Tag Archives: michael h. levine

Attention all designers, developers, and researchers: Almost 50 years ago, Joan Ganz Cooney submitted a proposal to the Carnegie Corporation that led to the creation of Sesame Street. Inspired by a conversation with Lloyd Morrisett about how children were so captivated by television that they were effortlessly learning advertising jingles, she conducted interviews with cognitive psychologists, preschool educators, television producers, and filmmakers to explore how this new medium could be harnessed to help young children learn to read and write.…

On September 14, Michael Levine will participate in “Changing the Game: How Digital Games are Changing Entertainment and Education,” an academic panel at Becker College in conjunction with the inauguration of the college’s new president, Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D. The honorary chair and moderator is Gordon Bellamy, executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Other panelists include Chad Dorsey, president and CEO, The Concord Consortium; Paul Cotnoir, PhD, professor and director, Becker College; Dave McCool, president and CEO,…

At the 2011 Games, Learning and Society research conference in Madison, Joan Ganz Cooney Center Executive Director Michael H. Levine was the closing keynote speaker on the topic “Gaming Education Reform.” His presentation to a multidisciplinary group of scholars, game industry leaders and practitioners focused on several missing key elements in our current approaches to learning. He shared some of the most cogent lessons learned from Sesame Street’s rich and instructive history as well as the Center’s more recent research…

On December 14, 2010, Michael Levine participated in Generation Mobile, a panel discussion hosted by the FCC in Washington, DC. Watch the video from the panel discussion:     (This video will begin with the “Ask the Experts About Generation Mobile” panel. View the full video on YouTube.)  

A funny thing happened at a Capitol Hill Caucus Event in  D.C.  last month–a moment of bipartisan agreement!  The sighting of this rare bird seems well worth noting–everyone who has been following the debate over painful budget cuts has been wondering if and when consensus might ever break out. So I was delightfully surprised to be a part of a discussion of one issue that could, perhaps, be an important bridge across the political chasm: the role of digital technology–especially video games– to…

If you are in New Haven on Friday, February 11, we invite you to attend the Zigler Center’s weekly social policy lecture series. Michael Levine will present a preview of Always Connected, a collaboration with the Sesame Workshop that will be published this spring, and The Impacts of Media Multitasking on Children’s Learning and Development. He will discuss the results of some recent studies about the constant flow of media that kids are consuming — often simultaneously — and the…

Becky Herr Stephenson is a Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. She attended the Kids@Play Summit at CES 2011, which focused on the way technology is changing how kids learn and play. She shares some highlights with us here: The Kids@Play Summit at CES reaffirmed for me that the best technologies are those that are obviously disruptive — technologies that challenge our expectations about what learning and schooling should look like, about who can participate in creation and…

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…

This Sunday, games based learning will be New York Times Magazine cover worthy (we semi-scooped them.) Learning by Playing, by Sara Corbett, is a thorough overview of game play in the classroom, highlighting some successful  and revolutionary programs that are helping kids learn in school, most notably, Quest to Learn, a New York based school for digital kids. The school’s founder/director, Katie Salen, says she is “less apt to refer to a school as ‘school’ but rather as a ‘learning…

By Esther Wojcicki and Michael H. Levine, reprinted from the Huffington Post American students’ lack of knowledge about the world is unsettling. According to surveys by National Geographic and Asia Society, young Americans are next to last in their knowledge of geography and current affairs compared to peers in eight other countries, and the overwhelming majority of college-bound seniors cannot find Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel on a world map. Less than one half of today’s high school students study a…