Tag Archives: children’s media

Conducting playtesting with kids can be tricky. It can be challenging to get feedback from children that can really help producers make great products—but it’s definitely not impossible. We are thrilled to share Playtest with Kids, a new digital toolkit that shares best practices gathered from dozens of kids researchers. “Do you like this?” seems like a very reasonable question to ask children. But we’ve noticed that asking this seemingly-straightforward question will often result in an immediate “yes!” —not because…

As people rush to predict what’s coming next, David Kleeman reflects on Joan Ganz Cooney, and how some things about childhood will never change.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop is thrilled to present a newly reformatted version of Sesame Street co-founder Joan Ganz Cooney’s still-relevant 1966 report to the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Potential Uses of Television for Preschool Education made a convincing case for the power of television to prepare children, particularly in underserved communities, to succeed in kindergarten—and led directly to the program that revolutionized children’s media. We have reformatted the original photocopied report because we know today’s researchers, educators,…

When Sesame Street first went on the air in 1969, it was part of a movement to help public media reshape what then-FCC Chairman Newton Minow called “the vast wasteland” of programming. Today, more children have access to their own smartphones and tablets than ever before, and almost any kind of content they might want to watch is just a search bar and a click away. What are some of the lessons that we can learn from public media’s successes…

The 2017 Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference took place at Stanford University in California this past June. The conference brought together an amazing community of researchers, designers, educators, and industry specialists who are interested in designing (primarily technology and new media experiences) for and with children. Before the conference began, various groups of people put on one-day IDC workshops focusing on topics spanning from joint media engagement to making to co-design. My co-organizers Dr. Julie A. Kientz (University of Washington), Dr.…

Creating inclusive children’s media is a lot like creating a beautiful garden. It requires research, planning, and mindful effort. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is pleased to announce our partnership with the Kids’ Inclusive and Diverse Media Action Project (KIDMAP), formerly known as Diversity in Apps. This collective, made up of media creators, producers, researchers, educators, and parents, is committed to putting all kids on the digital media map. They’ve just launched a new website, www.joinkidmap.org, and are spearheading a number of initiatives that…

Both Minecraft and YouTube are ubiquitous in today’s children’s media culture. And like millions of other children, my six-year-old son loves to watch Minecraft videos on YouTube. He frequently watches Grian’s how-to-build-it Minecraft videos. He enjoys the silly antics from Pat and Jen of Gaming with Jen, the husband-and-wife team who produce PopularMMOs. And he loves Stampy Cat—but more on Stampy later. Minecraft-themed YouTube videos are definitely a different genre from the children’s television that I grew up watching! As is…

Across the children’s media landscape, from movies to video games, diversity and inclusion have been hot topics for discussion throughout 2016. Much of the conversation has focused on the finished product, such as an app or toy and whether it does an effective job in reflecting the diversity of the world we live in. Looking at the finished product is without a doubt important, but at Diversity in Apps (DIA), we are also nudging the conversation towards a focus on…

The art and science of storytelling has been at the heart of all good education from the beginning of the humanity. Since before technology, before media, before printing or even writing, education was passed from generation to generation through storytelling. The stories told around the fire before written histories may have had elements of myth and legend and exaggerated truth in them, but they all served the same purpose: the enculturation of the young and the drawing together of the…

Frances Nankin, Executive Producer and Editorial Director of Cyberchase, has been developing children’s media for 30 years. She is both an educator and a media producer who sees great potential in emerging media platforms to boost kids’ learning. Cooney Center: What excites you about the potential of new technologies to support learning? Frances Nankin: My first experience with kids’ media was when I was a first-grade teacher and there was a slide projector in the library where kids who behaved…