Monday night Women in Children's Media and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center cosponsored an event at Sesame Workshop showcasing the center's newest study, "The New Coviewing: Designing for Learning through Joint Media Engagement." You can download a pdf of the study here--it's the center's first study published exclusively online; this not only saves trees but also allows for some cool interactive features impossible in paper. (Mac users should use Acrobat rather than Preview.)
Now last night I spent just over an hour writing what I thought was a really thorough review of the event and the report; that got deleted when I tried to post it, and I'm not able right now to rewrite the entire post. (Frustrated with google!) But the most important thing I can say is to read the actual report itself. The design guide will be an excellent resource for content creators of all stripes: it contains great, research-backed advice about how to design media that will maximize the opportunities parents have to interact with their children while using/viewing your product. Like I wrote at the very outset of this blog several years ago, smart parents will look for those opportunities anyhow, so it's savvy of producers to maximize that potential in our products.
One great example of this that I wanted to mention is the new Electric Company video game "Electric Racer." You can download this for free at the show's website. It's basically a phonics game couched stealthily in a racing game. That in and of itself is worthwhile for kids in its target 6-9 demo, but it goes further by involving parents as well. Kids man the arrow keys to steer the car while parents use the mouse to unscramble words and give their kids additional speed. It's a great example of media designed to foster collaboration and learning through "joint media engagement," or JME.
So to be brief, what are some pointers for maximizing JME? Check out the report for full discussions, but here are some bullet points:
* Make it kid-driven
* Provide multiple planes of engagement
* Ensure differentiation of roles; parents shouldn't be backseat driving the kids' task
* "Scaffold to scaffold," meaning you should make it easy to engage with immediately; parents shouldn't need a lot of prep
* Previous/Next -- build on prior experience and prepare for future experiences, within your own brand or elsewhere
* Co-creation -- like old Lego, give the kids the tools and let them build their world the way they want; allow parents the tools to collaborate but not dominate
* Fit -- make sure it fits well into daily routines, otherwise it won't get used
* Collaborate, don't compete; it's never good to pit parents against kids, at least not in educational media
Wish I had time to repeat some of the other great points. Perhaps the best lesson is for people to get in tune with what WICM is doing, either on their website or through their twitter feed (@wicmnyc), for future events and writing groups. They're a great resource and another joy of working in children's media in NYC.
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NOTE: To the PBSKids.org IT team, "Electric Racer" isn't downloading (with Safari). Any thoughts?
Happy new year! I've been writing on my other blog so I'm glad to have a reason to post here again, and a really good reason it is (and it's not even the upcoming BAM Kids Film Festival--though I wanted to mention that). Last night ASIFA-East and SVA hosted a panel called "Inside Sesame Street." The four panelists were Louis Mitchell, an Associate Design Director of Special Projects (more on that later); Margot Duffy, a producer of "Sesame Street English" (that too); Marcus Pauls, a producer of digital media; and Nikon Kwantu, a digital media and animation producer; it was organized and chaired by Justin Simonich.
Justin began with a quick history of the show, including a 2-3-minute television spot from 1969 announcing the show for the first time. Rowlf the dog is in charge of the whole thing, but it's Kermit who comes up with the title "Sesame Street," "because it's going to open up whole new worlds to these kids. You know, like 'Open Sesame.'" That was a gem that's apparently not online, so it was great to be able to see it.
Then we moved into a discussion of each panelist's position and recent projects. If there were any over-riding themes, the most prominent was what a wonderful opportunity it is to work for Sesame Workshop. Everyone was really enthused to be able to work with these classic characters, new media and formats, and the expectations of the brand. Louis Mitchell was particularly explanatory about how much of a dream come true it is to be working on the Street; during the day yesterday he was attending a shoot with Kevin Clash for a new Elmo project, and he talked about how fulfilling it is to be able to sit down on the most famous stoop in the world and work out production problems, or do things that naysayers claimed could never be done, like transport the Snuffy puppet for a photo shoot or introduce him into teen licensing and merchandise. That enthusiasm and optimism was probably the best part of the evening for me--I'm using its momentum to push me through all these video projects and finally get randyastle.com back up and running--and it's evident in this 2009 interview that Louis gave The Muppet Mindset, or in this photo (which we saw and is actually a full-body shot, taken after shipping the giant Muppet to his first L&M photo shoot).
A second theme was the protection/projection of the Sesame brand that I just mentioned. Louis does a lot of this as he vets everything from scripts to DVD covers. He does the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons and floats, and talked about how one Super Grover pose was too heroic, when in fact "he's an idiot," so he redesigned it to look more bumbling. (The original character designers, in passing him the baton years ago, emphasized that each character was created to exemplify certain preschool character traits, and the most important thing--for characterizations and curriculum--is to ensure that the characters remain true to that purpose. Grover, then, may be bumbling but he's never down on himself, he's the eternal optimist. That's what Super Grover as well as Regular Grover teaches, which may be why he was my favorite as a kid.) But with the property in so many territories and existing in so many media--print, live, interactive, etc. etc.--the brand is more than just something that concerns individual artists; it's enshrined in the culture of Sesame Workshop, with lots of levels of review to ensure that the brand--and the responsibility in implies toward parents and kids--is maintained. As Louis said, "All the new media have to connect back to the show." One department with a lot of sway there is called ER&O--Education, Research, and Outreach--and it got a lot of both wry and appreciative shout outs during the evening.
This, of course, implies the third theme of the evening, that the bureaucracy at the Street has really increased over the years. Gone are the days of carte blanche commissions to freelance animators, for instance, and any project can expect a litany of notes all the way through postproduction and even broadcast--tweaks might still be made on something that's already aired. But notes on curriculum, story, music, and other components are no strangers to children's media, and Nick, Disney, and CN probably aren't any different.
