Tag Archives: digital games

Ever since the Joan Ganz Cooney Center opened its doors in 2007, we’ve met a lot of great developers who are producing games for kids. And one piece of advice that they are all looking for is how to get their products funded and distributed as widely as possible– whether the K-12 institutional system, or the App Store. We’ve been listening, and we want to help. Two years ago, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we convened…

Executive Director Michael Levine and former Cooney Center fellow Sarah Vaala have co-authored Games for Learning: Vast Wasteland or a Digital Promise?, the conclusion to the new anthology Digital Games: A Context for Cognitive Development, edited by Fran C. Blumberg and Shalom M. Fisch. The volume takes a broad look at the many positive impacts digital games can have for children’s cognitive and social development, opening with a call for developmental psychologists to recognize how digital games present an important…

Recently in one day, I witnessed two expert panels discussing critical issues for our educational system: the first one was on implementing the Common Core for English-language learners, the second was on how games offer an exciting new frontier for student learning and engagement. In the morning, I listened in to an Alliance for Excellent Education panel including Stanford professor Kenji Hakuta and Carrie Heath Phillips, director of Common Core implementation at the Council of Chief State School Officers. That…

“Radical change” and “storm the Bastille” were the rallying cries of the inspirational opening keynote of the 2nd Annual New School Venture Fund Summit, held on May 2, 2012 in San Francisco, CA.   This invite-only conference attracts big names from the education reform movement, including:  school chancellors from Newark and Washington DC, representatives from the US Department of Education, charter school network leaders, educational technology entrepreneurs and of course the venture capital managers who invest in them. The Joan Ganz Cooney…

On September 14, Michael Levine will participate in “Changing the Game: How Digital Games are Changing Entertainment and Education,” an academic panel at Becker College in conjunction with the inauguration of the college’s new president, Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D. The honorary chair and moderator is Gordon Bellamy, executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Other panelists include Chad Dorsey, president and CEO, The Concord Consortium; Paul Cotnoir, PhD, professor and director, Becker College; Dave McCool, president and CEO,…

Last week, Zachary Levine shared his thoughts on the future of educational games after attending the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. Here is his report on the Games and Learning Summit and the highlights from the Expo. The 2nd annual Games and Learning Summit, organized by the Entertainment Software Association as a special dialogue session developed for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, included inspiring talks from several experts on the role digital games can play in advancing education. As several dozen…