Joan Ganz Cooney Center

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Joan Ganz Cooney Center Advancing positive futures for kids in the digital world Fellows from academia, industry, and policy help the Cooney Center advance its action research mission.

The Cooney Center concentrates its activities on four primary areas:

· Research: supporting interdisciplinary research among leading scholars engaged in the educational and developmental aspects of new media innovation. The Cooney Center develops practical knowledge to meet the research needs of media producers and tracks new trends through its series of industry research reports.

· Production: collaborating with media companies (commercial and nonprofit) and independent producers to design and test models and prototypes based on academic research. Partners currently include Google, Nokia, the USC Game Innovation Lab, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and E-Line Media.

· Investment: initiating public/private partnerships, making new applications available to commercial investors for further development, and collaborating with distributors to influence product launches. The Cooney Center also runs an annual prize competition to reward and recognize innovation in children's digital media.

· Policy: catalyzing policy change by disseminating research and convening leadership across pivotal sectors to inform national debate and stimulate effective reforms. The Cooney Center's 2009 Leadership Forum: Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age, hosted at the Googleplex, attracted more than 200 thought leaders from research, policy, education, and industry. Recent research publications on the potential of video games and mobile platforms for children's learning have received wide attention in the media and among national and state policymakers.

10/17/2026

We’re excited to share that Toogs is joining the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Sandbox for Literacy Innovations! Toogs is a mobile and tablet app that invites kids and their parents to create, draw, and tell stories together. In the Sandbox, Toogs will explore how the science of early literacy can be embedded into activities that are co-played with a parent and child together. Learn more about their work: https://bit.ly/4dpsEGr

10/16/2026

We’re excited to share that Seesaw is joining the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Sandbox for Literacy Innovations! Seesaw is a suite of multimodal learning and creation tools, digital portfolios, teacher dashboards, and family engagement features. In the Sandbox, Seesaw will explore ways to build on their AI-powered reading fluency assessment. Learn more about their work: https://bit.ly/4dpsEGr

📣 We are so excited to announce the official launch of the RITEC Community of Practice for those passionate about design...
10/15/2026

📣 We are so excited to announce the official launch of the RITEC Community of Practice for those passionate about designing children’s digital play with well-being in mind 📣

We have been listening to game designers, product leads, trust & safety professionals, researchers and other experts in children and digital games over the past year to shape a community dedicated to supporting practitioners in applying the Responsible Innovation in Technology for Children (RITEC) framework, research and tools to their work, with the goal of embedding children's well-being in digital play.

That listening took many forms — interviews, two co-design sessions, and pilot meetings both online and in person. To everyone who contributed to this process: thank you.

What we heard overwhelmingly was a desire for connection. Those making playful digital experiences for children wanted a supportive, playful community where they could practice putting RITEC and designing for well-being into practice, together.

The community is built for designers, product leads, and trust & safety professionals working on digital games for children ages 8–12, and open to practitioners in adjacent fields — learning games, museums, edtech — and anyone building general-audience games that children play widely.

It's a member-driven community that meets regularly online and once a year in person. Membership is free.

We are now officially ready to welcome those interested in being a part of a community like this to join us. You don't need to have used RITEC before, and you don't need to arrive with answers — we hope this will be a place where members bring their questions and challenges to work on together.

✨ Register: https://buff.ly/qaDogdm
🎮 Read more about the community: https://bit.ly/4zzuywN

UNICEFinnovation • Games for Change • The LEGO Foundation • LEGO • Joan Ganz Cooney Center

10/14/2026

We’re excited to share that Medley Learning is joining the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Sandbox for Literacy Innovations! Medley is a browser extension for student devices that automatically adds scaffolds to texts based on each student's English proficiency level. In the Sandbox, Medley will explore how they can expand their model to help students with learning challenges such as dyslexia and ADHD. Welcome to the Sandbox, Medley! Learn more about their work: https://bit.ly/4dpsEGr

Bay Area families: the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to bring Family Digital Wellness activities to Sunday Streets...
10/13/2026

Bay Area families: the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is thrilled to bring Family Digital Wellness activities to Sunday Streets: Excelsior. We'd love to meet you!

The Cooney Center is a research and innovation lab within Sesame Workshop, and we're excited to share some of our research-based activities to promote healthy digital habits for the whole family.

