Education Technology for the Next Generation with Michael Preston and Zaza Kabayadondo of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center

Michael Preston, PhD is the Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a pioneering thought leader at the intersection of technology, media, and children’s learning. He leads the Center’s efforts to explore new frontiers and new literacies, support and translate research into action, and guide the field toward better opportunities and outcomes for kids.

Previously, Michael co-founded CSforALL, the hub for the national Computer Science for All movement; after launching a 10-year partnership with New York City to provide high-quality computer science to every student in the nation’s largest public school system. CSforALL now helps other cities and regions across the country replicate the progress made in New York.

Prior to his work with CSNYC and CSforALL, Preston designed and led digital learning initiatives at the New York City Department of Education, including programs in middle and high school computer science, personalized learning, and digital literacy. 

Zaza Kabayadondo, PhD brings over 15 years of learning experiences design across the entire education ecosystem.

Zaza has worked with clients such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, IEEE, edX, and the Association of Asia-Pacific Rim Universities. 

Highlights from her career include work in the three-sided upskilling marketplace, developing multi-partner coalitions, and working directly with career-seeking learners. 

Zaza was a consultant at Entangled Solutions and on the B2B Learning Marketplace at Guild Education where she helped attract partners for employer-driven innovation in the talent pipeline. Zaza was formerly Director of Industry Partnerships for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the research and innovation arm of Sesame Workshop. She built a roadmap for creating a new business unit focused on leveraging Sesame IP to support youth-friendly digital designers; and helped broker the unit’s collaborations with global brands and early startups.

Zaza holds a PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design from Stanford University, and she is a co-author of Taking Design Thinking to School and a speaker on the future of learning.

Recommended Resources:
Center for Scholars and Storytellers by UCLA
Jason Yip’s research on kids
Innovator’s Compass by Ela Ben-Ur
Age-Appropriate Design Code in CA
Playful by Design Making Child’s Online Safety a Reality by 5 Rights Foundation

Transcript

Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators and investors, driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top edtech company. Michael Preston, PhD is the executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, a pioneering thought leader at the intersection of technology, media and children's learning. He leads the center's efforts to explore new frontiers and new literacies to support and translate research into action and to guide the field toward better outcomes and opportunities for kids. Previous to Joan Ganz Cooney Michael co founded ces for all the hub for the National Computer Science for All movement, after launching a 10 year partnership in New York City to provide high quality computer science to every student in the nation's largest public school system. Ces for all now helps other cities and regions across the country replicate the progress made in New York. Michael also designed and led digital learning initiatives at the New York City Department of Education Programs for middle and high school computer science for Personal Learning and Digital Literacy. Zaza Kabayadondo brings over 15 years of designing learning experiences with stakeholders across the entire education ecosystem. Zaza has worked with clients such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I triple E edX guild education entangled solutions, and was formerly the director of industry partnerships for the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. The research and innovation arm of Sesame Workshop, where she built a roadmap for our new business unit focusing on leveraging sesame IP to support youth friendly digital designers. Zaza holds a PhD in learning science and technology design from Stanford University. She is also the co author of taking design thinking to score and a speaker on the future of learning. Michael and Zaza Welcome to EdTech. Insiders.

Michael Preston: 2:13

Thank you. It's great to be here. Both of you, actually.

Alexander Sarlin: 2:17

Yeah, I can say the same. So let's start off with just a 10,000 foot view and overview. In a couple of sentences I'd like to sentences I'd like to ask each of you sort of what first brought you into education? And edtech. What's your sort of origin story? Michael, why don't we start with you.

Michael Preston: 2:34

It's funny, I've only really ever worked in edtech, I did have a brief spell at my first job out of college working for a nonprofit. But when I moved to New York City, desperately wanted to have a job that was related to the public school system, and found my way in at a time when the internet had just arrived in schools. And nobody knew what to do with it. Like just getting the hardware and the cables and everything hooked up was its own kind of mountain to climb. And once this stuff was installed, nobody really knew what to do. So that to me, seemed like a really exciting opportunity. I had always had a computer in my house growing up because my dad worked for Bell Labs. And so you know, we would like hook up the phone to the receiver and dial in and stuff. And there was not much you could do on the computer other than write little programs. But I was totally hooked. I love learning. I love technology. What I saw in New York City schools was incredibly inequitable. And also it seemed like what could be texting really unimaginative, or are just a vast unknown. And so it just seemed like a really rich place to go. And so that's how I got started. And I never really left.

Alexander Sarlin: 3:36

Yeah, that moment where the internet first came into schools, and nobody knew what to do with it was pretty, a sort of wide open opportunity. Zaza. How about you? What is your origin story in education in edtech.

Zaza Kabayadondo: 3:48

So I have two parents who are both educators, and I grew up going to college with my mom, she was a teacher trainer. And I think as early as I remember, I was hanging out with the teachers and thinking about how to teach. And so this is always, you know, steeped in that world. And when I was, I think this was the summer before college, I was visiting my brother in Texas, and I was watching the Lord of the Rings, The trilogy on DVD. And I don't know if y'all remember DVDs, but you know, you have one side had the all the discs for the films. And on the other side, they had the making off, which is about nine hours. So it's like 18 hours total of Lord of the Rings. And I was just enthralled with the process of making the story and just all the technology that went into that. I was like, wow, what if we applied this to education in some way. And so from then on, it was just a task to find ways to kind of think about and explore the creation of educational experiences. And that's got me. Yeah, that got me started on a very long and winding but fulfilling journey.

Alexander Sarlin: 4:55

Yeah, well, one of the GSV theses on education is you know, Hollywood meats learning and that's one of their investment thesis and I hear that in your, in your Lord of the Rings. You know what if we did this for education story I love that our audience for this podcast is ed tech founders that tech investors, a lot of people who work in the field who observe it from different perspectives, but I bet that not that many are that familiar with the Zhang Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. It's a Research and Innovation Lab. It's all about media and education. Michael, can you give an overview of Joan Ganz Cooney, where it came from, and its goals and who Joan Ganz Cooney herself.

