Tag Archives: families and media

In my 12 years at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center—from 2008 to 2020—I developed the research chops and professional network required to do what I do now as a program director at the National Science Foundation. But what I’m most grateful to the Cooney Center for, and what I believe made me who I am today, are the people I worked with on the fourth floor of 1900 Broadway. These people were family to me. They’re still family to me.…

Congratulations to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center on 15 years! This milestone is no small accomplishment and is a reflection of the Cooney Center’s heart and dedication to youth and their families. In a recent interview for a position, the interviewer asked me what my ideal work environment looked like. I told her that the first thing that came to mind was my time at the Cooney Center. In my experience, there was just so much to love and be…

It was December 2013. I was finishing my master’s program in Media Design for Learning at NYU when one of my professors told me about a position at Sesame Workshop that, according to him, had my name all over it. Soon, three more people shared the same position with me, saying it “would be a perfect fit.” The position was for a bilingual qualitative researcher with professional experience working with young children to work on the Families and Media Initiative…

Jason Yip was a Cooney Center Fellow from 2013-2014 and remains a frequent collaborator through his work with KidsTeam UW. My time at the Cooney Center (2013 – 2014) came immediately after a stint as a doctoral student at the University of Maryland (UMD). At the time, I was completing my PhD in curriculum and instruction in science education, with some work in child-computer interaction. While I had a lot of projects at UMD (such as investigating the way children…

“For me, my kids playing Halo is no different than playing outside and coming up with scenarios that seem kind of violent like our kids… they could be outside playing Nerf guns and pretending to shoot each other and die. I can go outside and play Nerf guns with my kids and we can be playing in the neighborhood. And I don’t get questioned about that, but I get questioned about Halo.” —Abigail, a mother of four daughters Between the…

How did I become a researcher on children, families, and digital media? In September 2013, I started as a Cooney Center Research Fellow, trying to find my way in the world. I was just completing my Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park and had done a dissertation on the development of science ownership in children as they engaged in social media use for science learning. One of the insights from my doctoral work was that the families in my…

Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture brings together insights from several years of work by a multidisciplinary team of scholars who comprise the Families and Media Project (FAM). As members of FAM as well as co-editors of the volume, we’re delighted to have been a part of this project and to have helped bring this book to fruition. We feel that the book, and the work of the FAM researchers as a…

As part of our Families and Media Project, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted a survey of nearly 700 parents whose 4-13-year old children play video games. We are pleased to present this data as a series of infographics, each featuring a particular facet of video games and family life. Here, we explore the genres and titles of digital games played by children and their parents. Stay tuned for more installments of this series over the next few months. Learn more about the…

Once a novelty restricted to arcades, video games have become a deeply embedded part of our lives. As digital game platforms have become increasingly more affordable and more accessible over the past forty years, it has become clear that games aren’t just fun to play, but can motivate people of all ages to learn more deeply and to improve productivity. As part of our Families and Media Project, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center conducted a survey of nearly 700 parents…

Today, we are thrilled to release the latest publication from the Families and Media Project at an event at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Diverse Families and Media: Using Research to Inspire Design,  by Amber Levinson, Sinem Siyahhan, Briana Pressey, and Katie Headrick Taylor, is a casebook and design guide to inspire educators, practitioners, and designers who create media and programs for children and their families. Diverse Families and Media was created as a response to a call from…