JOAN GANZ COONEY CENTER FOR EDUCATIONAL MEDIA AND RESEARCH INC
1900 Broadway, New York, NY 10023 www.joanganzcooneycenter.org

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Organizations Filed Purposes: THE JOAN GANZ COONEY CENTER IS AN INDEPENDENT RESEARCH AND INNOVATION LAB THAT CATALYZES AND SUPPORTS RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND INVESTMENT IN DIGITAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES TO ADVANCE CHILDREN'S LEARNING. THE FOCUS OF THE COONEY CENTER IS ON LITERACY DEVELOPMENT FOR DIVERSE LEARNERS. PROGRAMS ADDRESS VITAL FOUNDATIONAL CAPABILITIES, SUCH AS READING, WITH A SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON THOSE STUDENTS WHO RISK EDUCATIONAL FAILURE IF THEY DO NOT MASTER BASIC COMPETENCIES BY GRADE 4. THE COONEY CENTER IS ALSO FOCUSING NATIONAL ATTENTION ON EVOLVING "NEW LITERACIES" THAT CHILDREN NEED TO COMPETE AND COOPERATE IN THE 21ST CENTURY. MAJOR INITIATIVES FOCUS ON INTER-CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING, MEDIA LITERACY, AND ADVANCING SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATH (STEM) LEARNING -- ALL OF WHICH HAVE BECOME CRITICAL IN AN INTERCONNECTED WORLD.

THE CENTER'S MISSION IS TO CATALYZE AND SUPPORT RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND INVESTMENT IN DIGITAL MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES TO ADVANCE CHILDREN'S LEARNING.

Future of Childhood The arrival of the global pandemic in early 2020 forced the cancellation of the Future of Childhood Summit, which was scheduled for early March at Googles offices in San Francisco and focused on promoting positive visions of childhood in this tech-saturated age. The event would have assembled leaders from industry, research, education, and advocacy to create a unified vision of the future of childhood, in which all children grow up in a world where their interactions with media and technology enrich their learning, wellbeing, and safety. In lieu of the summit, the Cooney Center team invited attendees to write for a blog series entitled "Voices on the Future of Childhood," where they shared "aspirational but achievable" visions of the future of childhood and to offer the field some immediate directives to help us get there. Each installment features experts responses to a specific question about the immediate or longer-term future of childhood as it relates to COVID-19. Themes included: one thing that must be done now; what will change as a result of the pandemic; the future of play; the future of digital play; back to school; and diversity, belonging, and racial justice. New potential activities for the Future of Childhood group include a focus on digital play and wellbeing, including guidance for innovators to support better design for children. Next Gen Public Media Young people including tweens and teens represent a "missing audience" for public media, which has struggled to engage them through traditional broadcast programming. To address this gap, the Cooney Center partnered with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to spur innovation in the public media sector based on youth-focused research and youth-centered design practices. Entitled "By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences," this initiative will conduct and translate research on youth media practices, including the creation of media by, with, and for tweens and teens, while exploring opportunities for the public media sector to develop innovative and unique strategies to better engage young audiences. In the first year of the initiative, the Cooney Center began developing a literature review as well as original qualitative research to identify challenges, gaps, and opportunities for public media. The team also began a design process with 20 public media stations to lay the groundwork for new youth-facing program experiments, collaboration, and shared learning. If successful, the initiative will inform future federal support for youth-focused public media projects and provide the Center with opportunities for related projects including media literacy and youth voice. Connecting to Sesame Workshops Legacy The Cooney Center participated in the celebration of Sesame Workshop's 50th anniversary by reissuing "The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education," Joan Ganz Cooney's seminal research report that became the blueprint for Sesame Street and Childrens Television Workshop, and today drives the Centers efforts to direct research and innovation for the benefit of children everywhere. The reissued report contains the original, unedited text from 1966, as well as new forewords and archival photos. As a companion report, the center published "Revisiting the Potential Uses of Media for Children's Education" by journalist Chris Berdik, featuring interviews with more than 20 experts from a range of fields including developmental psychologists, educators, media historians, app developers, as well as education nonprofit leaders and funders, to understand some of the lessons that can be learned from the successes and failures of childrens educational media over the past 50 years. Together, they explore what we must do to make the most of new technologies and the changing role of families and teachers, and grapple with questions about media, learning, and educational equity. Designing for Kids In FY20, the Cooney Center began to investigate ways to expand impact on the field in new ways that are consistent with its mission "to catalyze and support research, innovation and investment in digital media technologies to advance children's learning." Traditionally, the Center's tools for influencing the field have included research reports, convenings, and other forms of "thought leadership," as well as talent development including fellowship programs for new researchers. At the same time, the Centers staff and advisors have identified various opportunities to more directly influence innovation and investment, e.g., by directly bridging the work of academics and creators with the goal of improving the design and development of new digital products for children. The Center worked with San Francisco-based consulting firm Entangled Solutions to analyze opportunities for positively influencing this market based on potential for impact, revenue sources, competitive advantage, existing capability, and required investment. The team began working on two approaches: first, a free resource for the field called "Playtesting with Kids," a web-based toolkit to help product teams that are new to user experience research and/or new to working with children and second, an "applied R&D" service targeting early-stage development teams to ensure high learning impact and approaches to reaching a more diverse and inclusive audience of children. The team initiated work on both projects in FY20 with plans to release both formally in FY21.

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