Michael Preston: 5:33

I think you're right. Not many people know who Joan is. She is the visionary founder of Sesame Street and the Children's Television Workshop, which later became renamed Sesame Workshop where we are now Joan in the 1960s was a documentary producer at Channel 13 in New York City, basically studying the lives of folks in urban poverty. And I saw how widespread televisions were in in apartments and homes around the city and had this idea that, you know, similar to your comment about where Hollywood meets education, right, this idea that kids were enthralled by what what they saw on TV. And so the potential for engagement and reach were already there. But no one had really harnessed that for a positive outcome for kids. Right. So that created a kind of how might we come excuse me moment for Joan and her co founder, Lloyd Morissette, who was at the Carnegie Corporation at that time, and together, they kind of seemed to create this, this new experiment that became Sesame Street. It was funny, I was looking back at this founding report that she wrote, that was published in 1966. We actually republished it in 2019 for sesame's, 50th birthday, but there is a page where she talks about how television has a lot of potential to educate, but it also provides endless distractions, from pursuits of the mind, she says, and that any high quality education program that you put on TV would have to could both break new ground but also risk a lot of criticism of from purists, right, that you would have to entertain in your mind that that both things were possible. And I feel like that's no better template than the world we live in today, where the obviously the media ecosystem is beyond what anybody could have possibly conceived in 1966. But it is like an ever expanding, you know, every year something many new things will be invented in the 15 years that the Cooney Center has been around, we were started as an independent innovation lab within sesame to think about those questions, but how to bring the ethos that drove what made sesame great out into the world is a challenge that I think we can rise rise to meet the challenge today, but I think we're gonna have to continuously rise to meet the challenge.

Alexander Sarlin: 7:37

Yeah, so I mean, it was really an incredibly visionary idea. In the mid 60s. And I have some history with sesame my my mother was the Research Director of Children's Television Workshop for my entire life growing up, which became Sesame Workshop. So I spent a good amount of time as a kid in that world. And it is an incredible group of educators and media creators. And it's so interesting to take some of those learnings originally from the 60s and then from 15 years ago, and now continually think about the changing media landscape and how it can be leveraged and used for really high quality digital education just like we used television back then. So let's bring us up to the current day. What are some of the things that Joan Ganz Cooney is doing? zoomies? Ganz Cooney Center is doing in 2022. We are beyond television, we have so many different technologies. What is the sort of theory about what types of media you study and how you connect them to education and education policy says I'd love to hear you on this. And then Michael, you can join in as well.

Zaza Kabayadondo: 8:45

Yeah, sure. So I'm sure Michael can do a much better job than I can just give you an overview of the types of projects that are going on. Okay, what makes the Joan Ganz Cooney Center really special, from my point of view, is trying to find how research can sort of precede innovative ideas, as opposed to reflecting on things that have already been done. So really bridging that, that gap between, you know, the people who are out there, the achievers who are doing and, you know, building really cool things, which I think comes with, it's for you to be a founder of, you know, let's say an app or or some kind of technology that kids are using, you really have to believe in it and push and you have to make tough decisions about, you know, how do we do this by a deadline? How do we do this and sort of meet a market need? And oftentimes, I think you you're faced with having to make tough decisions, especially design decisions. Whereas a researcher has sort of the luxury of time, right that you can sort of create this like longitudinal study and then take your time and and sort of look at things, many different iterations. And so we're trying to marry those two practices together. Like how can you help founders and creators and developers, be more intentional, be more iterative and how they create something I Think that's a value that came from Joan Ganz Cooney in the TV days right in the in the 60s and 70s, and 80s. And that we're continuing to apply today. What this means is bringing kids into the r&d Lab and having kids be a part of the design process, and have them kind of brainstorm with you. I know that a lot of people out there do work with kids, but it tends to be at the end of the process, right? Like, let's use, let's bring you in as user testers and tell us if you like this, but this is different, like actually coming up with ideas with them as partners.

Alexander Sarlin: 10:32

Yeah, that's incredibly important, as you say, a lot of product people and in business folks in edtech, even though you're building for often for K 12, or for kids don't have as much time or luxury to spend with kids, as you might expect. So how does this manifest it? Michael, maybe you can describe some of the publications or sort of the areas of research in which this philosophy of bringing learners and you know, children into the process as early as possible. How does that manifest?

Michael Preston: 11:02

Yeah, it's, it's an interesting position for us to be in in a unique way, I think, because as part of sesame, we get to be sort of value driven. First, we have the outcomes for kids are really more of our bottom line, rather than any other sort of market forces, things that all of the startups in the space need to think about as well. But we could also, hopefully motivate them by this idea that if they do well for kids, and kids do well, that that will ultimately be rewarding for them, because their products will have more impact, they will have bigger market share and such. So ultimately, we believe that both of those things can happen at the same time. And then related to what Zaza just shared. You have kids, we see kids and families as our partners in that and so elevating their voice and supporting participatory methods in that process is part of what we're trying to do here as well. Also, bringing all the research that we know tends to be neglected, because it's hard and accessible, slows you down, that kind of stuff. And so really, actually it was at a somebody last week accused us of instead of being accelerated that we're a slow inator. And I guess that that isn't I wouldn't treat I don't think that was praised necessarily. It wasn't intended that way. But I thought it was nice, I guess. The quandary then is how slow or how medium speed, can you go in and kind of get people moving in the right direction, we obviously do want to work with industry. That's where the great ideas, the innovative practices can really shape kids experience. But we want to provide some sort of meaningful support to that process. So the priorities that we're looking at are designing with and for kids, which is the area in which as a un I collaborated extensively last year, we're also interested in elevating ideas about what children's wellbeing looks like in digital spaces as sort of a North Star approach to this, like there's, and we can talk more about this. But you know, there's a lot of attention being paid right now to making products safe. The California age appropriate design code, for example, is one of the more recent entries into that work. But if if we're establishing kind of a new floor for what we think quality is, what would we build from that floor, the new floor. And there are other kinds of communities that we're working in, there's industry, but we're also collaborating with the public media system right now, to try and think about how they might engage older kids that after they grow out of the PBS Kids demo, and so that too, is very much ground up, you know, work with the designers work with the young people kind of approach us where we feel like if everybody's in the same room and has a thoughtful way of working together, we might get further together in the slow inator. So

Zaza Kabayadondo: 13:42

awesome. I know it wasn't meant as a compliment. We should brand ourselves. Identifying identifying the places in the process we use should slow down is an important part of doing a good job.