Here are some other items:
* One major project for Digital Media is the next Xbox Kinect game. Just like television was an emerging medium in 1966, so are gaming consoles today, with over 50% of American households owning one. The motion sensors of the Kinect make it ideal for preschoolers who don't have the fine motor skills to operate other devices, and Marcus Pauls talked about how they were going back and using forty years' worth of archival footage and make what was always an interactive show truly interactive, with player/viewer involvement affecting what goes on on screen. Loretta and I tried to go to a publicity event for the launch of the "Once Upon a Monster" game a few months ago but we couldn't get from her school to the venue in the pouring rain in time, so I can't really say much else about it. Here's a little trailer, though.
It's a long-term partnership with Microsoft, though, and the new game(s) are in post now; Marcus said they recently finished a seventeen-day shoot for the original content for the game, which consists of eight episodes.
* Ebooks are also a growing medium. The classic The Monster at the End of This Book just launched for handheld devices, and lots others are underway. I had a chance conversation with an editor at Sesame publishing earlier this week and she said the same thing, that ebooks are growing but they're committed to maintain print publishing as well.
* Digital Media has forty in-house employees, but it's producer-driven so they still look for outside freelance talent. You get those jobs by networking, putting out your own stuff, etc.-all the traditional methods.
* I didn't realize this, but Abby's Flying Fairy School (animated by Speakeasy in New Jersey) is actually Sesame's first transmedia project. Each episode, as seen in the middle of every Sesame Street episode, is written so that it has five points where, online, kids can enter the story and interact with it. I'll definitely be checking that out. You can do that here--so much for the rest of my work day.
* Margot Duffy's been working on a project called "Sesame Street English," which is basically a Street-based curriculum for teaching English as a second language, for 3-12-year-olds. The client is in Japan, but this could work for other territories too. Aging it up for middle schoolers was a challenge, even with Japan's increased acceptance of bright animation for older kids and adults (the program is 100% animated, I forget if with Flash or html5, all done locally here in the NY area). In fact, that leads me to a point Nikon Kwantu wanted to make, which is that
* Sesame Street is really a bastion of the New York animation (and puppetry) community. It's been here over forty years and it's kept people working. Economically, it's a major part of the filmmaking community here.
* Cookie Monster is #1 in the teen market. Mr. Snuffleupagus is #2. Who is #3?
* One thing impeding transmedia is its cost, especially since the Street's a union show. There's a push-pull effect between legacy (the term for maintaining the brand and the feeling of the show from the past 41 years) and moving into transmedia and new platforms.
* Everyone at Sesame Workshop wants to hire people with interactive experience. If you want to work with them know Flash, html5, ebooks, interactivity, etc. Stay up to date.
* Louis Mitchell has an online school for artists and creatives.
* Operating Muppets is hard. Kevin Clash and others travel to each of the 21 international coproductions (or those puppeteers come to Astoria) to train the puppeteers in the "Muppet Way." Carrol Spinney is particularly amazing: the Japanese 'Big Bird' has fainted from heat exhaustion inside his suit, and the Brazilian performer has kept a chiropractor on set because the costume is so demanding, but, as Margot pointed out, Spinney has conducted entire symphonies in character, keeping his arm up in the head the entire time. Big Bird is 8' 2", I believe they said, and that's a lot of bird. And his Oscar is pretty amazing too, of course.
* Just because you work for the Street doesn't mean to get to visit the Street. You can work there for years and never set foot on the set at Kaufman Astoria. That makes sense, but my own dream, I think, would be to stand in front of Hooper's Store and reach out and touch Oscar's trash can. Some day...
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I've talked to other children's television producers who have a decidedly low opinion of Sesame Street, citing its snarkiness and its obsession with celebrity cameos, parodies of grown-up films, and asides to adult viewers--none of which enrich the experience for the intended viewers, kids. But to hear the commitment, dedication, and technical and artistic standards of each of the panelists--and all of their coworkers--shows me that Sesame Street is no dinosaur. It's been on the air this long for a reason, and it's still an excellent show with exacting standards and some of the best artists in television. My Isabelle, who's almost 2 1/2, has now largely stopped watching In the Night Garden. Instead we've added Blue's Clues to her repertoire, but her favorite program is clearly "Mumo," her name for Elmo and, by extension, the whole show. There's a reason it's her favorite: the craftsmanship shows on the air, and that's what the entire organization of Sesame Workshop exists for. Thanks to Justin Simonich, ASIFA, and the panelists for an enlightening and encouraging evening.
While we're on the subject of apps, here's one that I totally missed a month ago when it was released. It's FETCH! Lunch Rush, and here's the Nov. 14 press release:
PBS KIDS Launches Its First Educational Augmented Reality App
Furthering PBS’s leadership in using new technologies to support learning, FETCH! Lunch Rush App employs augmented reality to teach kids addition and subtraction
ARLINGTON, VA, Nov. 14, 2011 – PBS KIDS today announced its first augmented reality app for iPhone and iPod touch, FETCH! Lunch Rush, which is now available on the App Store. Available for free, the app uses the camera on iPhone or iPod touch to overlay computer-generated graphics on top of the physical, real-world environment. Extending PBS’s leadership in using augmented reality as an educational tool, FETCH! Lunch Rush opens a new world of learning by teaching kids ages six to eight math skills, like addition and subtraction, while blending the virtual and real world into a truly engaging experience.
“Augmented reality is becoming a popular marketing tool and a compelling feature for gamers, but no one has fully explored what this could mean for educating children,” said Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President, Interactive, Product Development and Innovation, PBS. “We were among the first to offer educational augmented reality kids content when we launched the DINOSAUR TRAIN Hatching Party online game last year, in which a player’s real world intersects with a virtual environment online to help hatch a dinosaur egg. We’re excited to expand our exploration of this space by launching our first augmented reality mobile app and continue PBS KIDS’s leadership in using new technologies to further learning.”
