Tag Archives: broadband

When I met Michael Levine outside a conference at UPenn in 2012, I had no idea how much that conversation would shape my career. From my earliest visits to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center office, I was struck by the infectious sense of purpose and energy there. Starting in 2013, I had the good fortune to partner with Michael, Lori Takeuchi, and the JGCC team in a multi-year research project to understand how initiatives to advance digital equity were influencing…

On October 26, 2021, the Cooney Center hosted Learning at Home While Under-Connected and the Role of Public Media, a discussion about learning at home and digital inequality, and how public media stations can help within their local communities.  Vikki Katz (Rutgers University) presented key research findings from Learning at Home While Under-Connected: Lower-Income Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic, which follows up on 2016’s Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families to uncover the perspectives of lower-income parents…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Rethink media and tech leadership. Michael H. Levine is Senior Vice President of Learning and Impact for Noggin, Nickelodeon’s preschool SVOD service. Levine was previously Founding Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and is a member of the Center’s Board. Media and…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Learn the ABCDs of equitable remote learning. Vikki Katz is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. She is the author of Opportunity for All and Kids in the Middle. We have just jumped into a national experiment for students…

What is one thing you believe must be done now to improve how children and families are faring during the current crisis, specifically as it relates to the media and technology in their lives?  Close the homework gap—Internet access is a right! Karen Cator is President and CEO of Digital Promise, before which she served as Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.  Every day, the inequities that exist between students, teachers, communities, and…

For many years, the “digital divide” signaled a split between people with access to the internet and those without. The term expressed concerns about those who may fall behind in the highly digitized economy of the 21st century. But with internet service now present in most U.S. homes, the gap has become more nuanced. Today, the question is less about access and more about quality and consistency of connection. A nationally representative telephone survey of 1,191 families conducted last year…

Remarks of Chairman Tom Wheeler at “Digital Equity: Technology and Learning in the Lives of Lower-Income Families” On February 3, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Rutgers University co-hosted a forum at New America in Washington, D.C. We released Opportunity for All?: Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families  with presentations by authors Victoria Rideout and Vikki S. Katz, and a series of conversations around the issues of digital equity and access to broadband, with a focus on families with school-age…

This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post. It’s that time again. New commitments and new resolutions to make…and hopefully keep. As educators and children’s advocates we are involved in many initiatives whose goals are reimagining education and providing equal opportunity to all children. We are board members and advisors to some nonprofits that are doing remarkable work with kids — Sesame Workshop, Creative Commons, The Forum for Youth Investment, We Are Family Foundation, Learning Matters, Vroom and Journeys In…

Reprinted from Gary’s Blog, May 2010. Gary Knell, Sesame Workshop’s President and CEO reports on his visit to the FCC: It’s not every day you get to go to the FCC. But today, Elmo needs a chaperone. In February of 2009, Congress passed a bill which authorizes the FCC to create a National Broadband Plan which aims “to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability.” Today, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Elmo, and I, will…