Alexander Sarlin: 13:56

So I mean, I think an interesting example from your site and something that I would definitely recommend our some of our tech listeners go check out is this play test with Kids initiative, this digital toolkit about how to actually work with kids in children's products, it's methods and techniques that have been used by by Osmo by toca. Boca I know Carly sobo one of the authors of this is now at Duolingo this stuff from the MIT Media Lab. And I think that's maybe you know, that's it's one of many things but it's one where you can see how slowing down right at the moment where moments where you're you really want it to work for learning work for engagement work for well being work for the kids that you're trying to serve, may end up being you know, that famous phrase about if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far go together. It feels like you know, that's where you're thinking there, right? You go go together with a research organization like the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, you can go really far and make something that will actually work for the long term. That was really good Alex should be on there Yeah. So I know that you have a project called The Learning Lab, which is not up on the site yet. Can I ask a little bit about how that works?

Michael Preston: 15:10

Yeah, so we're building from the play test with kids website, which is all the things you just said, Really, it was, that was kind of like our contribution to the field in the sense that there are a lot of we come to this work, I think, with a lot of humility, because we know there are a lot of people who are expert in various ways across all the different methods folks have for developing a new a new educational product or, or anything really for the field involving kids. And so this team that we worked with, had been veteran designers themselves and had seen the absence of of supporting materials or community around this work. And so worked extremely hard to build out the resources through lots of generative sessions and physical playing card testing with partners and other companies across the field, you know, building a bit of a network of folks and then turning it into something that can be just easily adopted elsewhere. But as hopefully an entry point for folks who understood that at least engaging kids in the thing they've already made would be good. And a starting point for thinking more broadly, like, what if we actually had a more participatory process from the beginning? What if we consulted research and so forth? So that became an entry point for us? The Learning Lab is this sort of sesame as a service idea? Where if sesame methods were actually deployed into the field? How could we do that in a way that was not overwhelming to a product team or an entrepreneurial person who had a really cool idea, but not a lot of time or background in this kind of work? So how can we bring in expert of ideas, elevate research that was relevant to the product in question, and then really support a participatory process where kids were helping to drive that was the pinnacle, the thing we worked, most people would get to because of the unique insights, kids can provide directly into the development process. So play testing tends to be about you informing the existing product through like really thoughtful and creative questioning that elicits good ideas from kids responding to some things. But if you if you go the to the sort of like beginning ideation stage where you think of kids more as your partners, you might actually get some unique insights about what they really want, that there's really no other way to get. And so at the other end of the Learning Lab, really the I guess, the play on words in the Learning Lab is that the learners are the adults, designers, and that there are benefiting from, again, the knowledge base on which we're all working currently, but also the unique insights and perspectives that kids can bring.

Alexander Sarlin: 17:40

I love that that makes a lot of sense. And it's a really inspiring as somebody who has been on the product side, it's really amazing how infrequently, learners are brought into the process in any way. At the beginning of projects. There's a lot of assumptions made, there's a lot of voices in the room that are making their guesses from the experience about what they think will work. And it's only later that the kids actually come in one project from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center that stood out to me is the Buy with for Youth Project. And it's reminds me a lot of what you're saying, Michael, about bringing teens and tweens into the conversation to think about, you know, what should the future of public media look like? What should what could educational media do in a very different media environment than you know we've ever had before. And there were a lot of findings that just really jumped out to me once about representation or stereotypes or, you know, a desire for for trusted perspectives, and this sort of disinformation world that all of our young people are exposed to all the time, would you want to give a little bit of an overview of some of the outcomes of that project and how that's been playing out.

Michael Preston: 18:48

It has been such an exciting partnership for us. We're now three years into this and I think have at least a few more to go. The initial it was instigated by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which of course, is the intermediary organization between Congress and the public media system. Basically, they support a lot of real sustenance of stations all over the country, television and radio stations, as well as the big national network players that we all know, like PBS and NPR. But they also in addition to being stewards of the system broadly, they are also, you know, looking into the future and identifying challenges and opportunities. And this one identifies I think, both in the sense that the next gen audiences, right, so thinking about the teen and tween audiences between say the ages of 10 and 18, are completely underserved by public media that for strategic reasons, folks know that public television has really served little kids really well. And sesame has been a part of that story for 50 More plus years, but that upon, I guess age seven or eight kids tend to go off into the wild west of all the digital things that the Cooney Center thinks about too, but it became an opportunity both Think about how to engage that target audience. But also to leverage what makes public media so great. There's a network of about 330 distinct station entities with a general manager, let's say it's hard to count Public TV and radio stations. But that's one way to think about it. And they're all over the country, big and small, different sizes of markets, and communities and so forth. So extremely diverse system that has grown up in a very decentralized way in order to support the local needs of their communities. And so what the question is, what do you do when media is global? When people are increased, their people's attention is pulled in lots of different directions have way more competition for for attention. Now? What is the unique contribution public media could make if to engage young people that was, I thought, the most fantastic motivation to work on this project? So we did work, we created our own research for the field called the missing middle that dives into what young people are alike today, what they're, what they are, their likes and dislikes, and what they hope to see, which is the research you just cited Alex. But we've also, in parallel with this done a lot of work to understand the field, we've gone out to survey the system and gotten well over 100 responses to just what kind of work or your are you doing right now? Or if not doing work with young people? What would you be doing? Or is there interest, and found that there is actually a lot of work happening in the system, but not well known necessarily, because it tends to be fairly local and small, because it's championed usually by a very motivated individual Arts team. But it doesn't necessarily bubble up to the biggest priorities within a station. On the other end of the spectrum, there are a couple of really giant presences in the field, you know, you have PBS newshour STUDENT REPORTING Labs, which is an amazing national program that's adopted all over the country, and by schools. There's brilliant work at GBH and KQED, in San Francisco. So there are some of those players. But I think the idea is, those are fantastic models and great work. But there has to be something that every station can consider if they want to engage young people. But it comes back to this idea of deciding within for kids that ultimately, young people have strong ideas about, like what you said, like representation in the kind of media, they want their ability to navigate myths and disinformation, how they verify their own sources, how they look for authenticity, how they manage their identities online, ensure that they are protecting their own privacy and being careful about how they conduct themselves in different kinds of spaces. So lots of stuff that I think people who are regular consumers of youth media research know, but not necessarily translated into opportunity for public media. So that's kind of where we are now. And then the next phase of our work, which we hope to do in the years ahead would be more about seeding models and supporting station adoption and growing the community of folks who are already raising their hand and connecting them better.

