Tag Archives: digital equity

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…

The effort to find creative solutions to reach our under-connected, undercounted, underrepresented, and underserved neighbors, especially children, families, and seniors, during a global pandemic can inspire changes in the way we work. This time in which we live is issuing a challenge to us— to reach into the digital divide as much as we hope to reach across it. “Internet infrastructure is, of course, an essential element of the divide, but infrastructure alone does not necessarily translate into adoption and…

With children growing up in ever-changing conditions in the digital age, digital parenting becomes more crucial than ever before. The predominant focus for parents, policy-makers, and researchers has long been on minimizing the risk of harm. Yet the swift transition to children’s online learning during lockdown caught many off guard. Children from disadvantaged families struggle to get online due to a lack of device or internet connectivity. Safety issues such as online child pornography are also in the spotlight. In…

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…

Today’s children were born into relative peace and prosperity, however unevenly distributed. But now we are collectively encountering a world of disruption, uncertainty, and anxiety. All of us are figuring out how to cope with rapid change and maintain as much normalcy as possible, while caring for ourselves and each other. We also expect that our society’s inequities will be made significantly worse by the crisis across all aspects of our lives, not just in terms of our health and…

In January 2018, Michael Levine participated in a panel conversation on young children’s media use hosted by Common Sense Media and the Brooklyn Public Library. Here, in the second of a two-part series, are some of his comments regarding the Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight report. (See the first part here.)   The data from the Zero to Eight report showed that lower-income kids are spending much more time on devices than higher-income kids. If you just…

In January 2018, Michael Levine participated in a panel conversation on young children’s media use hosted by Common Sense Media and the Brooklyn Public Library. Here, in the first of a two-part series, are some of his comments regarding the Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Zero to Eight report.    What does the research say about the effects of technology on kids’ development and learning? And based on this, what stood out to you in the data? We know quite…

This post was originally published on EdCentral. Even in Silicon Valley, the epicenter of online innovation, families with young children are experiencing a digital divide. Hispanic families in particular saying that they experience slower connections, more data limits, and more broken computers and devices than their white and Asian-Pacific Islander counterparts. More than 80 percent of educators in the area’s high-need schools say that they are not assigning homework that uses digital media because they worry that families do not…

This piece was originally published in the Executive Summary of the 2017 Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight and appears here with permission.   You may have heard that Sesame Street’s beloved Cookie Monster has learned some valuable lessons in delaying his gratification and eating right. He now knows that his favorite chocolate chip treat is a “sometime food,” part of a balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, and the occasional hubcap! The same is true…