“The FETCH! Lunch Rush App is designed as a 3-D game, which helps kids visualize the math problems they are trying to solve,” added Lesli Rotenberg, Senior Vice President, Children’s Media, PBS. “At PBS KIDS our goal is to use media to nurture kids’ natural curiosity and inspire them to explore the world around them; we can’t wait to see what this new app will mean for furthering that exploration.”
The Fetch! Lunch Rush App was produced by PBS member station WGBH and is based on the PBS KIDS GO!series FETCH! With Ruff Ruffman, also produced by WGBH. In this multiplayer app, Ruff Ruffman has to collect the lunch order for his studio crew. The challenge is keeping track of how many pieces of sushi everyone wants using augmented reality “markers” (printable hand-outs) that prompt activity within the app. The app uses 3-D imagery to reinforce the early algebraic concepts, helping kids to make the connection between real objects and corresponding numeric symbols.
The FETCH! Lunch Rush App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone or iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore.
Developed in partnership with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and powered by a Ready To Learn grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Fetch! Lunch Rush is part of a new suite of games available on the newly launched PBS KIDS Lab website (PBSKIDS.org/lab). Combined with online and interactive whiteboard games, this new app helps build a learning experience for kids that takes place across platforms, all with the goal of accelerating learning. In addition to FETCH!, six suites based on hit PBS KIDS series are available on the PBS KIDS Lab: THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT!, CURIOUS GEORGE,SID THE SCIENCE KID, FIZZY’S LUNCH LAB, SUPER WHY!. and DINOSAUR TRAIN.
To date, PBS KIDS mobile apps have been downloaded more than 1.4 million times. With a transmedia approach, PBS KIDS is increasingly serving children wherever they live, learn, and play – through mobile devices, as well as on TV, online, in the classroom, and through a new line of educational toys.
Here's an informal announcement from Darren Lutz of Believe Animation about the latest with Dinosaurus ExploreUs. I worked on the original television bible and, if I remember right, pilot episode script. With money tight for television pilots Believe has moved to introduce Dinos in new interactive spaces, which is pretty great. I haven't seen it but it sounds like a nice integration of print and interactive media.
Exciting news from the work front. We just finished a book for one of my animated children's shows called DinosaurUs ExploreUs and it is being released this friday. yeh! It's called Rocks In My Socks and it was authored by my sister and I. It's an adorable story about the process of acceptance. What makes it really stand out from the pack though, is that it has Augmented Reality (old name; virtual reality) games and activities in it. You need an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch 4th gen. to use the AR. Its like nothing you have ever seen before. It will make an AWESOME christmas present for the lil' ones :-) It will be available on Amazon and the Dino website this Friday. The FREE App is in review by Apple now and should be ready be weeks end also.
So I just got passed along this new manifesto for quality and responsibility in the creation of children's apps. I know quite a few people whose names appear in the signatures, and there's nothing in the manifesto that they weren't already doing; be sure to read the "Our Thinking" page. Where it might be most helpful for producers is to get in touch with other like-minded professionals. On that note, the Facebook Children and Media Professionals group is great for that to. Happy producing!
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We were able to go down to Virginia Beach to see my brother's family, play with cousins, work on riding a bike without dozens of cars all around, and visit Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg on Black Friday. It wasn't Plymouth, but it was great to see the site of America's oldest English settlement and the recently excavated site of their first church, where Pocahontas was married. (At least I think the covered hole in the ground was the site referenced in the article, which came out a day or two after we visited.) Loretta's just suddenly gotten into the American Girl books, so it was nice to have two in hours in Williamsburg so that she can identify with the place when she reads the Felicity books, which she started this morning on the subway. It was a really unexpected "text-to-self" connection, as they say at her school.
Recently I've really been trying to get up to speed on all the kids' literary/narrative apps out there, like the Mo Willems app I wrote about the other week. A new one came out on 11/11 that looks really promising, Disney's Beauty and the Beat Storybook Deluxe:
Here's the description as posted in the app store:
Experience a tale as old as time in this fully interactive Storybook Deluxe app. Complete with games, movie clips, puzzles, coloring pages, and sing-along songs from the film, you’ll find a surprise on every page. Hear the story read aloud, record your own narration, or explore at your own pace.
In this unforgettable story of love and adventure, a young woman named Belle finds herself in a castle with talking furniture, an enchanted rose, and a grumpy beast. Despite an awkward beginning, Belle and the Beast gradually become friends, and Belle learns not to judge a book by its cover. A beloved Disney favorite retold in a magical new format the whole family can enjoy!
Features: * Interactive Storybook Deluxe app features your favorite characters from Disney's award-winning Beauty and the Beast. * Two reading modes allow you to follow along as the story is read aloud, or explore at your own pace. * Engage in exciting activities based on scenes from Beauty and the Beast—help Belle make her way to the Beast's castle in the hedge maze, or go on a hunt for hidden roses. * Puzzles and coloring pages for all ages! * Record your voice reading the story and hear it played back as narration. * Jump to your favorite page with the Visual Page Index.
I haven't been able to try it out yet--I guess I need to put an iPhone or Pad on my Christmas list--but it shows the promise of the expanding field of e-publishing. The combination of gaming and print is interesting, expanding the story world of the experience in ways that can engage new readers or lengthen the experience for established fans, and the games and coloring pages look really fun. But I'm a little more interested in the ways the app lets kids interact with the text itself. Essentially, different reading levels and reading out loud yourself remind me exactly of reading a print book, but it is a little different. Hearing your voice back, for instance, is something a book can't do, and I'd love to hear more about users' experiences--or professional research--about how this influences kids and the act of "reading" a text.
