Joan Ganz Cooney Center

Money, Time, and Tactics: Can Games Be Effective in Schools?

January 28, 2013 | 12:40 PM | By Tina Barseghian

Flickr:flickingerbrad

If it’s true that 97 percent of teens in the U.S. are playing digital games, then the focus on how games can fit into the shifting education system becomes that much more important. Schools, districts, and individual educators are trying to figure out how games and learning can fit into the current complicated landscape.

The newly released report Games for a Digital Age: K-12 Market Map and Investment Analysis, released by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the Games and Learning Publishing Council, describes the many different criteria in play in detail, including obstacles from the policy standpoint, lack of teacher development, as well as how the Bring Your Own Device movement is influencing the push towards games and learning.

“Games are more popular than ever with youth today with many students spending hours a day playing them,” said Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. “What we don’t know yet is whether and how they can be a key ally in driving pathways to academic success.”

Though it’s well worth reading the report in its entirety, below are excerpts pulled from the report, conducted and written by Dr. John Richards, Leslie Stebbins and Dr. Kurt Moellering.

ON FINDING WAYS TO USE GAMES WITHIN CLASS TIMES

The school day is divided into class periods, and this division limits lesson length. Furthermore, the combination of standards and the scope and sequence tied to core curriculum create “coverage” requirements that place practical limits on the number of lessons that can be devoted to a single topic.

Nearly all games fall clearly along a continuum ranging from short-form to long-form with a critical distinction and a bi-modal distribution pattern based on fitting in a class period. As noted by Rob Lippincott, Sr. Vice President of Education, PBS, “Games don’t fit the time box of a class period; a game succeeds when it is sticky and gobbles up more time. You want games in school to finish quickly and speed up learning.” (CS4Ed interview, April 2012).

“Games don’t fit the time box of a class period; a game succeeds when it is sticky and gobbles up more time. You want games in school to finish quickly and speed up learning.”

We placed games into these two time-based categories, short-form and long-form. Within these broad areas fall dozens of different kinds of games, ranging from three-minute apps to open, immersive Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) that involve lengthy game playing. In addition to the length of play, the mechanics of a gaming experience varies broadly, with simple “add-on” gamification-type reward systems falling typically at the short end of the time continuum, and more complex, multiple-path, role playing games falling at the long end. In longer-form games, the game mechanics are typically intrinsic to the learning experience rather than placed at the end of or external to the game play itself.

1. Short-Form Learning Games

In most K-12 schools the day is organized in blocks of time that average 40 minutes or less. Transition time and time for instruction or discussion connected to curricular material frequently leaves only 20 to 30 minutes for actually using a learning game. Short-form games are interactive Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, Games, Joan Ganz Cooney Center

Survey: Parents Prefer Reading Print Books to Young Kids

September 18, 2012 | 10:53 AM | By Tina Barseghian

Don’t count print books obsolete just yet — especially when it comes to younger kids. A study released today by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center shows that even among parents who like reading e-books with their kids, the majority still prefer to read print books over e-books with their children.

The survey, which included 1,200 parents of children age 2 to 6, showed that, of those who owned iPads (462 in total), an overwhelming majority — 89.9 percent — said they read mostly print books and some e-books, compared to 7.5 percent who say they read print books and e-books equally with their children, and only 2.7 percent who read mostly or exclusively e-books.

But the report also draws an interesting conclusion about how print books or e-books (in this case, iPads with multimedia features) are alternately preferred in certain situations. During times when parents want to read with their kids (co-read, as the report calls it), print books are preferred, even when e-books are available. But parents prefer e-books when they’re traveling or commuting.

Mixed reactions were reported in other aspects too. Although parents recognize that e-books can play a role in developing their kids’ literacy skills, especially when kids are reading alone, many iPad owners — a full one-third surveyed — said that sometimes “it’s just too difficult to read with a child on digital devices, and nearly as many are worried the child would start to want to use the iPad all the time.” Overall, in fact, 60 percent of parents said they prefer their child to read traditional print books.

This report follows another, much smaller survey of 32 parents, which examined the difference Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, Teaching With Tech, e-book, iPad, Joan Ganz Cooney Center

For Young Readers, Print or Digital Books?

May 29, 2012 | 6:00 AM | By Tina Barseghian

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Print or digital? Adults grapple with which is the best way to read — not only for themselves, but especially when it comes to their kids. Whether or not parents prefer print books over interactive e-books for their kids, the question is, what’s actually better for them?

Depends on what you’re trying to achieve. According to a study of a small group of parents released today by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, kids age 3 to 6 remembered more narrative details — “What happened in the story?” — from print books than from enhanced e-books with multimedia features.

But when kids were asked one plot question for each story, (i.e., “Why did x do y?”), there was no difference between the print book readers and the enhanced e-book readers.

“I would definitely make the distinction that the platform affected recall instead of comprehension,” said Cynthia Chiong, the lead author of the survey conducted at New York Hall of Science’s Preschool Place.

The study, the first of its kind to qualify the difference between basic and enhanced e-readers versus print books, examined 32 pairs of parents and their 3–6-year-old children as they read a print book and an e-book together. Half of the pairs read a basic e-book and the other half read an enhanced e-book.

“Now it’s time to start thinking more purposefully and thoughtfully into what goes into the creation of an e-book.”

Researchers found that while the multimedia features of enhanced e-books grabbed children’s attention, those same features also distracted young readers and led more to “non-content related interactions.” Features like animation, sound effects, videos, and games made it more difficult for some parents to keep kids focused on reading and diminished kids’ recall of the text. Parents continually had to tell kids not to turn the page or not to touch the tablets, according to Chiong.

