The New Coviewing

In fall 2011, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center released their latest report, “The New Coviewing: Designing for Learning Through Joint Media Engagement.”  The study points out the short-comings of the term “co-viewing,” suggesting that “joint media engagement” is more fitting.  The difference is more than just semantic, and instead alludes to the important cognitive shift from passive “viewing” associated with merely watching TV to active “engagement” (as in Sesame Street’s Kinect game Once Upon a Monster). We were excited to see this differentiation, especially because we think that the present and future of the best kids media is in truly interactive experiences.

In addition to presenting a brief literature review and a number of case studies on the topic, the report also included a design guide which outlined principles to consider when designing for joint media engagement.  These principles include keeping content kid-driven, allowing for multiple planes of engagement, and clearly differentiating roles.  The case studies included in this report pointed to a number of products that employ these principles, including Electric Racer, an intergenerational gaming experience designed to promote literacy. We found the principles outlined to be extremely interesting and helpful as we continue to consider co-play in our designs.  We highly recommend you take the time to look at these, and the rest of the report when you have the chance!

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CloudKid: A Year in Review 2011

Last January, CloudKid recapped our first full year with a dandy list of highlights. And while 2010 was a killer year, 2011 was doubly amazing. Some highlights include:

  • Finished Fizzy’s Lunch Lab season 2 production
  • Developed & started production on a project with Scholastic Education
  • Nominated for our 2nd Emmy for Fizzy’s Lunch Lab
  • Nominated for our 3rd Emmy for the Pictureka show opener
  • Green-lit for a 3rd season of Fizzy’s Lunch Lab
  • Produced a website and games for the upcoming show, Peg+Cat
  • Hired our first Harvard graduate
  • Moved into a new headquarters in Boston, MA
  • Launched our PBS /US Dept. of Ed. transmedia project, Escape
  • Held our first CloudKid open house
  • Awarded 2nd year PBS /US Dept. of Ed. transmedia grant
  • Landed our first gig with Sesame Workshop
  • Revamped the Lunch Lab website
  • Started production on our 1st original iPad app property
  • The CloudKid team grew to twelve full-timers

2011 was filled with hard work and a lot of fun, but next year is going to be even better. We have big things planned for 2012, and we’re not going to let the Mayans stand in our way.

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Mingle Jingle 2011

Last week, CloudKid hung up our Wacom pens for an evening to celebrate the holidays with our first annual Mingle Jingle yankee swap and holiday party.

The evening was filled with formal attire, delicious Thai food, more Christmas cookies than a grandmother could bake, and memorable yankee swap gifts. Some of the gift highlights included: an Axe Body Spray collection, a Reaching Claw, and a tub of Vaseline (accompanied by a can of clams).

A good time was had by all, and we can’t wait until Mingle Jingle 2012. Wishing everyone a happy holiday and New Year!

Check out the photos on our Facebook Page.

CloudKid Shenanigans

Lifelong Learners


One of the best parts about CloudKid’s Boston locale is the city’s robust academic community.  In addition to recruiting from local colleges and universities, we also try our best to take advantage of the amazing resources schools in the area have to offer.  In the past few months, for example, CloudKids have attended events at MIT, as well as at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education (HGSE).

HGSE hosts monthly Askwith Forums, a series of talks about education that are open to the public.  We recently attended one with Lisa Henson, CEO of The Jim Henson Company, that dealt with the importance of characters in informal education for early learners.  We also attended another forum with acclaimed author and professor Howard Gardner, who spoke about reframing truth, beauty and goodness for 21st century education.  You can watch Howard’s entire talk here, and hear a podcast of a post-forum interview with Lisa Henson here.

We got a lot out of attending both of these events, and look forward to continuing our involvement in the local academic community.  No matter what your location is, we recommend you look for opportunities like these in your own area (or even in the online community).  We believe there is much to be gained from looking at ourselves as lifelong learners, and attending events like these are a great way to keep learning!

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Lunch Lab Site Upgrades

For the last three months, we’ve been hard at work making big upgrades to the Fizzy’s Lunch Lab website as part of the upcoming Season 3 launch.  This season, we decided to produce less videos and games to focus on making the web experience more personalized and meaningful for kids.  We’re proud to announce the new and improved site launched today.

Some highlights:

  • PBS Kids Go! Login system – save progress and high scores.
  • Leader boards – recognize top scores
  • Fizzy Points – a site currency that rewards kids for playing games
  • Newly designed video player and Food Section
  • My Kitchen section that includes:
    • Custom Kitchen – Kids can buy appliances with Fizzy Points and design their own Lunch Lab
    • Build a Bot – Kids can design their very own helper bot that lives in their Custom Kitchen
    • Magnets – Kids are rewarded with awesome badges for watching, printing, and playing themed content

The CloudKid team put in some long hours this fall to make this happen and the upgrades look great.  We’re hopeful it’ll add a lot to the Lunch Lab experience.  Be sure to check it out and share it with family and friends!