If you watch this demo video, however, you'll be reminded that the Disney Beauty and the Beast that's being adapted here to app form is not a book but a film. At first I was hesitant about the use of the full-motion video, but it looks like it actually works with the printed text quite well; the music, visuals, and Linda Woolverton's narrative innovations are obviously the strength of the film version, after all, so it wouldn't make sense to ignore those in bringing the film to the iPad (plus the performances by all the actors). What you're left with is a nice mix of video, print, and gaming, which should be a great treat for any Disney Princess fan. I hope that with future adaptations the mix becomes more and more fluid, but how to do that will be the state of the art of narrative app design.
So even though I haven't yet been able to get an iPhone or iPad, I'm trying to get more informed about the children's media, particularly narrative media, that's appearing on their screens. One app that I've recently come across is the interactive picture book Off to bed! by Mariam Ben-Arab and David Yerga. It's produced by the Spain-based Dada Company and is now available in English as well as Spanish. Here's a video trailer:
And here's a little promotional film about the company in general, including their title on transportation. This is in Spanish and I wish the music were mixed a little lower because it's hard for me to follow what they're saying when Zooey Deschanel is so much easier for me to understand, but even if you don't speak the language there are some good shots of their art and design work.
It looks like companies like this are starting to get their head increasingly around what interactive storytelling is and how it differs from traditional A-Z narratives. But what are these hybrid forms? Is this really a goodnight storybook or should we call it something else? Beyond semantics, is this really helpful in getting kids down for bed? I tried a Pajanimals clip tonight and it initially quieted my two-year-old down, but when it ended and we closed the laptop she broke down, so I'm not sure how helpful it was.
But those are the kinds of questions creators and parents will have to ask now, because there's obviously no going back to the pre-digital days, even for late adapters like me. (I don't want to be a late adapter! I'm just semi-employed!) So I'm excited by the enthusiasm and commitment on Dada's website and the respect they show both their young audience and their new tools. Whenever a new medium's been introduced theorists and practitioners have had to labor over finding its inherent comparative advantages vis-a-vis old media, and I think titles like Off to bed! will help move us in that direction--and entertain kids along the way. I can definitely see Izzy--and even Loretta--playing with those lights, swings, and the kissing moon for quite some time. Bien hecho y buena suerte con sus proyectos en el futuro!
Hope everyone had a great Halloween weekend. Ours was full of candy, pumpkin carving (Harry Potter again...), some Wallace and Gromit were-rabbitting, a little partying, and, for the first time, the Halloween costume parade by Ft. Tryon Park in Washington Heights. Izzy bit into her glow stick and immediately threw up, but she recovered almost immediately and remained the cutest little chicken in the crowd (as profiled on the Today show!).
Before the holiday, however, I had the chance to learn about a cool new app from Hyperion Books and Mo Willems (seen here): Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App. (For everything the Pigeon can't do, evidently sitting on heads is allowed.)
I'm sure that nearly all parents will be familiar with Mo's work in print--he's the author of the Pigeon picture books (starting with Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus in 2003), the Elephant and Piggie easy readers, the Cat the Cat books, and numerous other stand-alone books. Recently Loretta took a break from her Harry Potter craze to really get into Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, which we had gotten for Isabelle. There's no way a naked mole rat isn't funny, and leave it up to Mo to be the first to exploit that in a book for kids. I first saw his work when Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus was being passed around the Strand Bookstore office--which is run by adults--when I was there in 2003. Through all this he's earned my everlasting envy by doing everything I want to do better than I ever could: he's won six Emmys while working on Sesame Street, created his own kids' shows, and racked up the awards with his books: three Caldecotts, two Theodor Seuss Geisel Medals, and probably others I'm losing track of. And he's pushing boundaries as well: on October 23 Jonathan Hunt wrote a column at School Library Journal arguing that the Elephant and Piggie book I Broke My Trunk should be considered for (and win) the Newbery Medal, an award given purely on the merit of the text and hence not traditionally given to picture books; Hunt's somewhat controversial argument, illustrated through a really thorough analysis, is that Mo has blown right past all other easy readers and expanded the state of the art of the storybook or illustrated book in what most publishers and librarians would consider just a picture book. Whether that argument will persuade the ALA remains to be seen, but last month Mo published a new Elephant and Piggie book (the excellent Happy Pig Day) and installed an large-scale sculpture at the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst; and another Pigeon book, The Duckling Gets a Cookie, will be coming early next year. Talk about polymathic. Maybe he should let the Pigeon do some of this stuff!
And now there's an app. At the event last week Mo said he'd long resisted doing something interactive. After his move from television to literature this reasoning makes sense: he's astute enough to know that each property needs to fully exploit the capabilities of its medium, and he didn't want to create any type of app that didn't fully capitalize on the interactive capability of iPads and handheld devices. He didn't want it to keep going if you set it down and left the room. (That would be a TV show on a tablet.) So when the inspiration came about how to create the right kind of app in March he and the folks at Hyperion jumped right in, working on it over the summer and launching last week. And it is a pretty great piece of software; Apple noticed and named it "App of the Week" last week. At $7 it's definitely on the pricey side, but that reflects the work that went into it and the variety of activities it presents youngsters.
This is the most basic: shake the Pigeon. Mo made sure that you could shake the Pigeon--causing him to freak out as seen here--indefinitely. Tickling works too. Beyond small creative corners like this, the app breaks down into two basic categories: drawing the Pigeon and telling stories with him. The first is fairly self-explanatory, with the tutorials introduced by Mo himself. This is enough to keep budding artists busy for some time, but it's with the storytelling where things really come to life. The Disney Interactive Publishing people described this as their first author-driven app, and Mo's drive for true interactivity (much like the original books themselves) means kids are intimately involved with shaping the narratives: the title page even credits it as an app "By Mo Willems and YOU." (So kids can "infringe on my copyright in interesting ways," Mo said.)
