Tag Archives: education

In this episode of ‘Into the Digital Future,’ hosts Jordan Shapiro and Laura Higgins discuss the transformative power of gaming with Susanna Pollock, president of Games for Change. Pollock explains how games are being used beyond entertainment to address critical societal issues such as mental health and climate anxiety. The conversation highlights various initiatives, including partnerships with UNESCO, the World Food Programme, and the Deepak Chopra Foundation. The episode also delves into the Games for Change Student Challenge, empowering young…

Imagine an education system designed from the ground up around fundamental human needs, from strong social bonds to cultural flourishing on a healthy planet. We are an inventive species, now with fantastically powerful tools, but limited wisdom to use them toward good. Solving this mismatch may be the key to our collective well-being. In this essay, I sketch an educational approach for building wisdom, with a special focus on learning through social interactions with other people, and one-way parasocial interactions…

On Thursday, September 14, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the XR Association present the third annual AR/VR Policy Conference in Washington, DC. The event will feature a series of expert talks and panels discussing critical policy questions covering privacy and safety, the use of AR/VR in education, children and teenager safety, and more. Panel #4: Back to School in the Metaverse (2:25 PM ET) As AR/VR technology becomes a valuable tool for educational purposes, developers and educators…

In July 2022, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center hosted a panel at the Games for Change Festival in New York City. Led by Cooney Center Executive Director Michael Preston, the panel featured Idris Brewster, founder of tech nonprofit Movers and Shakers, which creates augmented reality (AR) experiences centered around uplifting Black and Brown narratives within the classroom with Kinfolk and Unsung; Kevin Merges, executive director of immersive technology programs at Rutgers Prep, a private K-12 school in Somerset, NJ; Peirce…

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 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…

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.”  A renewed push to make learners independent Matthew Kam, PhD, is the lead researcher in Google’s Chromebooks team for families, education, and business strategy. The opinions expressed here are his own. Students are increasingly turning to…

Let me set the scene. You’ve been invited to a roundtable conversation with 17 international thought leaders working at the intersection of child development, early learning and children’s media. As you look around the table, you see influential early childhood educators, researchers, academics, pediatricians, children’s media producers, advocates and policy experts. It is immediately clear that these leaders and innovators share a commitment to young children and child development first, technology second. Milton Chen, senior fellow at the George Lucas…

Before the Future of Childhood: Immersive Media and Child Development salon took place in November 2018, we invited experts to share their visions about the ways VR and AR might impact childhood 10 years from now. Chris Chin, Executive Director of VR Content at HTC Vive, believes VR has the potential to play a positive role in building pathways for more equitable learning opportunities.   From Ready Player One to The Matrix, authors, futurists, and Hollywood have painted a picture…

Last month, researchers AnneMarie McClain and Lacey Hilliard presented some exciting findings from a a study they conducted around classroom media and socio-emotional learning among elementary school students at the International Communication Association Conference in Prague. We invited them to share details of the project as well as the findings that emerged from their investigation.    At the May 2018 International Communication Association Conference in Prague, Czech Republic, we presented some findings from our longitudinal study, the Arthur Interactive Media (AIM)…