The implication? Parents and teachers should choose basic e-books like the Kindle or Nook over enhanced e-books, such as the iPad, if they want a more literacy-focused co-reading experience with children. Prompting kids with questions that relate to the text, labeling and naming objects, and encouraging kids to talk about the book’s content from their own perspective all elicit Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Research, Teaching With Tech, e-books, e-readers, iPad, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, kindle, Nook

New Survey: Half of Teachers Use Digital Games in Class

May 2, 2012 | 9:00 AM | By Tina Barseghian

Flickr: Flickingerbrad

No longer relegated to experimental programs, digital games are becoming much more commonly used in classrooms across the country, according to a survey by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center released today.

Half of the 505 K-8 teachers surveyed said they use digital games with their students two or more days a week, and 18 percent use them daily.

There will be further, more in-depth coverage of this report in the coming weeks, but in the meantime, some more statistics from the study:

Nearly 70 percent said that “lower-performing students engage more with subject content with use of digital games.”
Three-fifths reported “increased attention to specific tasks and improved collaborations among all students.”
Sixty percent said using digital games “helps personalize instruction and better assess student knowledge and learning.”
Though most use Apple or PC computers, 25 percent said their students use iPads or tablet computers, and less than 10 percent use other mobile devices or video game consoles.
62% said games make it easier to level lessons and effectively teach the range of learners in Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, Teaching With Tech, Games, Joan Ganz Cooney Center

CHILDREN AND MEDIA

How Tweens Use Digital Media to Develop Their Identities

February 29, 2012 | 7:00 AM | By MindShift

Flickr: JuliaKoz

The following are excerpts from from “Kids Closer Up: Playing, Learning, and Growing with Digital Media” by Lori Takeuchi, International Journal of Learning and Media, Spring 2011, Vol. 3, No. 2, Pages 37-59. To protect the children’s identities, all names are pseudonyms, and location details have been altered. Read the first post in the series: A Look Inside the Digital Lives of Tweens.

According to some scholars, digital media provide young people with the tools, spaces, and communities to develop the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and social practices needed for full participation in contemporary society as consumers, producers, and civic actors. Surely all children can learn something through their use of digital media. But some of these lessons hold greater value to their present and future lives than others.

Researcher Jackie Marsh argues that virtual worlds like Club Penguin and Webkinz can “offer young children a wide range of opportunities to decode, respond to and create multimodal texts in a playful space, significant activities in a new media age.” She postulates that reading Club Penguin’s newspaper, for example, can help foster children’s reading comprehension skills and that its chat feature provides a fun context for children to practice writing and use text to negotiate, collaborate, and evaluate. If and when more work, play, and learning activities are embedded in virtual worlds, as many predict they will be, current young members of Club Penguin and Webkinz will be prepared to navigate these spaces and communicate as members of online communities. However, whether they actually become better readers and writers—or just fall victim to the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching With Tech, digital media, Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Social Media

CHILDREN AND MEDIA

With Media, Parents and Kids Learn More Together

January 20, 2012 | 11:20 AM | By Tina Barseghian

Flickr: Andrew Shell

Kids learn with each other while playing games on the iPad.

Most of what we read about kids and screen time revolves around whether or not it’s good for them. But one aspect of media use with kids that’s worth examining closer is how co-viewing affects their experience. Whether kids are watching TV, creating digital media, reading, searching, or playing video games with parents, siblings or friends, consuming media becomes a different kind of experience than when it’s done alone.

Though TV is still the dominant media in most homes, other forms are quickly permeating daily life: video games, apps, and exploring the Internet are woven into most families’ activities. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center calls it joint media engagement (JME), and they’ve just released one of their comprehensive reports, The New CoViewing: Designing for Learning Through Joint Media Engagement, about the phenomenon and its effects. The theory goes that the better we understand how kids use media together, the better designed the media can be, to take the most advantage of how kids work, learn, think, and make things together.

HOW PARENTS RELATE

Perhaps the activity that parents love most to do with their kids — reading — has been vastly transformed by digital media. E-books can be read on Web sites, computer software, products like LeapFrog, and of course tablets and e-readers. And depending on whom you ask, e-books (or print books) are the medium of choice for reading together. The typically tech-cautious New York Times decided that “for their children, many e-book fans insist on paper.”

But the Cooney Center’s own “quick study,” which followed 24 families with kids three- to six-years old reading both print and e-books, showed that most kids preferred reading an e-book to a print book, according to Digital Book World. And maybe just as importantly, “comprehension between the two formats were the same,” though the enhanced e-readers with all the bells and whistles were distracting to young readers.

Still, “If we can encourage kids to engage in books through an iPad, that’s a win already,” said the Cooney Center’s Carly Shuler.

Raise your hand if you’ve discreetly texted your friends or shopped on your mobile phone undercover while watching “Cars 2″ with your kids.

Plenty of studies have shown that kids learn more when they’re consuming media alongside their parents — parents typically chime in and explain what’s going on or answer questions or share their opinions about what they’re seeing, hearing, and doing. In turn, parents can have a better understanding of what their kids are doing and learning and what they’re involved with during their kids’ media use.

And for a lot of parents, this kind of interaction is important. A recent national survey showed that two-thirds of nearly 1,000 parents of 12- to 17-year-olds said they talked regularly with their kids Continue reading →