There are three levels of interactivity here for different age ranges: Egg, which lets the youngest kids change a few nouns to create new stories; Chick, where slightly older kids can create stories through multiple-choice options; and Big Pigeon, where audio cues tell kids to supply various words, Mad Libs-style, that are then plugged into the resulting story. With all the variables built into the app--let alone the creativity of the kids using it--there are over 100,000 stories in there. (One youngster last week suggested Don't Let the Pigeon Poop on the People, and Mo promised to read it if the boy wrote it.) So there are quite a few train rides built into this thing--although given its aural interface it might be better built for quieter car rides than the straphanger kids here in the city.
Mo's influence is all over this--in a nice Freudian touch he even voiced the Pigeon himself--and I really hope it indicates the direction future narrative-based apps will be going. Thankfully, the Disney/Hyperion folks indicate that it is. After this maiden voyage--the first collaboration between the teams at Hyperion, a book-only imprint of Disney, and Disney Interactive Publishing, the app people--they have several other properties lined up and are even interested in new authors angling to write in this new space. And that bodes well for the state of art of the app; we'll see what suggestions the Newbery committee is dealing with ten years from now.
As for now, there's one cool app out there starring one surly but lovable pigeon. Check out this video and more Willems-related stuff at pigeonpresents.com.
Teletubbies is one of my favorite programs (or favourite programmes) out there for very young children. We used it to introduce Loretta to television when she was old enough, and now I still go back and look at old episodes on my own. I've also recently discovered the joys of In the Night Garden, the follow-up show by the same production company, Ragdoll, in the UK. I've been watching it on the Hub constantly over the past two months and can't think of a better program for the pre-preschool set, the 2-4 year-olds. So if parents have been using these shows to introduce their youngsters to TV (no younger than 2, I hope), then they can now use them to introduce them to their mobile devices. I haven't seen these apps yet, but I expect them to be pretty high quality, given the precedent.
Toddlers can now tap into BBC Worldwide’s In the Night Garden and Teletubbies brands on their iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad mobile devices.
Now available on the App Store, Teletubbies: My First App! features the characters from the TV series along with the original music and voices. Developed by EM Studios, the app features age-appropriate games and a dedicated Parent’s Zone that allows parents to customize the app specifically for their children, including length of play and access to other content.
Similarly, Hibernum Creations’ In the Night Garden app immerses fans into the TV series’ fantastical world. Players are able to dance and play counting games alongside characters like the Pontipines and Upsy Daisy.
Now I know that for some Ragdoll's shows can be a little controversial, and there are plenty of parents out there who don't like the Teletubbies. I think they're extremely well designed, but I'd love to hear any other opinions. What can be the merits of new Teletubbies and Night Garden apps?
Today was the first day of the expanded KidScreen Summit for 2011 and I already had several really great meetings. There were no regular sessions today, just day-long master classes for those who paid an additional fee, but that gave those of us who were meeting a chance at finding a seat. I'll start going to sessions tomorrow, of course, and will probably be tweeting with the hashtag #kidscreen11, which is how you can find out about all the goings-on. My twitter name's randyastle, btw.
The youth research firm Smarty Pants recently released their list of kids' most beloved brands (i.e. a combination of brand awareness and brand loyalty), and though the Wii topped the list Kidscreen on Friday had an interesting little article about Facebook's amazing jump up the charts. Here's what Kidscreen's Wendy Goldman Getzler had to say (read the original here), and here's Smarty Pants' listing of top brands, which is incredibly interesting reading in and of itself, even without the Facebook connection. (Like, what does it mean that Walmart is #51?)
Facebook's age limitation isn't stopping US kids from naming the world's largest social network among one of their Most Beloved Brands this year.
According to an annual study by youth research firm Smarty Pants entitled Young Love, Facebook's brand-affinity ranking among kids ages six to 12 jumped 85 positions in the past year and is now a Top 100 brand among tweens nine to 12.
Facebook jumped from #181 to #126 this year among kids six to 12 and to #91 among tweens, making the social network's shift in ranking among the most significant increases of the 270-plus brands evaluated by more than 4,500 children.
Brands that facilitate a family connection seem to dominate the top spots on the Beloved Brands list, with Nintendo's Wii holding the number-one spot, followed closely by McDonald's, M&M'S, Disney Channel and Oreo. Apple's iPod Touch and iPad made 2010 debuts at #35 and #109, respectively.
I only recently became aware of 360KID, an interactive product development firm that also features a great blog about all things children's media, especially online, gaming, and other interactive media. After I added the blog to my blogroll on the right here the CEO Scott Traylor very graciously contacted me and let me know about two presentations he recently gave. I've been focused for quite a while on children's literature and traditional media--i.e. television--and it's just within the past five or six months that I've started trying to get equally up to speed on interactive media. So these presentations, though brief, were fantastic for me and I wanted to pass them along.
The first was given at Engage Expo earlier this year. It's called "Virtual Worlds for Kids" and is full of some great statistics about what online worlds kids are joining, the advertising and merchandise tie-ins that get them there, the age demographics, etc. Some surprising stuff for me.
This second one is from the EdNET Conference held in Boston last month. Scott is speaking to educators about his perspective as both an educator and consumer product developer: his ninety-second Digital Data Smack Down, starting around 3:40, is worth repeat viewing for educators, commercial producers, and parents alike. Check it out!
