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. Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce the Sesame Street television series. 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."
Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) is an Israeli independent public college primarily offering undergrad education. It also has a Master's degree program and does research in the fields of science, applied mathematics, engineering, digital medical technologies, instructional technologies, industrial engineering/technology management and design.
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 co-created by her. Cooney grew up in Phoenix and earned a Bachelor of Arts 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 Tekinbaş is an American 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.
Mizuko Itō, sometimes known as Mimi Ito, is a Japanese cultural anthropologist and learning scientist. She is Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Chair in Digital Media and Learning, and Director of the Connected Learning Lab in the Department of Informatics, Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her main professional interest is young people's use of media technology. She has explored the ways in which digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities.
Idit R. Harel is an Israeli-American entrepreneur and CEO of Globaloria. She is researcher of learning sciences and of constructionist learning-based EdTech interventions.
The Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment is the technology department of Birmingham City University, England, covering engineering programmes. It is located in the City Centre campus in the eastern half of the Millennium Point complex. Spanning five stories of the £114 million complex in the developing Eastside district, the centre offers courses in undergraduate and postgraduate education.
The University of Maryland (UMD)College of Information is a teaching and research college located just outside of Washington, DC on the UMD College Park campus in the state of Maryland, USA. The UMD College of Information, also known as the INFO College, offers bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree and certificate programs. Research at the college spans areas of information science, from AI to cybersecurity to archives, and is driven by a mission to use information and technology to solve real world problems and do good.
Istanbul Beykent University is a foundation university in Istanbul, Turkey, teaching in English, Russian combined and Turkish with 30.000 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), also known as Northwestern Qatar, is Northwestern University’s campus in Education City, Doha, Qatar, founded in partnership with the Qatar Foundation in 2008.
Lloyd Newton Morrisett Jr. was an American experimental psychologist with a career in education, communications, and philanthropy. He was one of the founders of the Children's Television Workshop, the organization that created the children's television show Sesame Street, which Morrisett created with Joan Ganz Cooney.
Malmö University is a public 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.
Yasmin B. Kafai is a German American academic who is Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, with a secondary appointment in Computer and Information Sciences at University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is a past president of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS), and an executive editor of the Journal of the Learning Sciences.
Michael H. Levine is Senior Vice President at Nickelodeon where he is leading learning and social impact work at Noggin, an industry leader in early childhood education. Previously he was 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 and Sesame Workshop’s first Chief Knowledge Officer.
Connected learning is a type of learning in which a young person pursues a personal interest with friends and adults. This learning method is linked to academic achievement, career success, or civic engagement. The approach leverages new media to broaden access to opportunities and meaningful learning experiences. The connected learning model suggests that youth learn best when they are interested in what they are learning, have peers and mentors who share these interests, and their learnings are directed toward opportunity and recognition. According to the proponents of connected learning, social support for interest-driven learning and connections drive individual learning outcomes. Platforms that support connected learning are generally characterized as having a sense of shared purpose, a focus on production, and openly networked infrastructures.
Elizabeth Gerber is a tenured 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.
