How can the Sesame Street philosophy impact educational gaming for older kids?
Image: Joan Ganz Cooney Center
In a December story for The New York Times, reporter Elizabeth Jensen reports on a new nonprofit research and production institute, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center created by the Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street. Cooneycreated Sesame Street 40 years ago.
Here is the interesting part: the goal of the institute will be to bring more educational content and value into digital media designed for children who have outgrown Sesame Street:
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will initially focus on how computer and Internet games, cellphones and other digital devices on which children increasingly spend their time can be used to improve literacy among minority and economically disadvantaged 6- to 9-year-olds, Ms. Cooney said. In addition to producing its own new media projects, the center plans to open its work to outside companies, with which it hopes to develop educational projects. It also plans to conduct and sponsor research intended to push the industry to think more broadly about how interactive technology can be used to speed children’s learning …
While educational games and Web sites for schoolchildren are available, few are grounded in a detailed educational curriculum, said Michael Levine, an early childhood education research and policy expert who has been named executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. “We are just about to see an explosion in the kinds of software that will be available on phones,” said Dr. Levine, 50, who previously worked at the Asia Society and the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is a senior associate at Yale University’s Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy.
Sesame Workshop uses research to determine what children can be expected to learn. By the time a workshop-produced show goes on the air, “we know it’s educational, there’s no guessing about it,” Ms. Cooney said, adding that the same needs to be known about new media projects. With content for older children, she said, some commercial producers have added educational elements “to get brownie points, but there’s no hard evidence that it’s helping” …
Susan B. Neuman, professor of educational studies at the University of Michigan and a co-editor of the forthcoming book “Multimedia and Literacy Development,” said the new center’s approach “desperately is needed.” She added that many companies are jumping into the digital new media world for elementary-school children without solid educational standards …
The center’s first report, which looks at the potential of digital media to encourage learning and examines where the industry is falling short, is being released today on the center’s Web site … Future research will examine the nation’s fourth-grade reading slump, how new media can help students for whom English is a second language, and market barriers to the introduction of educational games. In addition Mr. Levine said he had had exploratory conversations with Verizon, Google, Scholastic, Nickelodeon and the Boston public television station WGBH, among others, about collaborations.
Read the New York Times article here.
Visit the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Web site.
