Tag Archives: video

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…

“We used to love playing Xbox all day. That used to be great. But now that it’s all we really do or have to do, they’re always like, ‘Oh, I’m so bored of Xbox. I just wanna do something else.’” (Boy, Age 17 / Pasco County, Florida) Last year the Joan Ganz Cooney Center launched the By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences initiative. Next Gen Public Media aims to “understand the media habits of tweens and teens and…

On January 26,  2021, the Cooney Center’s Executive Director Michael Preston and Senior Fellows Monica Bulger, Mary Madden, and Rafi Santo presented a session called Tweens and Teens: Public Media’s Missing Audience at the 2021 National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) Conference and CPB Public Media Thought Leader Forum. The goal of the session was to share findings from our latest research on tweens and teens and their media habits, as well as ideas and opportunities for public media to serve…

For Part 2 of the Voices on the Future of Childhood series, we asked experts to take a stab at predicting the future by offering their thoughts on “What will change in the coming months and/or years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.”  When liberated, face-to-face will overtake face-to-screen David Kleeman is Senior Vice President of Global Trends for Dubit, a strategy and research consultancy and digital studio based in Leeds, England.  On March 31, the New York Times…

Young children spend about two hours each day using screen-based media, about half of which is spent on educational media, according to their parents. Many studies report that children can learn a range of skills from well-designed educational media. Yet we know relatively little about whether and how well children are able to apply skills they’ve learned from digital media in the real world. This question is particularly important for subjects that involve learning about the physical world, like science.…

Researchers and practitioners have long known that when it comes to digital media for kids, quality is key. But what does it mean for a children’s app to be good or bad? How do specific features and design decisions affect the children who engage with them? If parents want to find high-quality content, what exactly should they be looking for? As part of a team of collaborators at Microsoft Research, the University of Michigan, and the University of Washington, I…

Over the past several years, New America and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop have become known for our book Tap, Click, Read and for our joint research and analysis on how digital technologies could be used to improve, instead of impede, early literacy.  Now our two organizations are going a step further: This month we are releasing a toolkit of materials designed to help educators and other leaders put these insights into practice to help children learn…

Family Time with Apps: A Guide to Using Apps with Your Kids is a free interactive guide for parents and caregivers. The book, which is available for free in the iBook store, features comic strips that parents and children can enjoy together, as well as tips on selecting apps that can help turn screen time into family time. We are thrilled to have Stuart Dredge, a journalist and children’s app reviewer, share his thoughts on how the right apps can…

Did you catch Michael H. Levine’s TEDxAtlanta speech back in May? In light of the fact that the event was entitled “Re: Learn” we thought it deserved a second look. In his eighteen minute talk, Michael shares three powerful trends in digital media that are revolutionizing learning. View his speech here.   Michael’s reflections: The TEDxAtlanta experience was a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate how communities can mobilize to translate innovation research, and new designs for learning into action. Convened by the leading…