Tag Archives: games

Join the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Games for Change 2025 Festival on Friday, June 27 for a workshop on creating games that promote children’s well-being. Hear how Fred Rogers Productions, Killer Snails, University of Oregon, Tiny Docs and Quest Craft are incorporating well-being by design into their games. Participants will then have a chance to ‘play’ with the ideas! Fri, Jun 27, 2025 11:00am – 12:30 pm Speakers include: Noelle Posadas Shang, Design Director, Killer Snails Michael Preston…

Back in 2008, when my niece was a pre-teen, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to nurture our relationship as she moved beyond childhood into those precarious years when children and their adult caregivers often diverge in their preferences of how to spend quality time together. During this time, I thought about how we could continue to play games together and talk about those games in ways that would engage us both and build a foundation for…

Supporting Families in a Screen-Saturated World: A New Guide for Movement and Play As digital media becomes more integrated into family life, parents and caregivers are increasingly looking for ways to strike a healthy balance—especially when it comes to screen time and physical activity. A new resource from the California Partners Project, developed in collaboration with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, offers timely, research-informed guidance to help. The Tech/Life Balance: Movement & Outdoor Activity Family Guide is a bilingual tool…

In a world where career paths are no longer linear, how can we prepare young people to thrive amid constant change? At Unity Technologies, and through my book The Career Game Loop, we set out to tackle this challenge by borrowing strategies from an unexpected place: video games. Today’s learners face a workforce landscape filled with uncertainty. Technological disruption, gig work, AI automation, and remote jobs have rewritten the rules. Traditional models of education and employment no longer guarantee a…

Andy Robertson draws back the curtain on his Ludocene Kickstarter project that hopes to change how children discover video games for the better.

In this episode of ‘Into the Digital Future,’ hosts Jordan Shapiro and Laura Higgins discuss the transformative power of gaming with Susanna Pollock, president of Games for Change. Pollock explains how games are being used beyond entertainment to address critical societal issues such as mental health and climate anxiety. The conversation highlights various initiatives, including partnerships with UNESCO, the World Food Programme, and the Deepak Chopra Foundation. The episode also delves into the Games for Change Student Challenge, empowering young…

In the last five years, there has been mounting public interest in the relationship between digital technology use and children’s wellbeing. New policies and legislation aimed at promoting children’s rights and/or safety online are being proposed across North America and around the world at an unprecedented rate. Despite their popularity among children of all ages, however, digital games are often left out of the conversation. As is children’s vast knowledge, insights, and willingness to discuss the positives and negatives that…

Ever since I joined the Joan Ganz Cooney Center’s Well-being by Design Fellowship, I have found myself subconsciously auditing my entire virtual world for its well-being design considerations. Does the team budget spreadsheet system promote feelings of competence for my colleagues? How does my wedding website support guests’ sense of identity? Did this airline-app-that-shall-not-be-named consider users’ feelings of autonomy in times of a global airline outage at all? I was delighted to attend the Play Make Learn annual conference at UW…

During the week of the 2024 Games for Change Festival, the Cooney Center had the privilege of helping to organize a series of events to bring the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children Project (RITEC) learnings to life by sharing the backstory of the research process and work with children, and demonstrating how some have begun putting the RITEC-8 framework into practice. Celebrating the launch of the recent RITEC research report: Diving into working with children for children We started…

The importance of play for children’s development and learning has long been recognized by parents, educators and researchers.1 Much of our lives are now being lived in digital contexts, and this is true for children as well. With the global popularity of video games such as Minecraft and Angry Birds, a great deal of children’s play these days includes digital games. This has raised some concerns about possible negative effects of digital technology, and it is important that parents help…