Alexander Sarlin: 22:51

Yeah, that this network of public media stations that are all doing different approaches, or, you know, local approaches to try to break through that noise and make, you know, beat be visible and be effective and be useful and interesting to the teens and tweens in their community, but are underserved. And then these findings that that are a little bit of a shake up and I want to I want to quote a couple of these and then says I want to bring you in and ask you a question about about video. One of the findings I thought was interesting. It says, When teens and tweens encounter content that is developed by adults without youth input, it often strikes them as perpetuating stereotypes about teens or as being out of touch. They want to see the diversity they see in their generation and perceive content as authentic they wanted to see, you know, it says regardless of format, teens and tweens felt they've matured past the often simple storylines directed at their age group and wanted to say things that address everyday challenges. It's really humbling and makes a lot of sense. I mean, I can't growing up now it's a different world. Zaza question for you about a can be about where we just talked about but I also want to bring in this video aspect because one of the set of findings from this is that video dominates media experiences for teens and tweens. And social media is basically a go to for discovery and search. So people find what they're looking for through social media and other channels, and then doing videos and there was a recommendation about public media might even think about how to videos, because how to videos are short form content that kids find very useful for how to do pretty specific things. Joan Ganz Cooney and sesame have been were pioneers in using television in education for many years. And now we're in this sort of short form video world. What do you think educational media, you know, will increasingly look like in this tick tock streaming how to kind of world? Oh, yeah,

Zaza Kabayadondo: 24:48

this is a beautiful question, but also really complex and kind of hard to answer everything in its entirety. But there are a few things that that come to mind. So so when I started working, I met Michael when I was a consult Done. And we sort of collaborated on conducting sort of a landscape analysis looking at tech and media that is ends up in the hands of children, kids, teens, the Cooney Center kind of looks at the whole age spectrum from zero to 18. Even though Sesame Street is for younger audience liquidity center is looking at it, like that whole spectrum. So one of the things we did was just look across the industry and try to understand what's going on. What are the trends to expect and anticipate? So we can dig into that. But I think your question is around your question about videos specifically, is just trying to understand what it means in the lives of young people. I look at this as a designer, as a sort of human centered designer, it's sort of like when you design something for the most vulnerable. at the D school, they like to call this the extreme user. That's the language they used to use when I was a student there. The person who is most marginalized, most forgotten, if you can design something that works for them, it's going to work for everybody else. So this is going to resonate with a lot of other people's needs. So an example of this is when we started putting ramps on all the sidewalks at the traffic lights so that if you're in a wheelchair, you can cross the street safely. That's something that cyclists use people in strollers, people on scooters, much to my dismay, it just sort of opened up the universe of who could use the space, right? So designing for somebody who is marginalized or less visible, ends up being the most inclusive approach that you can take. And I think this applies, like the way we're thinking about kids and including kids and thinking about how kids use video also applies here. So so when you were kind of reading this result from the study that they feel like the stories don't represent who they really are like, we don't get it, it's oversimplifying for me as a black woman. For me as an African immigrant in the United States, it really resonates like yes, when I'm watching TV, when I'm watching video, it feels like it's sort of this, this version of myself, that's an hourglass and doesn't really connect with who I really am or anybody that I know. Right. So so there's a lot of echoes there for I think, a lot of other groups, there. Is this really fantastic. I know, you usually ask this question like what's a great resource, this is really fantastic group based in LA, I think they're like UCLA affiliated, called the Center for storytellers. And scholars are scholars and storytellers. What they do is actually work with big studios and have them do, oh, you're launching a pilot and you have a queer character, let's actually dig into like how you write about this character, the script and focus group and talk about ways that you can better handle the representation of the character, but also treatment off their, you know, their wants and their needs and their motivations and how they walk through the world and do better service to that topic, because we want you to engage with these themes, and TV and video, but we want you to kind of do it in a way that feels real and true to how people live in that experience. So that's an example of ways that I think the answer is not to avoid talking about things, but to do justice to the topic by actually doing your homework, right, slowing down a little bit. I'm gonna go on and on and on. Maybe I'll maybe I'll pause and give Michael a chance to jump in on the question. But I have more to say it's just that I didn't want to kill all the time,

Michael Preston: 28:13

says I think you said it perfectly. And I also was gonna mention the Center for Scholars and storytellers as one great example of, I guess, and they've, some of their recent research reports are really well worth checking out, even though they're targeting the film and media industry. It's about story. It's about authenticity, it's really trying to achieve some kind of honesty in the way you make, make things that are are for kids. I mean, generally speaking to when the age appropriate design code talks about this, it's not just about what's created for kids, but also what is likely to be used by kids. And so you have to really apply this broadly to it's really for everybody that will all benefit from from better practices in that space. And then in the designing for the interest part. I mean, unfortunately, we realized that most technologies are just not made with anybody in mind, except the people who are in the room making, right and so yeah, one approach, One approach is to just expand who's in the room and make it easier for that to happen. And then maybe over time, you can you can build in a sense of the value of doing that by having practices that are easily understood and adaptable, for example, we've tried to, in a incremental way do some of the work, though, that they do like for the public media project last year, or this past summer, rather, we had our own youth fellowship where we had 10 amazing young people join us. And ultimately, it was, well it's designed to be for an experience for them. Ultimately, what was generated by them was guidance for us and for stations that we're working with in the field where their own insights about the kind of media environments that they live in what they want, what they like and dislike the same. Basically, they were living representations of the missing middle research in a way that that became something where by the end, we were building resources for stations that would live on pass the fellowship It's not rocket science, it's just a commitment to doing that work, putting your money where your mouth is, in a way. Yeah, yeah,

