Tag Archives: professional development

The Call for Applications is now open through October 11, 2024.  If you follow our work, you may have seen the incredible results produced by our inaugural cohort of Well-Being by Design Fellows.  Building from the success of the first year of this program, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to announce a second year of the Well-being by Design Fellowship, supported by Pinterest.  We invite applications from mid-career designers of kids’ technology and media who want to prioritize…

In 2024, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center invited 10 professionals who design kids tech to join us for the inaugural Well-Being by Design Fellowship. The organizations that these fellows represent range from small startups to large, well-established companies; all of them share a passion for creating great digital experiences for young people.  Throughout the fellowship, we met regularly as a learning community, workshopping ideas informed by well-being and child development frameworks and applying them to the fellows’ digital products for…

The Call for Applications period has closed. Please learn about our Fellows here!   The Cooney Center is excited to announce our new Well-being by Design Fellowship, supported by Pinterest. We invite applications from mid-career designers of kids’ technology and media who want to prioritize designing for well-being at early stages in the development process and are currently working on a project/product that can be workshopped throughout the fellowship period. This free program will involve interactive virtual sessions over four…

Technology may promise to disrupt. Yet, all too often in education, tech tools simply digitally replicate the ways we’ve always gone about teaching and learning. From gradebooks to slide decks, to gamified learning, many ed tech offerings tend to be fancy window dressing more than new approaches.  XR– or “extended reality,” the umbrella term for immersive tools including virtual and augmented reality– has the potential to be truly different. These emerging technologies can unlock learning opportunities never before known in…

At the XR for Change Summit in New York City in June 2019, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center hosted a cross-disciplinary panel of experts to discuss the potential impact and pitfalls of virtual reality (VR) in the classroom. Michael Preston, the Cooney Center’s executive director, kicked off the session with a call to take advantage of VR’s relative youthfulness to ensure that content and hardware developed for learning are beneficial and safe for children. The panel was moderated by David…

On October 26, 2018, over 50 key stakeholders in early education gathered at the Idaho Early STEM Summit in Boise. Led by the Idaho STEM Action Center (STEM AC), this convening of professionals—comprised of representatives from research institutions, government agencies, libraries, and community-based organizations—is the first of its kind in the state to focus on advocacy for STEM opportunities for young children ages birth through age 8. Boise State University’s College of Education opened our morning with a presentation on…

Now that digital technologies—and touch-screen tablets in particular—are finding their way into preschool and kindergarten classrooms, educators are faced with multiple questions about if, how, and when it is best to introduce them to young children. On September 3rd, the U.S. Department of Education brought together nearly 60 people from across the early childhood field to think through what would be of most help. At least three needs became apparent throughout the day: Educators and parents need  succinct, research-based messages…

On March 23, Michael Levine presented “Teaching with Digital Games,” a webinar for the Share My Lesson Virtual Conference with Rebecca Rufo-Tepper from the Institute of Play. The session was attended live by nearly 500 participants, and is now available for view on demand on the Share My Lesson website until March 22, 2016. Participants who take the webinar are eligible to receive one hour of professional development credit. Register online to view the session.

I spent last weekend on a camping trip with extended family.  Having just completed a report on the use of digital games in the classroom, I was more than a little eager to consult with the kids in the group about their use of digital games inside and outside of the classroom.  Given the popularity of Minecraft, I started there.  “Do any of you guys play Minecraft?” I asked.  Instantly there were three kids with three devices surrounding me, each…

This fall, students across the country walked back through school doors. Each child undoubtedly had his or her own unique summer, possibly filled with camps, vacations, or just time to relax with friends and family. However, it is very likely that one shared element of each child’s summer vacation was ample time to spend with media and technology, whether it was the television, smartphones, tablets, or computers. While one might assume the end of the summer means students spend less…