This large-scale study by Common Sense Media explores young people’s use of the full range of media and technology. It offers a comprehensive picture of the use of media by kids, age 8 to 18 in the U.S., including the level of enjoyment, frequency of use, and amount of time devoted to a wide array of media activities and devices.

Download the full report here.

 

The 21st Century demands a modern approach to social and emotional learning.

In 2014, SCE launched the SEL Challenge to explore how young people are best supported in developing skills like empathy, teamwork, problem solving, and more. We gathered a learning community of researchers, expert practitioners and evaluators to study the practices of 8 exemplary programs with a proven track record of transforming the lives of teens.

The result of this work is the SEL field guide, Preparing Youth to Thrive: Promising Practices for Social and Emotional Learning, available for download here.

Each December, SCE pulls out a file of organizations that have caught our attention, impressed and intrigued us during the year. As part of a special discretionary program, we make unexpected, one-time grants to support efforts that we admire.

We are thrilled to award our 2015 Catalyst grants to 12 organizations using innovative approaches to drive social change across a variety of sectors.

Click here to view the complete list of Catalyst grant recipients for 2015.

Announced this fall, Common Sense Media forged a partnership with Univision to bridge the digital divide and expand access to high-speed internet for Latinos.

The “new joint initiative, ¡Avanzamos Conectados! (Connected, We Advance!), is an unprecedented, multi-year national media effort designed to inform and connect Hispanic students to broadband technology.”

Part of this national media effort will also help Latino youth and families navigate digital media for learning, leveraging the learning ratings platform built by Common Sense Media with support from SCE.

Read more from Common Sense Media about the initiative here.

In 2015, SCE created a new grant portfolio to proactively target and partner with thought leaders and creative organizations on the leading edge in the fields we work in: digital learning and social emotional learning.

Through our SEL Venture Grant portfolio, we build partnerships with innovative groups working to solve key challenges aligned to our strategy of surfacing and spreading best practices in SEL in order to help more youth thrive.

Our SEL Venture Grant recipients include:

MHA Labs

Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning

Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

We are excited to work with these organizations toward transforming life outcomes for youth.

Learn more here.

Based on marketplace inefficiencies, the warp speed of change in the digital environment, and a need for stronger guidance from both parents and professionals, new divides in the quality of educational experiences for low-income households have emerged. SCE is thrilled to partner with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and First Book, a nonprofit organization that connects publishers and community organizations, on a research project that will offer one of the first major assessments of the technology infrastructure and content needs of those groups looking to help low income and socio-economically disadvantaged kids.

The goal of the “Mind the Gap” initiative is to build a more robust, evidence-driven distribution and support network for both developers of digital learning products and education professionals in order to better reach underserved communities.

Through this partnership, the Cooney Center and First Book are exploring opportunities to deliver high-quality digital content to underserved youth through First Book’s vast network of over 185,000 pre-school, schools and community-based programs. The Cooney Center is analyzing market data and funding opportunities related to afterschool and other informal learning spaces, and producing case studies of developers and investors and the professionals who use digital media in their instruction of underserved youth.

A survey of over 1,400 teachers and school administrators as well as out-of-school program directors and instructors highlights some of the needs and opportunities for those wanting to use games to engage and educate. Forty-Seven percent of teachers and school administrators and 34% of out-of-school program directors and instructors have expressed interest in learning more about using game consoles and other gaming tools to teach. What are the major impediments to those educators unlocking the power of game-based learning and other e-learning tools?

The barriers to the use of games and other technologies echo what we have heard before from general surveys of teachers. Still, for those serving lower-income students the challenges often are more complex than in other schools. The big three barriers both in- and out-of-school folks reported were:

• Cost
• The age of technology
• Lack of training

The results are an initial look at a far larger analysis of the state of video and other digital games in the classroom that will be released in 2016.

The Cooney Center is releasing a series of reports and tools on gamesandlearning.org to inform developers and investors interested in reaching afterschool markets and low-income communities. Here are a few of the recent reports:
Cost, Training Top Challenges for Low-Income Providers

Major Project Looks at Digital Access among Low-income Kids

Low-Income Programs, Schools Surveyed on Tech Use

 

SCE partner Common Sense Media recently released a new report showing widely varying media habits of youth ages 8-18.

The shockers?

• Tweens spend on average 6 hours a day using media
• Teens spend on averge 9 hours per day
• 60% text while doing homework
• TV dominates over social media in teens and tweens daily media diet

Check out the infographic below for more, or read the full report from Common Sense Media here.

 

Games for Change, the leading organization dedicated to celebrate the power of digital games for learning and civic engagement, has teamed up with the NYC Department of Education for a game design challenge for public middle and high school students citywide.

In the NYC Games for Change Student Challenge, students are invited to design and code original digital games about social issues in their local communities, based on five themes. The themes and their affiliated sponsors are:

• Animal Welfare (A Kinder World Foundation)
• Smart Cities (Mayor’s Office of Technology & Innovation)
• Civic Journalism (The New York Times)
• Literacy (XPRIZE Foundation)
• Youth Justice (ACLU)

The theme partners provide multimedia assets for students to use in their games, and facilitate in-person meet-ups to give students opportunities to interface with experts in the field and connect their game making to issues they care about.

To prepare students for the Challenge, 20 NYC public school teachers have received training and financial support to run game design courses using the Globaloria blended learning platform, teaching their students how to code digital games. Professional game designers will mentor these students throughout their game making process.

Students can work either individually or as a team of up to four. A jury of top game developers and social innovators will evaluate submissions and select the winners. Prizes, which include paid internships and mentorship opportunities with game studios, will be presented at an awards ceremony at the Museum of the Moving Image in March 2016. The winning games will be unveiled there in a public exhibition, and featured at the Games for Change Arcade at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. The deadline to submit games is January 30, 2016.

Melissa Tortora, who teaches 9^th grade English at Hudson High School of Learning Technologies in Chelsea, is one of the teachers who has gone through the game design training. “Game design does not necessarily require a technology background or advanced math skills,” she commented. “What it is about most is logical thinking. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned with my students and to see what they come up as they enter the competition.”

The Challenge is being developed and hosted by Games for Change in collaboration with the NYC Department of Education through two innovation initiatives, iZone and Digital Ready, and leaders in the social impact games sector Globaloria, Institute of Play and the Museum of the Moving Image. A consortium of cross-sector partners is providing additional resources, prizes, and expertise, including leading game platform Unity and digital learning advocate Susan Crown Exchange.

Throughout the Challenge, Students will develop 21st-century skills such as systems thinking, problem solving, and inquiry-based learning through hands-on, collaborative learning experiences. Teachers are empowered to use game design as a teaching tool, and provided with professional development and in-class support. NYC communities will benefit from increased civic engagement and awareness around social issues.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with organizations committed to bringing digital gaming into classrooms and after-school programs,” says Susanna Pollack, Acting President of Games for Change. “This winning combination of games and social change is core to G4C’s mission and we look forward to bringing the Challenge program to other cities in following years.”

For more information or to submit a game to the Challenge, visit www.g4cstudentchallenge.org.