Tag Archives: literacy

“Interactive” is one of the most overused words in the 21st Century, a label attached to thousands of digital devices, apps and TV shows for kids. Interactive tablet apps will read a book to your kid and interactive cartoon characters will invite your kid to dance during a TV show. The word “interactive” can make anything sound more educational. But what does it mean, really? Digital devices generally provide solitary experiences for kids, but these tools are marketed to parents…

Can text messages to low-income parents help close the word gap? It’s not an idle question. Last month, the advocacy group Too Small to Fail announced plans to experiment with text messages to parents in a new partnership with Kaiser Permanente, Sesame Workshop,* and Text4Baby. In a recent blog post for Seeding Reading we reported on an initiative called Parent University that sends text messages to Head Start parents with suggestions for building literacy skills in their children. (We also reported on parents’ reactions to the project.)   A study…

When Alexiss Evans enrolled in the Ounce of Prevention Fund’s Parent University literacy program, she did so because she believed in the organization and because she wanted to give her daughter every possible opportunity to learn. “I’m one of those parents who, if [the Ounce says] something, I’ll do it,” she said. “I want to show support and be a team player.” Evans received text messages each weekday for six weeks. These texts suggested activities for Evans to do with her…

The pediatrician’s office is becoming a new player in helping children learn foundational skills for communication, language development, and eventually reading. But a project in New York is taking this concept a step further, by bringing digital technology—specifically, video cameras and video players—into the doctor’s office. The Video Interaction Project (VIP) is underway at the Langone Medical Center at New York University. Specialists meet with parents and caregivers during regular well-check visits and record them playing with or reading to…

Today’s children are surrounded by digital media of all kinds. How will they ever learn to read? That question is at the heart of Seeding Reading: Investing in Children’s Literacy in a Digital Age, a new series of articles and analysis brought to you by New America’s Education Policy Program and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop.  Over the next six months, we will be exploring early education and parenting initiatives that are harnessing new technologies; scrutinizing the…

The nation’s largest family and community literacy conference, presented by The National Center for Families Learning. Gather with family literacy professionals, educators, researchers, advocates, coalition members, and policy makers from across the United States for the latest resources in education, networking opportunities, and plenty more. For more information, please visit the NCFL website.

To celebrate Children’s Book Week, the oldest literacy initiative in the country, we asked Cooney Center staff members to reflect on their favorite children’s books: the books whose spines we wore out, even if we knew the words by heart; the books that sparked hours of laughter and debate with our parents and friends and the books that helped us to become life-long readers. Did your favorites make the cut? Executive Director Michael Levine’s childhood favorites were Where the Wild…

The Cooney Center’s Executive Director Michael Levine and the New America Foundation’s Lisa Guernsey will present the keynote address at Ready at Five’s  D Is For Digital School Readiness Symposium. Together, they will present the findings from the Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West report. For more information on the symposium, visit the official site.

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…

Hosted by the National Center for Family Literacy, this event invites literacy professionals, educators, policy makers, and philanthropists to discuss approaches, resources, and strategies in literacy and learning. This year the conference will invite writers of the new Common Core Standards to frame the conversations. For more information, please visit the official site.