The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media has started a
blog "to expand the dialogue on the potential of digital media to support early learning and development," as the first entry notes.
"The blog is the next step in work that we've been doing for more than three years," says the Rogers Center's Executive Director Rita Catalano: trying to provide guidance to parents and media creators, educators and researchers, about what represents quality children's media and what is best for them.
The Rogers Center had already created a "Framework for Quality" to spur the dialog, but Catalano hopes the blog will "promote some new thinking" on the subject.
Among the regulars will be two Rogers Center Fellows Daniel Anderson, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, who researches the effects of adult background television on infants and toddlers, and Alice Wilder, chief content officer at Speakaboos, a children's website that encourages reading and literacy.
Beginning next week, Wilder and Carla E. Fisher, the founder, game designer and researcher at No Crusts Interactive, will present videos showing kids and adults using media products to an expert panel for comment. "It's meant to model how people think about quality when people use an app or other digital media product," Catalano says.
Guest bloggers will vary from week to week. One of the early entries was by Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, and Michael H. Levine, executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, about their new report from the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Ellen Galinsky, president of Families and Work Institute and author of Mind in the Making, will write about the potential of media to help with child development.
Child is still hoping to get more public commentary, "but we've seen people sharing it on their social media, so I'm hopeful this means we will continue to build an audience for it."
Do Good:
Looking for an additional way to join the conversation about kids and learning? Join the conversation at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh
here.
Writer:
Marty Levine
Source: Rita Catalano, Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media