Zaza Kabayadondo: 30:08

I was gonna say some of the trends to anticipate. And so what Michael was saying is, if I can just reiterate it, what Michael was saying is, it's important to have kids in the room, right, whoever you're designing for whoever you might overlook, it's important to bring them in the room, at some point, hopefully as early as possible in your process, and design with them. And I think that gets easier and easier to do, or to see the reason why as we start to think about, like, inclusive design as we start to think about equity and diversity and what that really means. I think the the pandemic and just sort of the last three, four years, for me have been a really exciting time just to see how these conversations are entering spaces that never felt like spaces where you could talk about inclusiveness or identity or you know, belonging and things like that. And, and I think it's sort of been so so when you ask about trends, this is one of the trends like this is kind of exciting, like, what is what is everyone's asking themselves? What is inclusiveness mean to us? What does belonging mean here? As far as like spaces like tick tock, go, YouTube and video, it's important for that question, to continue to be at the center of how we think about content and how we think about engagement with audiences. One of the things that, for me have, I think there's like a lot of potential to unpack or dig deeper is, when we are creating educational content, I think we tend to think of these false divides between like education and entertainment. But there's kinds of something in between where people are using, I was talking to a researcher the other day, and she studies MOOCs, and looks at the types of behavior. And so one of the critiques of MOOCs has been completion rates, right? She does data analytics, and she wants to kind of understand, is this a real critique? Is it authentic or not. And so looking at the numbers, what you see is it's not that people aren't completing it, because of some failure in the design of the content, it's actually that people are going there for different reasons. So she could see sort of clusters around a different type of learner who's signing up for, let's say, a Coursera course, because they're using it as a reference. Like, I just wanted to get a definition of what this concept is. And I don't actually want to take the whole class, I don't care about the assignments. So I'm gonna go straight to week six, because I want to, you know, dig deeper. And my husband is like an engineer. And he's doing that right now. Like he's taking a Coursera class, because they're doing something at work. And he, you know, rather than going to a textbook or encyclopedia or whatever, the videos have become the reference, right, the reference tool. And so that's a really important trend to think about when it comes to short form video, how do you make it easy for people to search and kind of engage in the content as they see fit, as opposed to assuming that there was like a linear way of engaging? How do you think about different types of users coming in at different points? I just wanted to make sure I answered that question. So I think it's a really good one about listening is something to think about. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 33:11

it's a fascinating conversation. And I would love to hear more about about all these ideas. So maybe we can set up a part two, because there's a lot in there to unpack. Coursera recently just launched a clip service it for exactly that type of user where they're breaking their courses into clips. And I think they have 50,000 or 100,000 clips where you can search for any concept and find, you know, the little tiny bit of a course that talked about it, because exactly that kind of user you mentioned, and we all know anybody who's who spent any time with a teenager recently, they use YouTube or Tik Tok to look up anything. It's their reference as I Oh, I just here's a new thing I'll look at. I'll look it up on YouTube. I'll look it up on Tik Tok. It is such a common behavior and something that is so alien. I'll speak for myself here. But the idea of using YouTube as a as a reference to look something up is not my generation at all. But it is so common. So I think this short form video world is going to be is going to be fascinating. We only have time for one question. But we will definitely have to follow up with both of you here. But one of the things that I think is so interesting about Joan Ganz Cooney and the center in your thought process is it's really about the educational potential of of new technology starting back and back 50 years ago with television as a new technology. Over the years, you've put out reports about using tablets about using games and learning, augmented and virtual reality, you know, all sorts of new technologies and how can they be used to bridge that gap? You know, that entertainment education gap that you just mentioned, Zaza? So, for both of you when you look at the landscape right now, what technologies excite you most for education? Are there technologies that you think are about to sort of hit an inflection point either in schools or in informal at home use? I'm so keen Guess what you both say to that, so why don't we start with you.

Zaza Kabayadondo: 35:02

So what I think is going to hit or has already hit a will soon is AI and machine learning in schools. Michael, we can we talk about OCO, there's probably not a lot of time to like really outline what we did. But we collaborated with a startup that is called Aqua labs, really fantastic founder who wanted to engage with researchers and sort of dig deeper before launching the product, we use this process of engaging kids as early as possible in the design process, what they're trying to build is a tool that will be in classrooms helping third, fourth, and fifth graders learn math. So it's sort of like an intelligent tutor, who the kids can do small group work with, while the teacher is sort of circulating, so just kind of like a classroom aide. That's all powered by AI. And I think this is something that will be in classrooms, in working spaces in sort of collaborative spaces. We're going to blink and it'll be there. It's already there in many forms. But just That's something to watch out for. Personally, I'm interested in VR. And AR, I'm really curious about this sort of learning simulation types of games, especially as they might apply to some professional development. I know there's some folks experimenting with this and like management training, so you get to practice on in the simulation and not on real people with real lives and real problems. Michael, what are you excited about?

Michael Preston: 36:24

Well, that was that was a really great example. But maybe then to contrast, the sort of high tech example, I'd go a little bit more conventional or low tech. I mean, Aleksey, you mentioned Coursera, you know, short form, learning. And I'm enthralled by this idea of the rise of how to videos, and the idea that, that video platforms are the sort of de facto search engine now for learning kids in the pandemic, especially get accelerated this trend. But the good that kids are innately looking to learn, right and seeking it wherever they see search it up, instead of looking up, right, but it's like, but but where the search happens, keeps changing. The algorithms that match them to content, obviously keep getting smarter. But there's still this idea that there's kids want to learn, they want to verify they're looking for trust in a way. And so like a really teacher with a form of who a teacher might be is I think changing rapidly. It could be anybody who seems to know what they're talking about. And it's no longer a credential thing or an age thing. It's just somebody who can explain something in a way that makes sense and resonates with the person who's doing the search. There's a lot of really interesting potential. And the theme I love about that, aside from the go look for anything kind of learning environment that the video landscape has become is this idea of connectedness. I think that one of the scariest things about technology is that we all kind of go diving into our screens and don't actually talk to each other. But if there's a potential for us to feel close to each other, because we've learned something from a random stranger, that's kind of motivating to and it's a very ill formed thought I'm sharing with you, I'm hoping to think about it some more.

Alexander Sarlin: 38:08

No, that's amazing. I am very excited about all of those trends. I love the idea of AI in the classroom as a sort of teacher aide, it feels like that world has already shifted to, you know, video short form video platforms as the de facto references, but I don't just don't think the education world has really caught up to it. And the idea that there are some online personalities, which may be other users, they may be peers, they may be trusted teachers, they may be credentialed teachers, or, or none of the above being the sort of, hey, here's a new idea you learn about in the classroom, every kid is about to Google that and YouTube that and they're all going to find the same video from one person. That is like a very surreal but very common, I think experience right now that as edtech people and educators, I don't think we've even begun to get our mind around. I think one of the reasons why tick tock is and how to videos are such an exciting technology is that they're often made by near peers or peers. They're not they're not coming down from above, you're not watching you know, Bob Vila fixer saint, you're watching another teenager in another country or somebody in the next state over who's three years older than you talk to you about, about how something works. And that's much more relatable and understandable. In some ways. There's a lot in there. It's really exciting. I also love VR. I don't know if it's going to take off or not. I go back and forth.

Zaza Kabayadondo: 39:32

I'm waiting. I'm waiting for the day. I'm ready.

