Sesame Workshop (SW), originally known as the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and foundation executive Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce Sesame Street, a television series which would help children, especially those from low-income families, prepare for school. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade."
Joan Ganz Cooney is an American television writer and producer. She is one of the founders of Sesame Workshop, the organization famous for the creation of the children's television show Sesame Street, which was also co-created by her. Cooney grew up in Phoenix and earned a B.A. degree in education from the University of Arizona in 1951. After working for the State Department in Washington, D.C. and as a journalist in Phoenix, she worked as a publicist for television and production companies in New York City. In 1961, she became interested in working for educational television, and became a documentary producer for New York's first educational TV station WNET. Many of the programs she produced won local Emmys.
Katie Salen Tekinbas is a game designer, animator, and educator. She is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. Previously, she taught at DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media, Parsons The New School for Design the University of Texas at Austin, New York University, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has an MFA in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Learning sciences (LS) is an interdisciplinary field that works to further scientific, humanistic and critical theoretical understanding of learning as well as to engage in the design and implementation of learning innovations, and the improvement of instructional methodologies. LS research traditionally focuses on cognitive-psychological, social-psychological, cultural-psychological and critical theoretical foundations of human learning, as well as practical design of learning environments. Major contributing fields include cognitive science, computer science, educational psychology, anthropology, and applied linguistics. Over the past decade, researchers have expanded their focus to include the design of curricula, informal learning environments, instructional methods, and policy innovations.
Mitchel Resnick is Lego Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. As of 2019, Resnick serves as head of the Media Arts and Sciences academic program, which program grants master's degrees and Ph.D.s at the MIT Media Lab.
Idit R. Harel is an Israeli-American entrepreneur and CEO of Globaloria. She is a learning sciences researcher and pioneer of Constructionist learning-based EdTech interventions.
The University of MichiganSchool of Information (UMSI) or iSchool in Ann Arbor is a graduate school offering baccalaureate, magisterial, and doctoral degrees in informatics and information science.
The School of Information Sciences, also The iSchool at Illinois, is an undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Its Master of Science in Library and Information Science is currently accredited in full good standing by the American Library Association. The school is a charter member of the iSchool initiative.
Information and media literacy (IML) enables people to show and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right. Renee Hobbs suggests that “few people verify the information they find online ― both adults and children tend to uncritically trust information they find, from whatever source.” People need to gauge the credibility of information and can do so by answering three questions:
- Who is the author?
- What is the purpose of this message?
- How was this message constructed?
The School of Education and Social Policy (SESP), established in 1926, is the smallest of the eight undergraduate and graduate institutions at Northwestern University, USA. Located about 12 miles north of downtown Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, SESP is devoted to the academic study of education and is consistently ranked among the top schools of education in the US.
The College of Information Studies is a school within the University of Maryland, College Park in Maryland, United States. The College offers graduate study leading to the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS), the Master of Information Management (MIM), the Master of Science in Human Computer Interaction (HCIM), and the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Information Studies. In addition, it offers an undergraduate degree, the Bachelor of Science in Information Science. The College of Information Studies focuses on creating new designs and addressing issues involving Information Management.
Beykent University is a foundation university in Istanbul, Turkey, teaching in English, Russian combined and Turkish with 29,401 students.
Charles M. Payne, Jr. is an American academic whose areas of study include civil rights activism, urban education reform, social inequality, and modern African-American history. He was the Chief Education Officer for Chicago Public Schools and used to be the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.
The School of Communication and Information (SC&I) is a professional school within the New Brunswick Campus of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The school was created in 1982 as a result of a merger between the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, the School of Communication Studies, and the Livingston Department of Urban Journalism. The school has about 2,500 students at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, and about 60 full-time faculty.
Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q) is Northwestern University’s campus in Education City, Doha, Qatar, founded in partnership with Qatar Foundation in 2008.
Malmö University is a Swedish university located in Malmö, Sweden. With more than 24,000 students and about 1,600 employees, Malmö University is the ninth largest institute of learning in Sweden. It has exchange agreements with more than 240 partner universities around the world and roughly a third of the students have an international background. Education at Malmö University focuses on, among other things, migration, international relations, political science, sustainability, urban studies, and new media and technology. It often includes elements of internship and project work in close cooperation with external partners.
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan research and innovation group founded by Sesame Workshop to advance children's �literacy skills and foster innovation in children's learning through digital media.
Michael H. Levine is the founding executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, an independent research group founded by Sesame Workshop focused on fostering innovation in children's learning through digital media. He was recently appointed as Sesame Workshop’s first Chief Knowledge Officer.
Elizabeth Gerber is an associate professor in the Segal Design Institute, Mechanical Engineering, and Technology and Social Behavior departments at Northwestern University.
Sandra L. Calvert is a developmental and child psychologist, whose scholarship illuminates the children's media area, including policy implications. Calvert is currently professor of psychology, and an affiliated faculty member at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. Calvert is also the co-founder and Director of the Children's Digital Media Center, a multi-university research initiative funded primarily by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as by private foundations. Calvert served as chair of the department of psychology at Georgetown University from 2006 to 2009.
