Moderator: Alan Gershenfeld, Founder and President, E-Line Media
Panelists: Wendy Bronfin, Director, Product Management at Barnes & Noble; Sara DeWitt, Vice President of PBSKids Interactive; Rachel Schiff, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Interactive Entertainment
Devices: If you buy technology to help kids to read, you still need to encourage them to read. You can't just hand them a device and expect them to automatically learn. Make sure they're not getting lazy and browsing YouTube.
Put something you want them to learn in front of them. Just because they use technology doesn't mean they're doing it in an effective and productive way.
If you have technology games or books, try and add in real-world activities. Making sure your digital world encompasses more than just the screen time aspect.
Parent Child Interaction: PBS Kids did eye tracking testing, realized there was a real break with kids younger than 6.5 if a video came up anywhere on the screen, they zoned in on the video and stopped doing anything else. Older kids tended to pause the video to get on with their task at hand.
Thinking about leaving breadcrumbs for parents - finding ways to bring parents into the experience later. eg. Martha Speaks, they had an associated app where parents could record what kids were doing in the game. Simple example: leave something for the parent elsewhere on device (such as saved photos from game to photo gallery).
Health: One of the negative things doctors are seeing in kids is insomnia issues in children. What they are saying is as a practice they are developing strategies about how to guide children and families on this insomnia issue.
Q: Well Roundedness: What do you do to encourage well roundedness in kids?
A: Was a scholastic research report on time kids reading books for fun and doing things for fun. As they get older, do less reading activity and more time in gaming and then cell phone use becomes more pervasive use of their time. Suggests making compelling content to help.
See what other kids are doing in different ways - different collaboration networks. Follow kids interests through technology - how can we push them to something in the real world? How many of games kids build are things they're very passionate about? How to get them active in this passion outside of digital environment?
Q: What do you think should be kept sacred in the 'real world'
A: It's not an either / or - one person said if you live in boston, you know a lot of stuff is done inside in the winter! Do as much as you can in real world. Also up to the parent to encourage that real world experience.
Nook lady - reading bedtime stories to your child. SOmetimes digital books can inspire a better experience for kids at bedtime - digital media enhances that experience that parents and kids love doing together. It's not about either / or - but how to compliment.
Q: What do you think about when you are designing games for kids interests without pigeonholing them? There are stereotypes about how boys vs girls play games. Eg. sometimes theme might be more interesting for a boy, but how do you make it interesting also for girls?
GameStar Mechanic: they found at late elementary and middle-school age, both girls and boys were engaged in product. Found girls made games very differently at the beginning, but the end product was similar. Found it very difficult to get girls engaged in construction of a product at the 9th grade.
Alot of girls who engage in product, want to go into digital games focus on storytelling narrative of gameplay.
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