AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, Named for Sesame Street’s Visionary Founder, to Examine Digital Media’s Educational Potential - Press Release

In 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney and her colleagues created a pop culture phenomenon called Sesame Street (www.sesamestreet.org) forever linking the words, ‘educational’ and ‘television’ and harnessing the power of the medium in a unique way. Almost 40 years and 150 Emmy Awards later, Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, is taking Ms. Cooney’s experiment into the digital age with the unveiling today of THE JOAN GANZ COONEY CENTER at Sesame Workshop (www.joanganzcooneycenter.org). The Center, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research and production institute, will explore the 21st century equivalent of her original question, “How can emerging media help children learn?”

Focusing on the needs of elementary age children, The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will conduct and support research, create new media properties, and stimulate a national dialogue on how interactive technologies can be utilized to help accelerate children’s learning. Based at Sesame Workshop, the Center will work closely with leading universities and industry partners that are engaged in cutting edge media and learning innovations. New media platforms such as the web, cell phones and video games will be examined to better understand their role in children’s literacy development both in school and out. The Center will also champion best practices and develop policy agendas to stimulate investment in promising and proven new media technologies for children. Two Cooney Fellows have been appointed, who will assist with carrying out the Center’s objectives.

“When Sesame Street was created, we brought national attention to the sorry state of children’s television and challenged the industry to raise the bar,” said Joan Ganz Cooney. “Today, history is repeating itself as the new media environment resembles the old, vast wasteland. The Center will lead a much needed conversation on how young children can learn from new media innovations, and be a major force in getting industry to act on their behalf.”

More