaborate with public media professionals to produce content. We hope you and your colleagues will log on and join us live! Registration is free.

Group Chat: Adolescent Well-being Online
Tuesday, October 25, 12:00 pm ET
It’s no secret that teens are deeply immersed in online spaces – for better and for worse. How do their online activities impact their well-being? Emily Weinstein and Carrie James from Project Zero surveyed 3,500 teens to understand how youth today must navigate their digital lives. Next Gen Public Media Youth Fellows Faiza Ashar and Jaden Thompson share their own perspectives as young people who are trying to figure things out for themselves.

Group Chat: Youth Creators in Public Media
Wednesday, October 26, 12:00 pm ET
Public media stations around the country are offering unique opportunities for young people to produce content. In this Group Chat, teens from WNET’s Youth Collective “Amplify Series” and MPB’s Student Council Podcast join Hannah Dawe (WNET, public media station in New York City) and Jasmine Harvey (Mississippi Public Broadcasting) to give us the scoop on what it’s like behind the scenes when adults and youth collaborate in the studio.Group Chat: Youth Digital Culture
Thursday, October 27, 12:00 pm ET
What do young people really think about what they’re seeing online? Monica Anderson (Pew Research Center) and Joan Mukogosi (Data & Society) chat with Next Gen Public Media Youth Fellows Gabby Rodriguez and Audrey Gage about the platforms they use, how they find community online, and where they get their news.

Register for these sessions and more at the 2022 U.S. Media Literacy Week event site.

Media Literacy Week: Building Toward Digital Well-being for Children
2022-10-26 20:00
Join Children’s Media Association, the LEGO Group, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, and NAMLE for an interactive virtual session where we will investigate the questions: what is children’s digital well-being? why is it important? and how can we all build towards it? We’ll share new research and plans from the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) initiative and hear from experts in child development, gaming—and you! Let’s explore how we can all play a role in building a better digital landscape for children.

Wednesday, October 26, 2022
8:00pm – 9:00pm ET
Register here

Gen Z in the Room: Making Public Media By and With Youth for the Future
2023-01-18 13:00 - 14:00
Please join the Joan Ganz Cooney Center on January 18, 2023 for a special presentation celebrating our forthcoming publication, Gen Z in the Room. This report summarizes insights from 30 in-depth interviews with stakeholders involved in public media youth projects across the country. The report documents what public media stations have learned from these youth projects over time. By looking at the various ways participants have thought about, approached, and experimented with youth engagement, the public media system can develop more thoughtful strategies for serving and platforming this missing middle audience. We look forward to sharing highlights and discussing takeaways with you.January 18, 2023
1:00 pm-2:00 pm ET via Zoom
Register here

From Surviving To Thriving In A Digital World: A Safer Internet Day Chat
2023-02-07
The National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) and The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop are teaming up to host a webinar and Facebook Live Event with adult and youth experts for Safer Internet Day on Tuesday, February 7, 2023 (4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST). “From Surviving To Thriving In A Digital World: A Safer Internet Day Chat” will be a conversation about the importance of designing online experiences with kids’ well-being in mind, including providing insights from young people on what they need in order to thrive when their lives are digital by default.To register to attend the webinar, visit shorturl.at/dBKW9 Watch the event live on Facebook Live (No registration required) on the National Association for Media Literacy Education’s (NAMLE) page at facebook.com/medialiteracyed.

SXSW 2023
2023-03-10 - 2023-03-11
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to participate in two sessions at SXSW 2023 this March. If you’re in Austin, we invite you to join us at the JW Marriott on March 10 and 11th.
Designing Tech for Children’s Well-Being
There has been a great deal of conversation about technology’s potential harms for children. But what does well-being for children in the digital age look like? Can we design digital experiences that allow children to learn emotional regulation, develop competence and creativity, feel empowered and self-actualized, and connect with others in a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment, while also keeping them safe? We will discuss the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) project—a global, multi-stakeholder, and cross-sectoral initiative that aims (1) to create a framework that maps how the design of children’s digital experiences affects their well-being, and (2) to provide guidance as to how informed design choices can promote positive well-being outcomes.
March 10 | 2:30 pm CST | JW Marriott Salon 7-8

Designing for Digital Thriving
How can we create & foster healthy, inclusive digital spaces that enable individuals and communities to thrive? Riot Games, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, the Fair Play Alliance & IDEO came together to host an Open Innovation Challenge to champion responsible design practices that foster healthy, inclusive communities in a rapidly changing digital world. By learning how to intentionally design online spaces with digital thriving in mind, we believe that anyone can help individuals, groups, & communities truly thrive in today’s connected world. No matter what industry you’re a part of, we invite you to share in our vision of creating a thriving digital world for all.
March 11 | 11:30 am CST | JW Marriott Salon 7-8

We also invite SXSW participants to take a break in the LEGO Play Lounge in Room 403 of the JW Marriott on March 10. Recharge and play with us!

Designing for Digital Well-Being at SRCD 2023
2023-03-24 | Salt Lake City, UT
On Friday, March 24, the Cooney Center’s Senior Director of Research Medha Tare will moderate Designing for Digital Well-being: Frameworks for Optimizing Positive Media Experiences for Children and Families, a roundtable at SRCD 2023 in Salt Lake City. Panelists include Amanda LaTasha Armstrong, New Mexico State University and New America; Bruce Homer, The Graduate Center, City University of New York; Remi Torres, University of California, Los Angeles; Sesame Workshop; and Jason Yip, University of Washington, Seattle. This conversational roundtable brings together multidisciplinary experts in social-emotional learning in children’s media; learning through games; youth co-design of technology; and inclusive technology design. The conversation will address questions around how developmental science can help identify opportunities and pathways to design equitable, accessible, and enriching digital experiences for children and families.