Alexander Sarlin: 39:35

We interview a lot of Metaverse, folks on this podcast and I'm I'm bullish on it. But I'm like, you know, there's also been a lot of crashes in the past in that world. So it's really interesting. So one other really interesting finding from this, this public media study is about online learning and how you know, the sort of young Gen Z learners some people really take to online learning but a number of really have struggled with sort of managing the flood of communications and deadlines that that come with with online learning. I'm curious from your perspective, from from Joan Ganz Cooney from Sesame, you know, what are we? How do you think about this, this generation of youth and how they learn online or how they sometimes don't always like learning online?

Michael Preston: 40:21

It's funny to think about that research. Now, because we conducted the missing middle research. In the first year of the pandemic, we had planned actually a whole different way to manage the research with a smaller group of kids in person. And as part of our overall revision to our plan for the year ended up going fully online and review interviewing lots more kids and lots more places across the country over zoom, which had its own kind of, you know, unique challenges, but also great affordances. But so at the time, they were very online, as we all were, and I think that as you were mentioning, Alex in the in the research, the the rise of how to videos as a new form of edtech, let's say, even though it's a fairly low tech edtech, the thing that struck me when talking to young people and I not only in our research, but I saw this in other people's videos of interviews with kids, where they would say like, when they would ask kids what they were doing online, if they asked them, if they were doing anything educational, they would always say now, I don't I don't do that, and I like that. But then you would ask them what they were doing. And invariably, it was all things like I learned how to cook something or I learned this musical instrument, or I learned about XY and Z esoteric topic that I care about. And so it was endlessly about learning new things, a lot of it was over video, a lot of it over the sort of typical video platforms that we all know. And so it was just became the like the same way we used to call it we should call YouTube, the default search engine for kids. I think it also became the default learning platform and that has now in the last couple of years transitioned to tick tock, as it is ascendant in terms of screen time, let's say, but YouTube still dominates. Even in the most recent readout, I think 95% of kids use YouTube and something like 75% are on Tik Tok, I think so, but rapidly on its way up. So between the repository of everything of YouTube and the algorithmically served up stuff that they know kids might be interested in, eventually, you end up having a sort of personalized learning environment created for you, even if it might, if it's, it might be something that's really deliberate like an instrument, my son actually taught himself guitar entirely from YouTube. He's an example of one, my younger daughter taught her friends had scrambled eggs on FaceTime. So sometimes it goes the other direction. But the point I guess, I wanted to make that this is leading me into is that, in addition to the fact that you can learn pretty much anything, you can also learn it from somebody who's not an anointed authority, and that they may be your age, they may be a lot younger than you, they may be from a different country. Or you can look at 10 versions of the same thing and take what you will from them. So this idea that we become social through asynchronous learning opportunities, like that is just kind of an amazing thing. So that to me, was the big tech pandemic shift. I've always I've worked in ad tech for my almost my entire career now, which is many years, but I've always been disappointed in the transformational power of of ad tech. It's always been like, let's do this more efficiently. And then we'll do it even more efficiently, but never in a way that that's not always in a way that inspires. So I think the in this in this sense, kids go to it. It's so effective that they don't even know that it's educational. Yeah, it's really

Alexander Sarlin: 43:50

interesting, you know, that they, we were just looking at a new Washington Post editorial about a Gen X parents of Gen Z tweens. And they mentioned some really interesting things about Gen Z being very sincere, compared to sort of cynical Gen X and being very interested in global events and diverse and all of these great things. And I'm curious how you think that plays out in their online behavior, as well as I'd love to hear your thoughts on this?

Zaza Kabayadondo: 44:18

That's a good question. So what I think is kind of interesting is how, you know, when we move to online learning, okay, so I out here in San Jose, during the pandemic, there wasn't a lot of, you know, opportunity. There weren't a lot of opportunities to go out and give workshops and teach in person, but you would, you know, show up on the Zoom call and your guest speaker and I volunteer here as a director of programs for this film festival, local African Film Festival, and we'd go to classes and teach about African history and, and use film as a way of talking about it. And one of the things that was really interesting about observing this generation, is how playful they are. So I'm thinking of what Michael was saying that they are not thinking of themselves as learning when they were looking at videos on how to bake and, you know, knit and sew and esoteric topics. They're also coming into into zoom or whatever platform they're using, and engaging in chat in, which is not like a new technology, right, but engaging in chat and these really interesting and weird ways. So So what strikes me is that this generation has had to learn how to be kids in this like, really interesting way like they used. Michael, I think you saw this also in the play testing session, like they would use chat and this really obnoxious way. And then the teachers are like freaking out, like, stop pressing one key. Do you know what I'm talking about? Alex, I don't know if this is an answer to your question, but it's just sort of, maybe I'm gonna make this a question.

Alexander Sarlin: 45:52

And what I'm hearing is that, you know, this generation has grown up with these technologies, they say, digital natives, even that term is maybe getting old fashioned, but they've grown up using these technologies all the time. And they don't think of it as very formal. They don't think of online learning with the quotes around it, they might not even think they're learning like you both mentioned, but they live online, they live their entire life online. So anytime they're curious about anything, they're gonna look it up in the platforms they're already in, we look from the outside and say, online learning. They don't think of it.

Zaza Kabayadondo: 46:24

Yeah. And, and they find ways to this is not new findings, right? Like they find ways to build an interactivity, even when it wasn't intended in the, you know, the original design of a tool, they find ways to make it their own, they find ways to engage ways to thrive, right? Maybe this is a question for Michael, like from the research that you've been doing, or the Cooney Center has done, you know, over over decades? How do you capitalize on that? Like, how do you take advantage of the amazing ability of young people to always surprise you and to always find new and somewhat rebellious ways to use something

Michael Preston: 47:02

that really pulls on the rest of this conversation we've had together, doesn't it that the way you take advantage of it as you give them the floor? I feel like that that ultimately, your kids some people talk very optimistically about Gen Z kids as a bridging generation that will help us move out of the morass that we find ourselves. And that Washington Post article you mentioned, Alex cites the Pew centers research on Gen Z kids, which talks about how they're more educated than previous generations, they're more diverse, ethnically, they're more likely to be comfortable coming out as LGBTQ. They see the role of government as helping people they believe that same sex marriage is good for society, like those are things that were compared in comparison to prior generations, they are incrementally more in those directions. And so they maybe are less encumbered by things. I mean, I personally, I love the article, because it also gives us Gen X parents a little credit for enabling, or at least getting out of the way, not just sharing our love of 90s music with them, you know, the oldies. So I think that these kids are also known to be less willing to wait for adulthood to take charge. And so we should just get out of the way. I think that's why we see the rise of, at least in my field, not just the work we do, but the rise of youth councils, and advisories that are not just like a one and done kind of thing, but actually a sustained effort. Our our next gen public media initiative had a youth fellowship for about five or six months this year, and it was just an incredible learning experience for all of us. There's opportunity, you just have to do it. I love