Last week ASIFA-East and the School of Visual Arts presented an outstanding evening with the creators of Sesame Workshop's The Electric Company. The show's now preparing the third season in this iteration, but it bears repeating that this is not The Electric Company many of us grown-ups watched a generation ago, nor is it a direct remake. In fact, as reconceived by executive producer Karen Fowler, PBS's VP of Children's Programming Linda Simensky, and their collaborators, the new show has a younger cast, a smarter connection to its audience (imo), and a cohesive structure that eschews sketch comedy in favor of continuous narrative and a strong reading and phonics curriculum for 6-9-year-olds. But it's also updated too: check out the new version's opening credits:
Also in attendance last Tuesday were animation producer Claire Curley, head writer Adam Peltzman, and one of the chief animators Alan Foreman. The emphasis was on the show's animation since this was an ASIFA event, which is an organization based on both coasts for animators interested in all age groups and genres; their interest in the children's television world is quite commendable (although David Levy, ASIFA-East's president, was head animator on Blue's Clues and has been involved with lots of other shows). It was cool to see a children's show examined in this way, with an emphasis on the artistry and craftsmanship of creation, although questions about curriculum and procedures in this industry also came up. Let me just go through my notes to try to capture some of the highlights.
Thanks to a conflicting meeting one hour before this one and the brilliance of the NYC public transportation system I missed Linda's opening remarks about the show's online presence and multimedia/transmedia strategy, but I got the feeling it's very thought out and very organic to the show as a whole. Television episodes are now directing viewers online with cliffhangers that can only be resolved by kids playing as avatars on the web, etc. Plus The Electric Company has always had a multimedia persona, even back in the 1970s with print material supplementing the television show.
Anyway, there are 35 episodes created in one year. They're all shot on the streets of New York, giving the show a realism not available on a set, even one as detailed as Sesame Street's. This has sometimes put off rural PBS station programmers, so the producers walk a fine line between the realism of life here in the city without making it too "scary" for viewers in Nebraska. That's not to be condescending, btw: I was impressed at how seriously Fowler took rural viewers' sensibilities. Ditto for racial issues, sexual/feminist issues, etc.
So they're 24-minute episodes, with each consisting of 15 minutes of live-action narrative and nine minutes of short-form animation. Within each show, for the curriculum, there are five new or complicated words used five times in context. Remember this is a show for 6-9-year-olds, a demographic that, I think, are a little more difficult to write for in a curricular program; they have more autonomy and more non-curricular options, aka SpongeBob, and they're more easily turned off by obvious didacticism, so kudos to Peltzman and his team for keeping it fresh and funny while working in the language lessons. Besides vocabulary (the newest element) that curriculum includes four elements of phonics per episode, connected text (visualizations and contextualizations of printed words), and the narrative element of explicit motivations for the characters, which I believe means relating to the language material, not strictly narrative material.
Interesting stat: over one-third of kids are below reading level by fourth grade. So a huge portion of the producers' motivation is to really improve these kids' lives and nip that trend in the bud, a lot like Reading Rainbow a generation ago.
Now, on the animation. Claire came in in the middle of season one, when things were in trouble for delivery to PBS. They did over eighty animations in 2008, between April and August. (That's a lot!) So she had to really reach out to a lot of artists--trying to find the best ones--with no proof of concept to show them initially. Some of the clips they showed included Jack Bowsor, a 24 parody that achieved economies of scale by always featuring the character in essentially the same situation, allowing the production company, in this case Screen Novelties in Los Angeles, to crank out a lot of shorts in record time. She also talked about how they learned to reuse elements for their Music Man shorts, featuring the voice of improvising singer Reggie Watts, who does all of these vocals himself:
After Chaire spoke about efforts like these Adam Peltzman talked about the curriculum, which I've already mentioned, and gave a case study example, really, of how the Haunted House segments developed. They started out as one small interstitial used to teach a certain phonic concept, and the characters--a bat, mummy, and wolfman who live together as roommates--were so engaging that in the current season they've become a regular part of each episode. They're great characters and they easily lend themselves to working with written text (leaving notes for each other, etc.), and they're super funny. Here's one on apostrophes that Adam showed:
All the voices were done by the same actress, whose name I missed, and the animation was (and is) done by Alan Foreman. He came on board in March 2009 and has made, I don't know, 1,200 cartoons for them or something. He took us through the process of storyboards, animatics, rough, and full animation; the majority of this work, obviously in 2D, was done on Flash with small brushing up in AfterEffects.
One interesting thing with the new episodes came from the show's research, which showed kids were confused why they had to leave the live-action segments to "go off" and watch cartoons. It's for curricular reasons, but to make it a smoother transition for viewers new shows include animated characters like the Mummy above appearing on live-action backgrounds and commenting on the live-action action of the Electric Company, then introducing an animated spot (which themselves are fewer and longer than in previous seasons). There are three of these bumpers per episode, plus all the interstitials themselves; I couldn't write down all the production statistics fast enough, but it's now something like 300 short form cartoons that have been made (besides ten games, a twenty-city live theater tour, fifty-two more episodes by the end of this year, etc.).
There was a discussion of the animated effects done over the live-action portions (all done on Maya) with new clips with LL Cool J and Jimmy Fallon, and then the floor opened up for questions. Everyone agreed time and money were their greatest constraints, but Claire made a good point that if you put your emphasis on the creative material, i.e. the show's quality, then those things won't loom out at you, they won't be bears.
