Learn more about our mission The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
How can emerging media help children learn? - Joan Ganz Cooney

Forty years after Joan Ganz Cooney's landmark study stimulated the creation of Sesame Street, Sesame Workshop has established a new center devoted to accelerating children's learning in a rapidly changing world.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will focus new attention on the challenges children face today, asking the 21st century equivalent of her original question, "How can emerging media help children learn?"

Featured Event

Featured Event

Breakthrough Learning Forum at Google—a huge success!

Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age brought together thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy, and policy to create a strategy for scaling-up effective models of teaching and learning for children. The forum showcased cutting edge research--proven and promising models that are challenging decision-makers in key sectors to help "refresh and reboot" American global leadership in education. It also engaged youth leaders who are trailblazing the use of digital media as guides and mentors to the adult participants.

The forum was hosted by Google, Inc., in cooperation with forum founders: the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Common Sense Media, and The MacArthur Foundation. Well over 1000 people, both on-site and virtually, participated in the forum.

  • Watch the Webcast archive for October, 27 and October, 28. View photos for October, 27 and October, 28. Relive the event through Tweets and the 200+ questions that poured into Google Moderator.
  • What We Do

    What We Do

    Growing Up Digital: Adults Rate the Educational Potential of New Media and 21st Century Skills

    The Center is excited to announce results from a national survey conducted with Common Sense Media that examines parents' and educators' attitudes regarding digital media use in young children. Among the findings, parents expressed skepticism about the value of many digital media platforms, particularly when it came to whether digital media could teach kids how to communicate and collaborate, skills that are essential in a 21st-century workforce.

    Getting Over the Slump: Innovation Strategies to Promote Children's Learning

    Noted literacy and video games expert and Cooney Center advisory board member Dr. James Paul Gee examines how conventional and “new” literacies can converge with emerging media to produce a powerful new learning equation that can stimulate both our early education system and our children's abilities to innovate and create.

    Contact Us

    Contact Us

    email : cooney.center@sesameworkshop.org
    phone : 212-595-3456

     

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    Stay Connected

    We're on YouTube

    Our YouTube channel features short interviews with some of the most innovative thinkers in digital media and learning. Some recent favorites include: Danah Boyd, James Paul Gee, Katie Salen, Marc Prensky, Congressman George Miller, and of course, our very own Joan Ganz Cooney.