Zaza Kabayadondo: 48:41

that response, Michael, because, you know, it brings us back to the earlier part of this conversation, you know, the work that we did together about, like, what does online, you know, what does digital wellbeing mean? And trying to shift the conversation away from Hollywood, you know, safety and addressing risks and trying to sort of mitigate and minimize the kind of harms that kids are exposed to, towards the space of let's design something that will allow them to thrive. Because for me, like that word, that idea of thriving, that notion, really means stepping back, and like, you know, letting them figure out what that means and giving them room to sort of grow and spread their wings, et cetera, et cetera. But like a lot of you know, you said it much better. I love the way you put it, just get out the way and let them let them do what they do, right?

Alexander Sarlin: 49:25

Sometimes call that emergent behavior in some of the literature, right? It's like that idea. You said Zaza where you give them a chat platform, and they're going to hit one key over and over so that they take up the whole screen. That's not certainly not what the chat platform was intended for. But as soon as you see somebody do it, you realize it's possible. It goes viral, and then everybody has this new habit, and younger generations that live in these worlds are constantly coming up with these new ideas. And I love your point, Michael, but they're not sort of, they want to take over they want to sort of jump right in and be part of the conversation and be you know be giving ideas and not just sort of inheriting them from their, from their elders. Meanwhile, we're at a time when when our government is the by far the oldest, you know, government we've ever had. And I think you know that that tension is is really interesting. It's we've seen it play out in a lot of ways like the Parkland kids and lots of other ways. I wanted to pick up on something you both just said about kids do these really unusual things online, they find what they're doing, they don't consider things learning. One of the real specializations of the Cooney Center that is so interesting is that it research is community learning. And that's really how children quote unquote, interact with media on their own, or together with teachers, family members, or their peers. And this is really an interesting aspect of the Cooney centers research. Tell us a little bit about some of how how you think about this sort of community media engagement or community online behavior.

Michael Preston: 50:57

It really ties back to the founding premise of Sesame Street, right, where the original creators of the show developed content that could be enjoyed by really young kids who loved muppets and great songs and silly jokes, while also learning the letters and numbers. And the rest had to be kind of important things. But at the same time, their families could watch it with them, because you had these amazing stars on the show. I mean, I remember seeing Stevie Wonder, on Sesame Street when I was like four and my my head exploding to the point where I actually waited for the whole rest of the day to see the same episode run again at the end of the day, because I wanted to see that again. Right. So I was hooked. And so if your family washed with you, that meant that the the learning continued off the screen, because you would be engaging with the caring adult in your life and keep talking about the stuff and maybe that would extend it to other things. Obviously, the media landscape is vastly different. Now, when we published our new co viewing report more than 10 years ago, that was still early days for personal devices, right? The iPad was probably a year or two old at that point. I mean, kids weren't all like holding an iPhone in the stroller. But this idea that media would become enjoyed in different ways. But there was a risk that it would become very one to one, instead of something that can be shared. And so I think we're always looking for opportunities in Media Design, to leverage multigenerational shared experiences. And some of the best apps are things that like both both adults and kids can do together. But there is a broader phenomenon in society that where we do our, when we're in person, at least we're on our own. I think, obviously, the kids we're describing, or we're just talking about are extremely social all the time online, sometimes when they're in the same room, sometimes not. So what joint media engagement, the new term for this basically, is anywhere. So in some ways, it's a different paradigm. Little kids in their families are still watching TV, or they're still enjoying a show together. But I think it's less. So it's always a challenge to design the kinds of opportunities that kids and families want to do together. Different from teens and tweens in their peer group, kind of being silly creative, hitting the one key a million times, or, you know, looking, looking to get all of the typical business of kids done on an on a screen. So, but when we think about this well being concept that we've talked about a little bit Zaza, you just said Bill being a few minutes ago, right that I think we we try to unpack what that means, maybe be less less trapped up in the affordances of the media and the tech that the kids are using and think about holistic kind of child centered outcome that I think is a much more certainly more inspiring way to think about the work but how it sets the bar for us like what would it be like? How might we achieve a wellbeing children's Well, being in digital and non digital spaces, they're more fluid about it, like they're less encumbered as we are we're like, oh my gosh, I'm on this magical device. You know, that was invented in my lifetime. These kids are like this is this is it. This is the world right here in this in this digital device. And it all started to lens with all the other things I do. This initiative that we partner with Lego and UNICEF on called right tech talks about the opportunity to use technology to for things like developing competence, emotional regulation, empowerment, social connection, but also things like creativity, play like Lego is very focused on digital learning through play. And this is this is a key aspect of that is if you feel safe and secure. If you are in an inclusive environment. If you are feeling self actualized then you can get to these spaces of play that then every kid needs. So I think that that's an easier way to think about the benefits of using media. But connectedness is usually a big one in that list. Yeah, I

Alexander Sarlin: 54:52

mean, there's so much it's a fascinating answer. It's so so much to unpack in there. I love that idea of sort of multi generational shared experiences or joint media engagement. And you know, it strikes me that working across generations, having teachers and students or family member parents and students in the same media or learning app is a really rich experience. And it's also completely different than an app or learning experience where it's, it's peer to peer, where it's multiple kids of the same age, the behaviors are different, the you know, the feeling is different. But they both can be really optimized, that's probably not the right word. But they can both be incredibly enriching, incredibly good opportunities to build relationships, as well as actually, you know, improve learning. It's an exciting area.

Zaza Kabayadondo: 55:39

I was gonna say, when I think of the pandemic, that's what it really meant. To me, it was like finding ways to connect with my nieces and nephews who are halfway across the world. For us, we scheduled among us sessions, right. And it would be intergenerational in the sense that the youngest is like 13, or 14, and the oldest is 40. Something and, you know, it was just their approach to playing this game with us was like, very different from how they would do it on their own. Right. But I don't know when when we think about when you ask questions like what's the, you know, what's the future of educational technology? Like, where's this going? Maybe it's not so much. I think my answer was like AI and VR, but maybe it's not so much like what the technology is, but it's like, how do we find new ways of connecting? How do we find new ways of intergenerational joint meeting engagement? And all these? How do we find new ways of using these tools to create and learn and not so much the new tool itself, but how we're going to engage with it?