The last cool thing I found out about was a documentary that was actually done before the show went into production about a girl, Priscilla Star, who became one of its stars (and actually inspired the shift from adult characters to youth characters). It's P Star Rising, and it in itself looks like a great program for doc lovers. And Priscilla's own story, from nearly illiterate to the star of a show about literacy, is a great testament to the power, if not of The Electric Company specifically, the power to change children's lives. Here's the trailer, but be aware there's a little grown-up language in it:
Tiny Planets is a wonderful British/American preschool show made by Pepper's Ghost Productions in the UK and Sesame Workshop here in New York. It depicts the planet-hopping adventures of two fuzzy aliens named Bing and Bong. In roughly the decade since its creation, it has won a BAFTA and aired in nearly two dozen territories, and though no longer in production it's continuing to spread around the world, and deservedly so--it's a great program for preschoolers. I mention all of this because I really do have a strong affection for the show and its protagonists. Both of them are mute, and that fact alone harkens back to the narrative/visual brilliance of pre-1928 films and animated characters like Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, although the humor here is entirely different.
Bing and Bong are explorers par excellence. In each five-minute episode they hop into their fuzzy couch and launch off of their planet to go explore another. Each planet is visually distinctive with different denizens; hence they offer young viewers different learning experiences, most centered around the concept of exploration, a generally scientific concept, although some episodes range into the field of social skills as well. Bing and Bong interact with planets' color, sounds, and other characteristics to introduce these concepts to preschoolers with a depth and precision that wouldn't really be as efficient in another format--i.e., with characters explaining the concepts verbally as normally happens. Like I said it works really well for preschoolers, and it's also a nice way to sell your show in foreign markets, obviously.
The show was conceived and executed long before the word "transmedia" was buzzing around every executive's lips, but its central premise leant itself marvelously to extending the story space in multimedia directions. Right off the bat, the feedback that came back to the show's producers was that kids were keen to create their own planets, presumably in creative play. But the idea that kids could actually create their own worlds online began to grow organically out of the television show. Tiny Planets always had a strong web presence and as social networking and Web 2.0 design emerged over the past few years the direction for the show's website--transforming it into an independent universe--began to take shape. The new site, or constellation of related sites really (centered around http://tinyplanets.com), launched this past June, and I've had an opportunity to take a good long look at it over the past few weeks through my daughter Loretta, who's become an enthusiastic player. First, though, here's a video previewing all the new features:
The central site, at least as far as Loretta's been concerned, is My Tiny Planets. This is the core of the concept I was just talking about: young players can create avatars that build, play, and interact in a really well-balanced mix of Sim-like world-building, traditional games (harking all the way back to Asteroids, which is nice for us old folks), and social networking. Security is a big issue for any juvenile social network, and the creators here took pains to make sure kids' identities would be protected. As one example, they're not allowed to create their own user names; instead they choose from among an assortment of silly names like Cute Giant, Chatty Genius, or Classy Aurora. (Though implemented as a security feature, just selecting the wackiest name has become a major treat for some kids.) And then there are no places for them to transmit personal information to other players; parents have various controls, including the ability to temporarily shut an account down; etc.
So far there are a handful of games that Loretta likes best, like "Star Buster" and "Trash Blasters" (that's the Asteroids one). She loves the fact that she has her own planet to design and cultivate, although it took us quite a while to even figure out where in the galaxy it was (tip: you can access it from your passport, go to your map and click on Protoplanet, or just fly there). That's one of the things that's being revised as the site receives feedback, but we're still hitting a few problems, like how to name our planet something besides Protoplanet. A help page with FAQs like this would be, well, helpful. And I do have a few other quibbles: when flying your spaceship around with your keyboard's arrow keys, it's counterintuitive, at least for me, to always have the Up key move your ship forward no matter which way it's facing. For folks accustomed to console game controls, it makes more sense, I would think, to push Left to go forward if your ship is facing left. Also, if you click on any of the navigational menu items on the top (What's New, Parents, etc.) it logs you out. This is the worst when you're lost in space or stuck on some planet you don't want to be on and click on "Play" thinking it will take you back to the games, but it logs you out completely. (I'll let you think it was the six-year-old who kept getting lost in space.)
Those are a couple quibbles, but I'm getting ahead of myself: in general everything else is really well-designed. We haven't yet really made any friends, so I can't comment on the efficacy of the social networking, but the virtual chat rooms (i.e. chat planets) that are set up for your space explorers to float around make it more fun than just texting your friends. The games are fun for younger players (six is around the bottom of the target demographic, making this an older-skewed property than the original show), and the planet building and networking are fun for the older players, although taking the time to gradually build Loretta's planet has already been good in teaching patience and long-term planning. (You earn points in the games that you can use to buy portions of landscapes you can install on your planet--different skies, buildings, etc. There's also an environmental curriculum as kids recycle, collect and compost waste, etc.) So Loretta's really enjoying that component the most. Right now her world is chock full of mushroom everything; I'll let you figure out which one it is.
The other sites in this community arguably relate more to the television show. The most obvious is the TV site, where you can watch all of Bing and Bong's original adventures, making it a very good page for the youngest users. There are also books, more games, and a lot of additional educational material.
I really like the multiple directions the IP can take you, offering different avenues of enrichment to kids at different developmental levels and with different interests. I mentioned that it's still developing, and I'm really pleased by one feature currently in the works, which is the Moon Zoo. Located on the My Tiny Planets page, this feature comes from a partnership with NASA and will feature real photographs taken by the Hubble Telescope; basically children can become involved with actual mapping of space, getting the first look at images as NASA categorizes and studies them. I feel that's a real step away from being a simple multimedia property and becoming a major transmedia experience. Right now it's obviously limited to Internet use, presumably at home, but I could see school science curricula being written around this, partnerships with museums and other physical locations that can become educational resources, live events like star gazing, etc. The social network set up on My Tiny Planets can begin to take on a practical element as kids share information with each other and collaborate on their work. This type of interaction with the material would probably occur with kids over ten, but even having the framework in place will be immensely fun and educational for kids as young as six. I know Loretta loves all the space material at she's seen at various science museums--she still asserts she wants to be a "space scientist" when she grows up--and just knowing that she's getting prime access to new images essentially never seen before would really thrill her, even if she's not going to make a measurable contribution to NASA's research.
