Tag Archives: edtech

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center has officially welcomed the first six edtech partners into the Cooney Center Sandbox for Literacy Innovations. Supported in part by the Walton Family Foundation, the Sandbox aims to foster edtech design informed by the science of learning and the creative spark of children.  The six partners, introduced below, are working on a wide range of new literacy tools to help kids both in and outside of classrooms, from an octopus reading buddy to “beasties” hungry for…

The Cooney Center’s new initiative matters for kids and teachers Early in my education career, I taught ninth-grade English in a small public high school. My vivacious, curious students came from all over San Francisco for our school’s strong community, youth leadership focus, and promise of college readiness. I was an enthusiastic and capable young teacher, excited to read and discuss compelling books with students and to coach them to find their voice and clarify their ideas through writing. My…

Generative AI is here to stay—so how can we help children understand what it is and how to use it responsibly? On March 3, 2025, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center was thrilled to participate in a panel at SXSW EDU exploring how AI can enhance, rather than replace, the student-teacher relationship. Moderator Lisa Guernsey, Director of the Learning Sciences Exchange at New America, opened the conversation by highlighting AI’s potential to reshape literacy and computational thinking. She emphasized that AI-powered…

The tables were strewn with multicolored pipe cleaners, clumps of clay, construction paper, markers, feathers, scissors, tape, and other arts and crafts materials. On a Friday afternoon last June, about a dozen kids, ranging from 8 to 12 years old, filled a studio space in New York’s School of Visual Arts with noisy, exuberant chatter as they brought their brainstorms to life with marker-stained fingers. Several adults joined the creative chaos, including game designers from Mrs Wordsmith, a developer of…

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center with support from the Walton Family Foundation, is excited to announce a three-year initiative with a simple, yet profound goal: ensuring that the needs and perspectives of children from diverse backgrounds drive educational technology products development for use at home or in school.  The Cooney Center Sandbox aims to reshape an edtech marketplace that is booming in the financial sense—with U.S. school districts spending more than $40 billion annually on apps and software—but lacking evidence…

I’ve recently read a few articles listing the pros, cons, and questions1 2 3 that come up when we think about the changes education will and is already experiencing with the introduction of AI into learning environments. It seems this topic of personalized learning powered by AI warrants a bit of digging from a fellow concerned adult who is curious about the changing landscape of educational technologies. Going into this work, I wondered: What does personalized learning infused with AI…

Columbia University, Teachers College Thursday, October 10, 2024 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM [Invite-only] Lunch & Learn: “Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street? Designing EdTech for Impact” Sesame Street has been a successful edtech innovation for more than 50 years because it is both engaging and educationally effective for children and families. Over lunch in an interactive session, panelists who work at and with Sesame Workshop will share how they design for impact. They will discuss how to…

The Call for Applications is now open through October 11, 2024.  If you follow our work, you may have seen the incredible results produced by our inaugural cohort of Well-Being by Design Fellows.  Building from the success of the first year of this program, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to announce a second year of the Well-being by Design Fellowship, supported by Pinterest.  We invite applications from mid-career designers of kids’ technology and media who want to prioritize…

Key ideas and recommendations for edtech developers Children aren’t small adults. This might seem obvious to parents and educators, but, as we learned in our research for the recently released whitepaper, Context Is Everything: Reimagining Edtech for Early Learners, some designers (and purchasers) of edtech tools for elementary learners neglect this basic fact – which may explain in part why 70% of teachers in a recent Seesaw survey indicated that the edtech tools they use in their classrooms do not…

March 7, 2024 Austin Convention Center Room 12AB The current edtech market is full of products that claim to fulfill lesson plans and make assessment easier for teachers. But what if, in addition to helping kids master important concepts, digital products could make learning truly impactful, and help diverse students and teachers feel empowered and engaged? We’ll talk about how we can bring kids and teachers into the design process in order to create kid-centered products that students enjoy using.…