Designing Tech for Kids' Well-Being at ASU+GSV 2023
2023-04-18 | San Diego, CA
What does well-being for children in the digital age look like? A growing movement acknowledges that it’s not enough to worry about technology’s potential harm to children; it is time to be more intentional about designing for positive outcomes. How can we design digital experiences that allow children to learn emotional regulation, develop competence and creativity, feel empowered and self-actualized, and connect with others in a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment while keeping them safe? We will discuss recent research exploring the links between games and well-being, the value of child-centered design, and insights from the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) and Digital Thriving projects that offer guidance to developers looking for ways to create digital experiences that promote positive well-being for young people.
Michael Preston (Executive Director, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop) will moderate a panel with Bruce Homer (Professor, “The Graduate Center, CUNY”), Elizabeth Milovidov (Global Digital Child Safety Lead, The LEGO Group), Natasha Miller (Senior Research Scientist II, Blizzard Entertainment / Fair Play Alliance)
Date & Time: Tuesday 4/18, 2:30 – 3:10 PM PT
Location: Harbor I, Level 2
Channel: K-12 Transformation Learn more

IDC 2023
2023-06-19 - 2023-06-23
The 22nd annual ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) Conference will be held on June 19-23, 2023 at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. IDC is the premier international conference for researchers, educators, and practitioners to share the latest research findings, innovative methodologies, and new technologies in the areas of inclusive child-centered design, learning, and interaction. This year’s theme is “Rediscovering Childhood.”

Senior Director of Research Medha Tare will participate in an industry panel discussion chaired by Bill Shribman, with Felix Hu (Lando Interactive) and Jillian Orr (GBH Kids) on Wednesday, June 21. She will also be sharing a paper with Mona Leigh Guha as part of the Works in Progress group on Wednesday as well.

The conference agenda can be found here.

Designing Digital Play for Well Being at Games for Change 2023: Panel and Workshop
2023-07-19
Panel: Designing Digital Play for Well-Being at Games for Change 2023
July 18, 2023 at 1:45pm
The Times Center | Main StageHow do we define well-being in a digital world and what does it mean to thrive? How can developers incorporate diverse perspectives into game design to benefit players from different backgrounds around the world? How can we balance responsible design with business pressures? How can we empower game designers to embed designing for well-being and digital thriving into their work?In this session at the Games for Change Festival, Michael Preston will explore these questions with Jeffrey Burrell (Riot Games), Carolina Giuga (The LEGO Group), and Kevin Bedau (Scratch Foundation) while diving into the challenges and opportunities for creating digital spaces that contribute to the thriving of both kids and adults.

Speakers will highlight two initiatives seeking to provide answers, resources, and communities of practice to help answer these challenging questions: Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) and Digital Thriving.

WORKSHOP: Building Digital Play for Well-being
July 19, 2023 at 5:00pmMicrosoft Center | Music Box

Please join the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the LEGO Group, and the Fair Play Alliance for an interactive workshop. Participants will take part in a 1.5 hour playful and interactive session to generate new ideas for designing better digital play experiences for well-being. Attendees will envision and construct a physical representation of a digital space that allows children and adults to thrive – drawing from the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) and Digital Thriving initiatives – and work in groups to explore case studies of how to integrate concepts of well-being and thriving into design.

Participants will leave with concrete ideas on ways that they can incorporate these concepts into their work and a connection to communities of practice looking to learn from each other to advance this work.

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ARVR Policy Conference
2023-08-29 08:00 - 17:00
On Thursday, September 14, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the XR Association present the third annual AR/VR Policy Conference in Washington, DC. The event will feature a series of expert talks and panels discussing critical policy questions covering privacy and safety, the use of AR/VR in education, children and teenager safety, and more.

Panel #4: Back to School in the Metaverse (2:25 PM ET)
As AR/VR technology becomes a valuable tool for educational purposes, developers and educators should make sure these technologies are designed with young people in mind. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle have regularly called for making technology appropriate for young people to use, making safety a priority in the implementation of immersive learning programs. What are the unique benefits of immersive learning in comparison to other technologies (e.g., mobile and personal computing)? What are the special accommodations that educators should take in mind when deploying AR/VR tech in the classroom? How can policymakers ensure that immersive learning programs don’t widen the digital divide?

Speakers include Brooke Morrill (Schell Games); Muhsinah Morris (Morehouse College); Monya A. Ruffin (NSF); Medha Tare (Joan Gantz Cooney Center, Sesame Workshop); and Stephanie Montgomery (XR Association) – Moderator
The conference is free to attend.

Register here.

FOSI Webinar: Digital Learning: Prepping for the School Year Ahead
2023-09-07
Getting kids back in the classroom this Fall means tackling tech use from many different angles. In the coming months, parents will be contending with how to balance the extra screen time needed for homework, helping kids navigate complex social dynamics online, and striving to teach them what good behavior looks like by example. Additionally, both parents and kids are learning about generative AI in real time, and how these brand new technologies will impact academics and learning as well as everyday life.

Cooney Center Executive Director Michael Preston joins a discussion with Amanda LaTasha Armstrong, Janell Burley Hoffman, Judy French, and Yalda Uhls about how parents and kids can set themselves up for success this school year in the midst of a quickly evolving digital environment at home and at school.
Learn more and register here
