Tag Archives: creativity

Olivia Thomas, 17, is a 21st century learner. We got to spend some time with this self-directed and self-motivated creative thinker at the National STEM Video Game Challenge winners weekend in Pittsburgh, and were impressed by her drive to chase the opportunities she wants and the generous spirit that pays those opportunities back to younger students. When we asked Olivia how she started designing games, she recalled a rainy day car ride with her dad: “I want to make a…

Family Time with Apps: A Guide to Using Apps with Your Kids is a free interactive guide for parents and caregivers. The book, which is available for free in the iBook store, features comic strips that parents and children can enjoy together, as well as tips on selecting apps that can help turn screen time into family time. We are thrilled to have Stuart Dredge, a journalist and children’s app reviewer, share his thoughts on how the right apps can…

In an education setting, video games are often dismissed as mindless entertainment. This was the opposite in the National STEM Video Game Challenge Workshop hosted at the Science Museum of Virginia (SMV), where Barrie Adleberg and I helped students to critically think about the mechanics of a video game and apply them to their own passions. Students from all over Richmond filed into one of the Museum’s classrooms; they were clearly excited to find out what a video game design…

When twelve-year-old Amy O’Toole spoke at TED last fall, she took the stage as one of the youngest people ever to have published a peer-reviewed science article. Amy’s inspiring article, which she wrote with her classmates as part of a playful participatory science program, is perhaps the only peer-reviewed science article to begin “Once Upon a Time”; it is both good science and a good story. As Amy’s article and TED talk show, play helps students learn science, and storytelling…

Girls should play more video games. That’s one of the unexpected lessons I take away from a rash of recent studies on the importance of—and the malleability of—spatial skills. First, why spatial skills matter: The ability to mentally manipulate shapes and otherwise understand how the three-dimensional world works turns out to be an important predictor of creative and scholarly achievements, according to research published this month in the journal Psychological Science. The long-term study found that 13-year-olds’ scores on traditional…

For four glorious days, industry mingled and held hands with research at the 2013 Interaction Design and Children’s Conference, which took place from June 24-June 27 in New York City. This year, Sesame Workshop co-hosted the conference with The New School, a strategic move that further extended the conference’s efforts to bring together industry and research. I had the pleasure to attend the conference this year, where I saw four prominent themes: We can be friends As mentioned, researchers and…

This past Saturday, October 6, kids in over 30 countries in 6 continents participated in the Global Cardboard Challenge, the next chapter from the folks that brought you the short film “Caine’s Arcade.”  The fanfare around the film, featuring a 9 year-old Hispanic boy named Caine’s elaborate handmade cardboard arcade, was the impetus for the formation of the Imagination Foundation.  The non-profit, founded by “Caine’s Arcade” filmmaker Nirvan Mullick, aims to “help find, fund, and foster creativity and entrepreneurship in…

At Launchpad Toys, we’re working to inspire creativity in children through play with digital toys and tools like our flagship storytelling app, Toontastic. As tablet usage in young children increases year after year (NPD showed 13% growth between 2011 and 2012), it has become more important than ever to provide kids with quality learning tools that maximize their time on touchscreen devices. Still, in the immortal words of former President George W. Bush, “Rarely is the question asked: Is our…

Since my post a couple of weeks ago about Scratch, Meagan Bromley has contributed two really wonderful posts about her work with Gamestar Mechanic and their Online Learning Program where she is currently serving as a mentor/teacher.  Between Gamestar Mechanic, Scratch, Meagan’s posts and mine, one very clear throughline that I see emerging is the value being placed on connectivity within the world of creatively driven educational media. Technology has provided us with a level of connectivity that we have…

When it comes to digital media for kids, there is no lack of options in terms of what kids are consuming. From television, to computer games, to e-books, apps, and so much more, children are consuming media in constantly expanding ways. In such an increasingly crowded digital landscape, it’s important to consider the skills that kids need to successfully navigate and inhabit this world. Now what do I mean by skills? Some people refer to it as “digital literacy,” “21st…