Tag Archives: digital media

The annual Kids@Play Summit for industry professionals in related fields will meet at the Consumer Electronics Show this January at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The summit will include three exhibit days as well as a conference on January 9, 2013, which features several experts in the field of digital media for children and topics such as the transformation of play, interactive media use, learning, and communication in a digital age. Speakers include the keynote speaker, Nolan Bushnell (Founder of…

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…

In my first post from the Hispanic-Latino Families and Digital Technologies Forum, I described participants’ commentary regarding the importance of digital literacy for advancing equity and the need to ensure high quality content and engagement in order to optimize the enormous educational potential of digital media. Numerous participants in the forum also stressed the constant need for respect, understanding, and learning from the intricacies of a culture as rich and as the growing US Hispanic-Latino population. In this post I provide…

Until last year, I had a strong appreciation for Muppets, but limited knowledge of the role of children’s media in the 21st century. I was purely of the first generation of ‘Streeters — the generation whose episodes now come with a parental warning.  But in March 2011, everything changed.  While staying with my nephews in Maadi, a neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, for a few months, I got a first-hand glimpse into  some of the affordances of digital tablets and the way…

Last month, we released the results of our first QuickStudy on e-books. This report, “Teacher Attitude about Digital Games in the Classroom,” was inspired by the continued growth of e-readers — the Kindles, Nooks, and iPads that are almost ubiquitous now — and the exploding popularity of e-books for children. At the Cooney Center, we study how children’s learning is impacted by the technologies that surround them. There’s no doubt that kids are drawn to digital media — we’ve all…

Film.  It’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about.  Television is, of course, part of our daily lexicon here at the Cooney Center given our Sesame Workshop roots, but movies — not so much.  Last week I had the chance to head out to TIFF Kids (the children’s version of the famous Toronto International Film Festival), where I moderated a panel on transmedia and presented our latest work in the app space. In preparation for a busy few days, I sort of…

Here at the Cooney Center, we have seen the need to provide research-based guidance to help sift through the mountains of kids’ media that is out there (see our reports Always Connected and D Is for Digital) — so we are thrilled that Common Sense Media (CSM), the almost 10-year-old organization known for smart guidance and reviews of kids’ media, has beta-launched a new “ratings” system that deepens the appeal of their already appealing website. The ratings are intended to…

I always love going to the Games, Learning and Society (GLS) conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Where else are you guaranteed access to a lakeside terrace, local microbrews, and warm Midwestern hospitality? In addition to these welcome amenities, GLS is also a place where games are taken quite seriously, albeit in a playful way. This year was no exception.   I attended the conference to present some of the early findings from my own research. With my collaborator LeAnne Wagner, I…

According to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the typical American child — age 8 to 18 — spends no less than seven and a half hours a day engaged with media. According to research from Sesame Workshop and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, younger children are also consuming media heavily — about 4 hours a day for the typical five year old. Television, cell phones, computers, etc. are not just part of these children’s lives — in a very…

This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post.   On Tuesday, June 7, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop will present a report at the E 3 Expo in Los Angeles that may surprise media designers and cause policymakers to step back from their current concerns about kids’ digital multitasking addiction, cyber-bullying, violent videogames, and mobile disruptions in school. While much of the public discussion about digital media is concentrated on how little influence parents have in shaping…