Tag Archives: research

Conducting playtesting with kids can be tricky. It can be challenging to get feedback from children that can really help producers make great products—but it’s definitely not impossible. We are thrilled to share Playtest with Kids, a new digital toolkit that shares best practices gathered from dozens of kids researchers. “Do you like this?” seems like a very reasonable question to ask children. But we’ve noticed that asking this seemingly-straightforward question will often result in an immediate “yes!” —not because…

Can you feel the excitement? The buzz of conference-planning is in the air! We’re zooming with friends and colleagues across the country—and beyond!—as we make plans to attend our first in-person event in more than two years. The Cooney Center is thrilled to participate in this year’s ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego. We’re organizing and hosting some panels with our colleagues at Sesame Workshop, launching a project, and looking forward to talking about education, innovation, and equity! Come find us…

This post originally appeared on the Digital Futures Commission website and appears here with permission.   Last fall, the Digital Futures Commission (DFC) launched ‘Playful by Design: Free play in a digital world.’ The report looks at a crucial important aspect of children’s development – free play – and at how digital products and services succeed and fail in facilitating it. At our launch event, Baroness Beeban Kidron OBE and Professor Sonia Livingstone OBE were joined by key experts in the field of free play who discussed and explored our reporting as…

Kimberly Voll is a game developer, researcher, and co-founder of the Fair Play Alliance. In this episode, Kimberly joins Laura and Jordan to talk about her earliest experiences with video games, her interest in artificial intelligence, understanding games as social ecosystems, and the challenges of combating toxicity in digital spaces.

This post was originally published on GettingSmart.com Across the United States, children are returning to school. For some, it will be their first time since March 2020. The past year and a half has been a challenging, if not devastating, disruption for families, teachers, and administrators. Now we’re all hungry for a return to normal. But at what cost? Normal, for vast numbers of American students, is not something to which we should aspire to return. For too long, our society…

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast provides has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here and learn more about the series here. Alicia is the Head of Kids and Families Strategy at YouTube, where she focuses on helping children and their parents and caregivers realize their rights to more safely learn, connect, and play online. She was previously the Public Policy Lead for Kids and Families at Google, where she worked on issues…

On October 26, 2021, the Cooney Center hosted Learning at Home While Under-Connected and the Role of Public Media, a discussion about learning at home and digital inequality, and how public media stations can help within their local communities.  Vikki Katz (Rutgers University) presented key research findings from Learning at Home While Under-Connected: Lower-Income Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic, which follows up on 2016’s Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families to uncover the perspectives of lower-income parents…

Learning at Home While Under-Connected: Lower-Income Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic follows up on 2016’s Opportunity for All? Technology and Learning in Lower-Income Families to uncover the perspectives of lower-income parents with children ages 3 to 13.  In March and April 2021, researchers Vikki Katz and Victoria Rideout led a national survey of more than 1,000 parents. The report delves into the experiences that these families had while many children were learning at home during a time when many school buildings…

This article appeared in Physics Today, January 2021, page 26 and appears here with permission. From Elinor Wonders Why to Emily’s Wonder Lab, a multitude of fresh, dynamic programs have recently premiered that encourage children to channel their inner scientists. Between streaming services and television, today’s young people have more access to quality science programming than ever. But before there was Cyberchase, Wild Kratts, The Magic School Bus, or even Bill Nye the Science Guy, there was the show that started it all: 3-2-1 Contact. Premiering in 1980, 3-2-1…

The importance of literacy skills in our lives is clear – reading and language skills allow us to read signs, menus, and participate in everyday encounters. As adults, we rely on our literacy skills in the workplace to write reports, emails, or lesson plans. But it is also clear that critical “literacy” skills extend into the world of technology. And while digital literacy is increasingly becoming a component of the K-12 curriculum, we still lack sufficient understanding of how those…