Tag Archives: learning from hollywood

Susan Hildreth is the director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. She was appointed to the position by President Obama, and has previously served as the city librarian in Seattle, California’s state librarian, deputy director and city librarian of San Francisco Public Library, as well as on staff at Sacramento Public Library, the Placer County Library, the Benicia Public Library and the Yolo County Library. She has also served as president of both the Public Library Association and…

Jacob Blackstock is a cartoonist and animator who created Bitstrips for Schools, an online tool that makes it easy for kids to create their own web comics. He explains how his own obsession with comics led to an inadvertent breakthrough: by encouraging kids to produce their own comic strips, teachers are not only fostering creativity and encouraging literacy skills, but engaging students more deeply with content because they are actively collaborating with their peers.   Jacob Blackstock is a cartoonist/animator/entrepreneur…

This post was written for the Learning at Hollywood Forum that took place at USC in May 2011.   My hope for this forum is that it helps realize, in some concrete way, the vision of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. At this moment in time — the birth of the digital era — it is important to have the industry find a way to seize the unprecedented opportunity to entertain, educate, and make a sustainable profit through new media…

This post was originally published for the Learning from Hollywood forum held in Los Angeles in May 2011. My hope for this forum is that it helps realize, in some concrete way, the vision of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. At this moment in time — the birth of the digital era — it is important to have the industry find a way to seize the unprecedented opportunity to entertain, educate, and make a sustainable profit through new media platforms.…

The art and science of storytelling has been at the heart of all good education from the beginning of the humanity. Since before technology, before media, before printing or even writing, education was passed from generation to generation through storytelling. The stories told around the fire before written histories may have had elements of myth and legend and exaggerated truth in them, but they all served the same purpose: the enculturation of the young and the drawing together of the…

Frances Nankin, Executive Producer and Editorial Director of Cyberchase, has been developing children’s media for 30 years. She is both an educator and a media producer who sees great potential in emerging media platforms to boost kids’ learning. Cooney Center: What excites you about the potential of new technologies to support learning? Frances Nankin: My first experience with kids’ media was when I was a first-grade teacher and there was a slide projector in the library where kids who behaved…

To put my thoughts into context, I offer the following assertions: Our public education system is failing; Incremental change to a failing system is the same as making no change at all; Kids today spend—on average—seven hours each day interacting with and through digital media; The digital world has become the “new vast wasteland” unless, of course; We seize the opportunity to build quality, engaging digital content that reaches, teaches, and optimizes the skills and talents of the rising generation.…

As long as media have created content for children, there have been debates about what defines “quality.” From the “penny dreadfuls” to radio to comic books to music, and onward to TV and digital media, parents have been cautioned about wasted time, moral decay or learning delays. At the same time, creators and distributors of children’s media have proclaimed its great benefits; every recent media innovation from TV (and color TV!) to tablet computers has been marketed first to parents…

I hate to admit it, but I’m the one who brought Pocket Frogs into my daughters’ lives. We were at the airport, awaiting our flight. I was loathing the idea of breaking into all the carefully packed-up pens and activity books before boarding in 20 minutes. Why not find a new gaming app on my iPhone that would satisfy my girls, 6 and 8 at the time, while also giving me something fun to fool around with once in a…

At SCE, we aim to support and influence the emerging world of anywhere, anytime, any-device, access-for-all learning. Our vision, of course, relies heavily on high-quality digital media, and on aiding the people and organizations with the potential to create tomorrow’s innovative digital learning products. But we (and the field) have a problem: No one knows where digital learning’s killer apps will come from. Here is a quick take on potential sources of high-quality digital learning media—which I’ll define (for simplicity’s…