Tag Archives: learning

In January, I attended a workshop dedicated to games, assessment and learning hosted by the MacArthur and Gates Foundations and the USC Game Innovation Lab. The workshop brought together game designers, educators, and researchers to work together on designing games around various curricula topics that would be engaging, educational, and contain features to allow for the collection and feedback about how players were faring when engaged in the game. The conversation went beyond what players could learn from games: We…

Last Wednesday, April 27th, New York University held a special event to celebrate the work of University Professor Jerome Bruner. This year marks the 50th anniversary of his landmark publication, The Process of Education. Panel discussions between leading researchers who worked with Bruner in the 1960s and notable authors and academics working in education today, provided the audience with a sense of the legacy of Bruner’s work, along with ideas of how we might yet see it realized 50 years…

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.…

This essay originally appeared in The Huffington Post. In a recent speech to a group of students at TechBoston in Dorchestor, Massachusetts. President Obama had this to say about video games: I’m calling for investments in educational technology that will help create … educational software that is as compelling as the best video game. I want you guys to be stuck on a video game that’s teaching you something other just blowing something up. When I started my career in…

Last week, our colleagues at Microsoft announced the full availability of the Kodu Game Lab for the PC and the launch of a nationwide Kodu Cup competition. The competition invites students, aged nine to 17 to design, build and submit their own video games. This post by Cooney Center Research Fellow Gabrielle Cayton-Hodges originally appeared on the Microsoft Unlimited Potential blog. There’s a growing body of evidence that both playing video games and making video games have promise as educational…

The Cooney Center is thrilled to announce our newest report! A mobile media revolution that is changing the lives of adults, and now children of all ages, is under way across the globe. This report focuses on how new forms of digital media are influencing very young children and their families in the United States and how we can deploy smart mobile devices and applications-apps, for short-in particular, to help advance their education. Get more information and download report

Reprinted from Huffington Post This teacher bashing must stop! It is an unwise diversion from what matters most: teaching children to love learning and be creative right from the start. As an unabashed ally in the moral outrage that animates Davis Guggenheim’s powerful film “Waiting for ‘Superman’ “, count me as a skeptic of the proposed prescriptions advanced by the movie. Brent Staples of The New York Times gets it just right: “the many complex problems that have long afflicted…

The past few weeks have been big for our industry — conferences from EdNet to Engage, the expansion announcement of E-Rate, a stellar New York Times article on Learning by Playing, the release of Waiting for Superman, and NBC’s Education Nation. Guest blogger, Ellen Galinsky, offers her perspective on Education Nation (reprinted from What It Will Really Mean to “Put Children First”–Reflections on NBC’s Education Nation in Huffington Post): Many of this nation’s movers and shakers in education gathered this…

Last week I attended Back to School – Learning and Growing in a Digital Age, an event which explored federal policy, e-learning, and digital literacy, sponsored by Common Sense Media, PBS Kids, USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership & Policy, and The Children’s Partnership. The session that impacted me most was Empowering Parents and Kids with Technology. What was fascinating about the speakers on this panel was that collectively they described the evolution of Internet and its perceived challenges facing…

At last year’s Leadership Forum, Participant Media screened an early trailer for Waiting for Superman, which opens tomorrow. Here is some commentary on the film from Diana Rhoten, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Startl: I had the chance to attend the CUSP Conference in Chicago these last couple of days. I am not much of a conference go-er as I typically hate the contrived socializing and obsequious insider-ism that often go along with overpriced conference fees and underwhelming hotel rooms.…