Tag Archives: educational media

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here and learn about the full series here.   Laura Higgins: The work Michael Preston does around youth perspectives and technology is really important. This is one of those conversations that’s going to appeal to all different audiences —a lot of parents, and actually for a lot of industry people, I think there’s a lot they can learn from listening…

Unlike kids in the 70s, tweens and teens today are posting, dancing, and streaming across platforms from TikTok to Twitch. They have no interest in being corralled to discrete brands or destinations. They enjoy a banquet of high-quality digital offerings that are ready when and where they are. And they’re always one step ahead of us. While just about everything has changed in terms of media consumption, something essential has not: kids’ curiosity and desire for agency. The Corporation for…

The following post was written by the Cooney Center’s summer intern, Benjamin Prud’homme. We are grateful for his contributions this summer and for making our weekly meetings so much fun.    I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the opportunity to work with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center this summer on a website design for one of their exciting new initiatives. As an autistic person who adored Sesame Street growing up, it is incredible to think how far…

Young children spend about two hours each day using screen-based media, about half of which is spent on educational media, according to their parents. Many studies report that children can learn a range of skills from well-designed educational media. Yet we know relatively little about whether and how well children are able to apply skills they’ve learned from digital media in the real world. This question is particularly important for subjects that involve learning about the physical world, like science.…

In Jackson, Mississippi, researchers visited a family of seven (including a niece and nephew), headed by a stay-at-home mom in her 20s. During the visit, the children sat around the mom as she described their latest learning activities, including 1-on-1 homework time and making “slime.” One activity—planting a seed in the yard in front of their apartment building—garnered a lot of excitement. Here’s how the mom described her family’s experience. “[My son] wanted to know, ‘How did that tree get…

If you were born after 1990, are the parent or grandparent of someone born after 1990, or a children’s media producer of any age, Ready To Learn (RTL) has probably touched your life. Launched in 1994, RTL is a U.S. Department of Education-funded initiative that provides about $25 million annually for the creation of educational media (TV, computer games, apps, and more) designed to promote school readiness. RTL funding has gone to the production of legacy media properties that existed…

A few years back, I was talking with a friend, a science specialist from the local elementary school, about the state of science education in the early grades.  Her assessment could be summed up in two words: not good. She explained that early elementary teachers were in a serious bind when it comes to science.  By and large, teachers for this age group have limited backgrounds in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and, because there is so much pressure to…

About a month ago, we released a sneak preview of the literacy app analysis that we’re conducting with New America to discover more about the apps that families and educators are using to help children learn to read and communicate. As part of this preview, we provided a quick summary of our approach to this analysis of language- and literacy-focused apps for children ages birth to eight. Today, we are excited to share even more of our findings. In our…

In January, we introduced Cooney Center Research Associate Cynthia Chiong’s new website, A Matter of App, in which she rates educational apps for children. Fifty reviews later, she shares what she has learned along the way.   THE BIG 5-0. Fifty reviews, that is. Woo-hoo! This has been quite a learning process for me. I started out with the goal of seeing what’s out there in the app world for kids, and I must admit that my goal has shifted a bit…

Cynthia Chong is an educational media researcher whose research focuses on how the design of educational media can affect young children’s learning and the way they interact with them, as well as how parents and teachers use these technologies to teach. She recently began reviewing educational apps for 3- to 8-year-olds on her blog, A Matter of App. We’ve invited Cynthia to tell us a little bit more about this blog and why it’s important for parents, educators, and designers…