These are projects that get young people and classrooms participating in the digital maker movement: Current or aspiring videogame designers and videographers have about a month to submit their creations to three different contests: The National STEM Videogame Challenge, Whyville's game design contest, and Trend Micro's What's Your Story video producing contest. Design a videogame Videogame … [Read more...] about Designing students: Check out these contests (learning opps)!
Joan Ganz Cooney Center
What we know & don’t know about kids’ online socializing: Key study
Imagine a game in which a child not only discovers, collects, creates, and/or customizes 2- and 3-dimensional art objects that s/he then shares with fellow player-creators, but also creates his/her own levels of play. Imagine the literacies players could be developing in the process of playing such a game, including social literacy, through sharing, "liking," and reviewing each other's … [Read more...] about What we know & don’t know about kids’ online socializing: Key study
Surge in kids’ apps: Parents & providers sorting it out
I've done it, have you? I have a feeling most of us have passed our cellphones back to a kid in the backseat so we could drive in peace while the child (who has been hounding us to let it happen) plays a game app. Of course, increasingly, this is happening with really little kids, because the bigger ones have their own cellphones ("way back" in 2010, Pew/Internet reported that 75% of US … [Read more...] about Surge in kids’ apps: Parents & providers sorting it out
The complexities of raising kids in a digital age: Study
This was a fun study to read, especially because it tells the stories of the tech and family lives of Gabriella Guzman and Sierra Ramirez (ages 8 and 7, respectively) in the Los Angeles area. Of the children author Lori Takeuchi of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center writes, "They were somewhat ordinary as far as their digital media use was concerned. None were budding moviemakers, prodigy programmers, or … [Read more...] about The complexities of raising kids in a digital age: Study
80% of US kids under 5 are online: Study
Those 0-to-5-year-olds are on the Net at least weekly, with about a quarter of three-year-olds online daily, increasing to about half by age 5, according to a just-released review of seven studies from the past five years by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. The percentage of daily Net users rises to about two-thirds by age 8. "Children ages 5-9 average about 28 minutes online daily. In 2009, the … [Read more...] about 80% of US kids under 5 are online: Study