Tag Archives: family

For Part 3 of the Voices on the Future of Childhood series, we asked experts to offer their insights and predictions on what play will—or better yet, should—look like when families are released from isolation.  A return to play Rosanna Lopez is the Founder of SparkleLAB Design and Innovation Hub and the Discovery Academy of Innovation. Over the years, there has been a shift in the lives of children marked by the continual loss of play. As school hours are…

As if any of us needed a reminder, the last few days showed us how quickly things can change. A month ago—or even a week ago—no one knew quite how different our day-to-day lives would be. Suddenly, kids are out of school, parents are working from home, and the way we socialize and interact with each other has seismically shifted. Now more than ever, families need to feel confident in their technology—which has been helping us stay connected when we…

As a result of COVID-19, families around the world are struggling to adjust, adapt, and keep each other safe. In response, Sesame Workshop is launching the Caring for Each Other initiative – a commitment to supporting families for the duration of this crisis. Through this initiative, we will be introducing brand new content from Sesame Street and Streets around the world, as well as an online hub at SesameStreet.org/caring offering a rich array of free resources to support children and families.   On Sesame Street, we will be creating video messages of love and kindness, activities and virtual play dates featuring the Sesame Street Muppets (launching soon). Families can also now watch full episodes on…

I remember so well the days when my now-grown daughter was a little girl learning to count and read and taking in life lessons from the beloved characters on Sesame Street about how to be a good, caring person. Back then, she could only watch Sesame Street on our one household TV at the time it came on. Today, kids can watch the show on multiple channels, on different devices, whenever they want. In honor of the 50th Anniversary of…

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 games that parents and children enjoy as well as whether and how parents participate in their children’s gameplay based on their own interest in playing digital games. Stay…

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…

Educators and researchers have long argued that engaging families and making connections between home and school learning are key elements that foster children’s academic success and strong communities. In communities where parents may have had few educational opportunities themselves, or may have been educated in very different systems outside the U.S, it is especially important to build a common understanding and empower families. To help address this need, Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD) in Chula Vista, the largest K-6…

The 11th annual Games+Learning+Society Conference brought together game designers, educators, researchers, funders, academics, cultural institutions, and everyone in between (…and yes… there are even more individuals interested in learning games). This diverse collective sparked debate around issues facing games and learning and the future of this growing field, and, fittingly, this was the first year games were turned away from the showcase. This year’s conference marked a key shift in its history—no longer was the event focused on the need…

Several years ago, Museum of the Moving Image presented an exhibition called Spacewar! Video Games Blast Off. This was nothing new for us. We had done exhibitions about video games, featuring playable games in the Museum’s galleries, many times before–we presented our first such exhibition, Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade, a year after we opened in 1989–and video games have been featured in our core exhibition for nearly a decade. But Spacewar was notable, in part, for commemorating the 50th…

On Saturday, May 9, 17 kids between 8-18 years old joined a 50+ adult in their life (parents, grandparents, relatives, or friends) for a free, three-hour video game design workshop at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. hosted by AARP and MentorUp, E-Line Media and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center.  Allison Mishkin of the Cooney Center, and Mark German of E-Line Media led the pairs throughout a workshop to discover the elements that make up any game…