Tag Archives: learning

A few years ago, the Cooney Center released Family Time with Apps and Apps en familia, a guide that shares tips for parents and caregivers on finding and using apps to develop stronger connections and learning opportunities with young children. The original e-book, which is available for free on the iBook store in both English and Spanish, received a particularly enthusiastic response from librarians around the country, who urged us to create a shorter form, bilingual version of the electronic publication they could share with the…

The synergy in Pittsburgh that extends across three rivers, regional institutions, learning spaces, and communities in support of local youth was in the spotlight during May 9-15, 2016. Remake Learning Days was a bold vision to bolster over 300 events that took place throughout Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia with a culminating family-friendly rally at PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. All week long, Pittsburgh partied. We learning party partied. School marching bands welcomed visitors to open houses, fab…

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…

Part 11 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. Teachers have found many different ways of using digital games in the classroom. But what kind of games are these students playing? And how are teachers incorporating them in the classroom? Last year’s report from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, “Games For A Digital Age,” made the distinction between “short-form” and “long-form” learning games. Short-form games are designed to be played during a single class period. “They focus on a particular…

Part 7 of MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning. Games and learning advocates often come up against the video game stigma. Despite the fact that we’ve now seen decades of game play, and that a generation of gamers has grown up without a civilization collapsing, the bad reputation persists — and it’s mostly based around fear. News stories abound: games make kids hyper, violent, stupid, anti-social. It’s not only that people are generally wary of the unfamiliar, we also live…

Sandbox Summit, an idea forum focused on the intersection of play, learning and technology invites educators, researchers, developers, and innovators of kid-centric media to this annual event at MIT. Presented by MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Education Arcade, Sandbox Summit@MIT will highlight some of the minds behind – and in front of- today’s revolutionary ideas, platforms, places and products. From toys and games, to schools, museums, media and marketing, you’ll hear about the ways and whys purposeful designs power playful…

If the investment in digital technology and gaming in schools is going to continue to grow, it is up to game developers and companies to do a better job sharing information about what games work and for what kind of learners. That was the message from the deputy director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who oversees investment in what the foundation dubs the next generation of K-12 education in the U.S. last week. Stacey Childress said the coming…

Executive Director Michael Levine and former Cooney Center fellow Sarah Vaala have co-authored Games for Learning: Vast Wasteland or a Digital Promise?, the conclusion to the new anthology Digital Games: A Context for Cognitive Development, edited by Fran C. Blumberg and Shalom M. Fisch. The volume takes a broad look at the many positive impacts digital games can have for children’s cognitive and social development, opening with a call for developmental psychologists to recognize how digital games present an important…

Recently in one day, I witnessed two expert panels discussing critical issues for our educational system: the first one was on implementing the Common Core for English-language learners, the second was on how games offer an exciting new frontier for student learning and engagement. In the morning, I listened in to an Alliance for Excellent Education panel including Stanford professor Kenji Hakuta and Carrie Heath Phillips, director of Common Core implementation at the Council of Chief State School Officers. That…

Cooney Center fellow Christina Hinton is moderating a panel at the Digital Media and Learning (DML) Conference called Getting Global With It: Youth Global Participation in the Digital Age With an internationally interdependent economy, unprecedented levels of migration, and a continuous stream of information circulating the planet, children are growing up in a globalized world. In this era of globalization, children need to develop intercultural understanding. Modern digital technologies provide exciting new avenues for helping children gain this important skill.…