Production

Takeaways from Spain

Last week, I traveled to Barcelona and Madrid for a much needed vacation.  I purposely left my laptop in Boston to avoid the urge of doing work. I wanted to open my senses to a new and exciting place without the usual distractions, and what I found was a country so different from the United States, but a place that had clearly been infiltrated by American culture.  In almost every store or restaurant I entered, familiar music could be heard – Ella, MJ, Madonna. McDonalds, Burger Kings, and KFCs amazingly stood out next to Antoni Gaudi buildings.  Apple products were everywhere – iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks.  I even spotted some old friends such as Spongebob, Buzz Lightyear, and Phineas and Ferb.  I was in place so different than my own, yet it felt so similar in many ways.  But looking at the bigger picture (and lots of art), I realized the US can learn a lot from Spanish and probably most of European culture.  One lesson that seemed especially relevant (for the blog) is their connection to classical art and art history.

Goya is a national hero, Dali is a legend, Picasso is a god, and their buildings are shrines. They’re important, they’re relevant, and they’re part of the historical conversation – it creates a culture of inspiration for new generations of artists.  I also visited a college art school gallery in Madrid that blew me away.  Because art is their culture, it seems there is a greater focus on classical art and draftsmanship, and it showed in the student work.  Visiting Spain made me realize that the art of art is drying up in the US.  For the most part, the importance of traditional art skills is not preached or practiced here (especially for younger kids).  The result is portfolios from recent grads who can’t draw and don’t have an understanding of anatomy, perspective, or color theory.  Why?  Some ideas:

  1. The craft of seeing, drawing, and painting is not being properly taught in art schools.
  2. There is an emphasis placed on ideas over technique.  Ideas are a crucial element of modern art, but so is craft.
  3. Students are distracted by media and technology, and aren’t able to focus and push themselves to that next level of creation.

I don’t know if it’s possible to truly change the way the US views the arts, but young artists in the States should understand that being an artist is a constant evolution that takes a lot of time, hard work, dedication, patience, and love.  CloudKid believes this process starts with an emphasis on traditional art skills.  While I learned many more things during my trip, Spain truly opened my eyes that we need to embrace our artistic heritage, need more effective art education, and need to constantly push our craft.

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S is for Sesame Street!

It’s official!  CloudKid is going to produce a Sesame Street interactive game (and Android app version down the road).  The animation-heavy experience will feature a well-known character who doesn’t have a single game on the Sesame Street site – we like to think we’re breaking some cool ground. Everyone at CloudKid has been huge fans since we were in diapers, so needless to say we’re ecstatic!

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A Look Inside CloudKid

A few weeks ago, our friends at PBS Kids visited the CloudKid HQ with a camera crew. As partners in the 2012 National Stem Video Game Challenge, PBS decided to give kids a sneak peek at what it is like to work for a game design company.  We were honored when they asked us to be a part of this initiative, along with WGBH and Sesame Workshop.

Check out the finished video here and please help spread the word about the challenge.  We’re so excited to see what kids come up with!

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Risky Business

From "Gesundheit!" App

Last Tuesday, a few of us CloudKids attended “Reducing Risk in the Games Business,” an event put on by the New England Games SiG at the Microsoft NERD Center.  A panel of game industry veterans discussed their experiences and approaches in helping to manage risk in the game industry.  With the upcoming launch of CloudKid’s first original app, we were excited to jump in on this discussion.

The panel, and the audience, had a lot of great insights on the business side of game and app releases.  While the conversation was interesting, there was an extreme emphasis placed on analytics and the marketing of games. It seems all the panelists and moderator ignored one of the biggest factors of risk-taking in the game industry – THE GAMES!  We were a bit surprised that there wasn’t a discussion surrounding how risk-taking with IP and game mechanics can draw in and keep users engaged.  While we understand that having a great marketing plan is part of the risk equation, we still think that the products themselves need to be “risky” to stand out from the crowd.

A few other areas that we wished the panel had time to discuss were the challenge of balancing product and company recognition and the increasingly popular “freemium” model of app releases.  If you get the chance to comment, we’d love to hear your thoughts on reducing risk in the games business!

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Halloween Spooktacular

Last Tuesday, the CloudKid team got into the Halloween spirit for our 1st Annual CloudKid Spooktacular. For inspiration, we checked out some extreme pumpkin carvings over our pizza dinner.  Then, after some homemade treats were consumed, we plugged in our power-tools, popped in Killer Clowns from Outer Space, and got to carving!

Check out the photos on our Facebook page to see the final results!  Hope you enjoy, and Happy Halloween to all!

CloudKid Shenanigans