📅 Sunday 10/18 from 11-4 pm, as part of Sunday Streets San Francisco
📍 Stop by our table on Mission St. (near Italy Avenue)
🎉 Our Sunday Streets table includes free, interactive activities to help your family establish digital wellness habits.
📱This event is co-presented by our friends at The GIANT Room in partnership with Verizon (supporting Verizon’s Digital Wellness initiative: https://buff.ly/prhkAll)

Learn more about the Sunday Streets event: https://bit.ly/3VuI0Dy

10/13/2026

We’re excited to share that Kai XR is joining the Joan Ganz Cooney Center Sandbox for Literacy Innovations! Kai XR is an immersive STEM learning platform for elementary and middle-school students. In the Sandbox, Kai XR will explore how their platform can support more students’ reading abilities. Welcome to the Sandbox, Kai XR! Learn more about their work: https://bit.ly/4dpsEGr

See you at Meaningful Play on this Wednesday 10/14! 💡 “Sharing the Secret Sauce: Translating Research into Practice with...
10/11/2026

See you at Meaningful Play on this Wednesday 10/14!

💡 “Sharing the Secret Sauce: Translating Research into Practice with Sesame Workshop & The Joan Ganz Cooney Center” workshop
🧠 Join Sesame Workshop & The Joan Ganz Cooney Center for a 90-minute playful, interactive workshop at Meaningful Play. We’ll share case studies on how we’ve applied research to practice, introduce the Sesame Workshop Model and the Co-Design with Kids Toolkit for designing for kids’ joy and well-being, and offer opportunities for you to practice what you’ve learned!
📍 Carnegie Mellon University | 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
🗓️ 10/14/26, 1:45-3:15 ET
🎟️ Register here: https://bit.ly/3VMDy2P

cc: Center for Transformational Play, Carnegie Mellon University, Michigan State University

Who will we see at our EDTECH WEEK panels next week? Panel 1: Incubating Innovation in Literacy Edtech🗓️ Wed 10/14 | 10...
10/10/2026

Who will we see at our EDTECH WEEK panels next week?

Panel 1: Incubating Innovation in Literacy Edtech
🗓️ Wed 10/14 | 10:00-10:30 AM
💡 This panel highlights innovative, research-informed design practices for creating high-quality literacy technologies for children across home and school contexts. We will demonstrate how tools can be designed to be both child-centered and aligned with the latest learning sciences research. Bringing together designers, researchers, educators, and funders, the panel showcases how cross-sector collaboration strengthens impactful edtech.
👤 Medha Tare (Cooney Center), Azadeh Jamalian (The GIANT Room), Laina Vlasnik Yip (Robin Hood), Youngna Park (Sago Mini), Ellen Darensbourg (New York City Public Schools)

Panel 2: Empowered or Outsourced: Rethinking Student Agency in the Age of AI
🗓️ Thurs 10/15 | 9:00-9:45 AM
💡 As artificial intelligence tools become fixtures in classrooms and on campuses, educators face a question that cuts to the heart of learning itself: are students becoming more capable, or are they quietly ceding the cognitive work that makes education meaningful? This panel brings together researchers, practitioners, and instructional designers to examine how AI is reshaping the conditions under which students exercise agency—the ability to set goals, make decisions, persist through difficulty, and take ownership of their intellectual development.
👤 Michael Preston (Cooney Center), Colby Tofel-Grehl (Teachers College, Columbia University), Kristen Dicerbo (Khan Academy), Caroline Casagrande (Vector EDU), Nathan Holbert (Teachers College)

📍 EdTech Week | Columbia University | 601 West 125th St.
🎟️ Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/3T0KKYi

Boston families: we can’t wait to see you TOMORROW (Sat 10/10) at Family Digital Wellness Day! Stop by the Roxbury YMCA ...
10/09/2026

Boston families: we can’t wait to see you TOMORROW (Sat 10/10) at Family Digital Wellness Day! Stop by the Roxbury YMCA anytime between 12-2 pm for fun digital wellness activities and pizza.

📅 Saturday 10/10 from 12-2, stop by for all or part of the time
📍 Roxbury YMCA | 285 Martin Luther King Blvd, Roxbury, MA
🎉 This free event is open to the public and includes interactive activities to help your family establish digital wellness habits, and pizza!
📱We’re the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a research and innovation lab within Sesame Workshop that advances positive futures for kids in the digital age. This event is co-presented by our friends at The GIANT Room and Boston Children’s Hospital's Digital Wellness Lab in partnership with Verizon (supporting Verizon’s Digital Wellness initiative: https://vz.to/4h4yNKf)

(Note: this is a rescheduled event- original date was 9/26 and was postponed due to weather)

cc: Roxbury YMCA (YMCA of Greater Boston)

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is proud to announce that four inspiring partners are joining the Sandbox for Literacy Innov...
10/08/2026

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is proud to announce that four inspiring partners are joining the Sandbox for Literacy Innovations, bringing together researchers, developers, and families to rethink how literacy tools are designed - with children’s voices and experiences at the center. By fostering these cross-sector partnerships, we’re working to spark real change in early learning. Welcome to the Sandbox, Kai XR, Medley Learning, Seesaw, and Toogs! Meet our new partners and learn about the Sandbox here: https://bit.ly/4dpsEGr

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