Alexander Sarlin: 56:35

Yeah, just the way that you know, sesame was a way for parents and children to engage in media together in the Age of Television. Now we're in the age of everybody has a screen attached to their face, and you're not sitting in a living room anymore. So what is that connection look like? I think that's a really deep question for all of us in edtech. And in media, to think about I love that,

Michael Preston: 56:59

because we're talking about teens and tweens, the sort of the operating word for joint media engagement. Multijet, like intergenerational media engagement is cringe, that so much of there's so much risk as an older person, right? Not a kid playing in the spaces that these kids are in and trying to be authentic. That's not okay. That's cringe like You're not a kid, you can't do those things, or just to be yourself. Also cringe. So you see why platforms like Facebook have such a declining use by kids because Oh, my mom does that. I actually heard that verbatim on the subway today, when I heard two teenagers talking about Facebook truly happened this morning. But if you were to play into Tik Tok, or any of the platforms kids are using, like I sometimes show up in my kids be real photos, because I happen to be there in the moment. But all of that is cringe. Like don't comment don't like my thing. You no stay away. That's, that's terrible. Like, so that's the minefield, or the new giant media engagement?

Alexander Sarlin: 58:06

Yeah, definitely is. And it there's a lot of ways to go wrong. As somebody in the wrong generation. I remember looking over the shoulder of kids, I used to tutor when they'd be playing online games. And they'd have these incredible conversations going with hundreds of other users just like whipping by the screen in real time. But any time you'd actually catch any line, it'd be like, oh, man, this is this is not my this is not my world. Zaza. Let me start with you. I want to ask what is one resource that could be a book newsletter, podcast, blog, anything that you would recommend? And it can be more than one for somebody who wants to learn more about any of the many topics we discussed today?

Zaza Kabayadondo: 58:47

Good question. So I think that if you want to learn more about kids and how they think, Jason yips work, Jason, you're busy professor at University of Washington, we've collaborated a lot with him and the lab that he runs, which is called Kids team. Kids team is kind of a network of different labs across the country that are studying ways to design co design with kids and get, basically you get access to a group of kids who may have like three, four, sometimes even five years of experience thinking like designers, and they're really good at pulling ideas apart, but also like generative co creation sessions. So check out the research that they publish, it's a really good way of trying to understand what goes on in the minds of kids. Another tool that I would resource that I'd love to recommend is this is a little less, it's kind of off the beaten path. It's a newsletter by a friend and colleague of mine called Ella been earned. She's a former IDEO designer researcher, and now she teaches at Olin College. She writes this little newsletter and she has this really interesting framework called the innovators compass, which is a really cool way of it's a compass in the sense that it's like finding your way Through the unknown and doing so in a creative way, and you can apply it to the work that you do if you are an entrepreneur, or you can apply it to planning, you know, the end of the summer slump and just sort of how you want your year to go. It's a really great visioning tool that guides you through how to ask questions and how to explore what's possible. So the innovators compass,

Alexander Sarlin: 1:00:20

fantastic, Jason yesterday search and Ella, Ben, are the innovators compass, we will provide links to those resources. Michael, how about you? What are some resources, again, any kind that you would recommend for people who want to learn more?

Michael Preston: 1:00:32

So I guess lately, by virtue of the work we're doing here, I've been a bit of a connoisseur of resources and guides and playbooks that do the kind of work that we also aspire to do, which is to bridge what the knowledge base tells us and what researchers who know and work with kids tell us around how to do, basically, to design for kids benefit, I guess, sort of roll that up that's up can be interpreted in a broad range of ways. There's a group in the UK called The Five Rights Foundation. That's the organization actually that successfully developed the framework that became the age appropriate design code that was passed in the UK last year, California recently adopted very similar version of that as the California age appropriate design code, which now has been the tech industry in a tizzy over how to interpret those regulations. A lot of the ideas are high level, and I mean, voluntary, in the sense that I mean, in the UK, you have the ICAO, like an actual governing body that's charged with enforcing in the US how that would go is still kind of unclear, I think. But the regulatory environments are very different, but they have created a hole for me that more than regulation of resource guide, if you can find people who are willing and interested in but need help. Giving them guideposts examples, methods, and maybe connecting them to others is really this new frontier, I think, and people there are a lot of people allies within companies that make products for kids that would want this stuff. So like a year ago, maybe five rights launched an initiative called playful by design free play in a digital world. And they also recently put out sort of a pack of cards you can use to design free play, I think there's this is responding to an idea that play in digital spaces can be constrained by the design of the environment, and kids have a right to have free play that is an inhibiting the things that they want to do. That's one that I'm inspired by. And then since I'm talking about five rights, they just won an award, like this week, like the lovies, or something like that. That's an award that I hadn't heard of. But I recognize another amazing contribution that they published this year called make making child's online safety reality. It's like a, it's a toolkit, again, a design specification for teams to consider how you actually take all of the guidance around privacy, safety, security, and turn it into something that you can operationalize for the development of your product. I think those things are, that's not a general audience reading, but I think it should be. And it's the fact that people are now trying to address specifically the challenging middle between what researchers know and what designers and developers need trying to bridge that gap. It's really inspiring to me.

Zaza Kabayadondo: 1:03:30

Yeah. And we talked earlier about the Center for Scholars and storytellers just want to

Alexander Sarlin: 1:03:34

Yes, we put that link as well. Fantastic resources all new to me. I'm sure there'll be new and exciting for lots of our listeners as well. And I couldn't agree more that that gap between research and practice is just this yawning gap in so much of edtech and I'm glad it's starting to get closed, at least within some of the children's design, world theories and practices. This has been a blast. Thank you so much for being here. Michael Preston and Zaza Kabayadondo. From Junghans Cooney Center with Sesame Workshop. What a great conversation. You're welcome back anytime to talk more about the EdTech landscape. It's been a great to have you both.

Michael Preston: 1:04:19

Alex. It's been so fun to be here. Thank you for hosting us.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:04:23

Thanks for listening to this episode of edtech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more edtech insider subscribe to the free ed tech insiders newsletter on substack.