Taken in whole, then, the Tiny Planets IP has positioned itself extremely well for seamless engagement across a very broad age range, from the nonverbal show and simple picture books for the smallest kids to the traditional online games and social networking for grade school kids on to the more serious science engagement that we could see emerge for older tweens young teenagers. The strong but mutable curriculum seems to be at the core of that breadth, and though there are dozens of IPs that engage really well in each of those demographics, I'm having a hard time off the top of my head thinking of one that does so across them all.
Anyway, these have been more the musings of a dad than a quick and formal review. I think the site's so in-depth that it warrants these kinds of thoughts, though, because it's really indicative of the direction social gaming and the Internet are going for kids--or at least I think so. It's a great model for those of us creating transmedia properties today, and I can't wait to see similar shows/sites/networks on other topics like music, reading, or fitness. Kudos to the Tiny Planets team!
I'm still trying to catch up on all my emails and blog post topics, but here's a note I received from the good folks at WordWorld clear back on September 24. Enjoy!
"It's time to Build-a-Word! WordWorld is thrilled to announce our first iPhone application, now available in Apple's iTunes store.
"Children will watch spellbound as the letters D-O-G transform into Dog and a lovable WordFriend from the PBS series WordWorld jumps to life. Words magically "morph" into animated WordFriends DOG, DUCK, PIG, ANT, FROG, SHEEP, BUG, COW, CAT and BEE and engage children to spell and read.
"This application is based on the Emmy Award-winning PBS television show. WordWorld has been demonstrated by a Department of Education-funded study to improve early literacy skills including: print awareness, letter knowledge and comprehension."
The app costs $3 and can be found through the iTunes store or through a link on the show's website. Episodes are also available for purchase.
In May singer and actress Debi Derryberry launched her new website My Baby Banana. She's best known as the voice of Jimmy Neutron, but this site is a platform for her music and music videos; it has information for grown-ups about her performances and releases, plus some videos, games, activities, and so forth for the kids. The launch, it appears, coincided with the release of a tropical themed CD, and the video on the site's main page will quickly bring out the little calypso dancer in your tyke.
Here's a short review/endorsement by the IE Mommy. (It included a contest that is now closed, but it's a good note from someone who's heard more of the music than I have.)
I've lately come across a few items about how video/computer games can help youngsters learn. I remember explaining the benefits of hand-eye coordination to my mother when I was a kid, but research today has gone well beyond that.
On June 23 the KidScreen newsletter reported on a new study by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center that basically uncovered new and unexpected ways in which games can be beneficial. Here's that summary, by Emily Claire Afan. The actual report, of course, is available for download at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center publications webpage. (Those who want to scroll down on that page will also find a lot of other great studies--I'll have to find time to read all of these soon.)
There's a lot of other material out there about this. Just browsing around I came across this two-year-old article on the subject. It lists a lot of game names, which are now obviously two years old, but it's still a good guide for seeing the kinds of things that are out there, especially for a fellow like me who hasn't really played games since the original NES (i.e. there's more to educational gaming than squashing walking mushrooms).
Along those lines and perhaps most exciting of all is the creation by the National Geographic Society of a video game unit, National Geographic Games. Here's the press release from last November. What's particularly cool about this, for me, is the apparent range of what they're going to undertake, particularly that they're going to make games for preschoolers and for older kids and even grown-ups too. In the former category we have National Geographic: Panda, seen below, in which kids can care for a panda like a pet, learning about its habitat, etc., and hopefully really coming to care about the real animals. Here's a review from Tech Talk for Families.
In the grown-up category the press release describes NGG's first release, Herod's Lost Tomb, which is history, archaeology, and heaven knows what else all wrapped up in one.
I'm not known as a video game expert. I grew up on Atari and Nintendo and since the mid-90s have only occasionally played Crash Bandicoot on other people's PlayStations. But even though sales are down the gaming industry is weathering the recession well, and it's long made more money than films, for instance. So here are some recent items about the future of the industry, specifically an interview with Nintendo's COO Reggie Fils-Aime. It was conducted by Daniel Terdiman and was published in CNET News last Friday. There's a lot of material of Fils-Aime's predictions for the future of the entire industry, not just Nintendo.
Also, today the Times (that's the UK one, not the New York Times) ran an interview with CEO Satoru Iwata.
Fils-Aime's talk of future gaming systems got me thinking about the next generation of PlayStation, so after an admittedly cursory search the best thing I found was a short notice from GamePro saying not to expect it until next year, although that is evidently sooner than some analysts had thought.
Finally, a bit of news about that former Most Recognizable Face of Nintendo (at least to former Nintendo Power readers like myself):
Yes, it's Howard Phillips of "Howard and Nestor" fame. (Yes, that is Nestor's eyeball in the corner--I still think of him every time I can't find my keys. For those who don't recall him, he was the screw-up, his name coming from the Nintendo Entertainment System.) Anyway, in March GameSpot reported that Phillips, who left Nintendo in 1991 (wasn't I still reading Nintendo Power in '91?), has joined Chair Entertainment Group in my own native Utah--103 W. Center St. in Provo, for anyone who's keeping track. They're not entirely new, but this bodes well for their increased presence.
And the ad on the side of that article reminds me that for a whole year now all the buzz seems to have been about the forthcoming Ghostbusters game...
My wife will be pleased to hear that her favorite video game, Nintendo's Super Mario Kart, was ranked this week as the most influential console game of all time by the Guinness Book of World Records. I'm not a big-time gamer but their list of titles is indeed interesting. You can see it here.
