Harvard, Sesame St. team up in course
The educators were unorthodox, to say the least -- an alphabet-crazed, cookie-devouring monster teaching the ABCs and a Goth arithmetic teacher who simply calls himself ''the Count." Nonetheless, their pupils learned.
For the past 37 years, parents have trusted these Sesame Street residents to provide the early schooling for their children, unaware that one of the most elite institutions was behind the educational agenda: Harvard.
Nearly four decades after numerous faculty members and students helped research the content that provides the basis for ''Sesame Street," the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the show, are teaming up again -- this time to create a class that benefits the university as well as the show.
Using the time-tested results of ''Sesame Street" to lure children toward the television screen for educational purposes, the course, ''Informal Learning for Children," will explore how electronic media can affect the health of children 6 to 9 years old. The graduate students will examine ways to lower childhood obesity, while having an opportunity to make an impact similar to their predecessors.
At the end of the semester, they will pitch a proposal to Sesame Workshop's executives that promotes better health habits among children using media as a tool.
Before the first class with the ''Sesame Street" flavor began, the class lecturer Joseph Blatt and Susan Royer, Sesame Workshop's vice president and executive director, spoke with Globe correspondent Glenn Yoder.
Q: Why is children's health such a critical issue?
A: Royer: The reason it was picked is if you look at the data, the rise in childhood obesity between children 6 to 9 years old is staggering. More and more children are being diagnosed with diabetes, and the long-term ramifications are pretty scary. So because of that, we decided to look at this complex issue. . . . We're looking at it in the health and the whole child perspective. This is a topic we took on for season 36 of ''Sesame Street," so we've taken that issue and made it age-appropriate for preschoolers. Now, in this course we're looking at this issue through the lens of kids 6 to 9.
Q: What results are you are hoping to achieve?
A: Blatt: The immediate results we hope of this first venture together would be a large number of students who are trained both in learning theory and other sorts of human development that we teach here, and in how to reach children effectively through media. So we imagine that we're going to be graduating a number of students who will be skilled and prepared to be the curriculum developers, researchers, evaluators, possibly writers, maybe even the producers of new educational media for kids. Some of our grads are already working at the workshop. . . . I think more and more people want to do media that connects with kids, and if we offer [television executives] people trained to do that and also make it a positive experience for parents and a learning experience that contributes to the economy, who wouldn't rather do that than exploit it with violent stuff?
Q: What are the major advantages of this partnership?
A: Blatt: One way people often talk about learning is to talk about formal and informal learning, by which formal typically means schools and informal learning means the stuff you learn on television and in museums and places like that. We see this as the perfect partnership of what we know about formal education and what Sesame Workshop knows about informal.
Q: In the past two decades, there has been a shift in which children understood technology more rapidly than many adults. How are you planning to address that problem as you study electronic media?
A: Royer: Media is permeating into formal education faster than educators can learn how to deal with it. You have students coming to class now with the power of a computer in their pocket, and teachers don't know how to deal with that, so [students] are asked to leave that device at the front desk. If we can educate educators about the power of media, whether that be television or interactive video games, and the power of those vehicles to educate, enlighten, and engage students and to be comfortable with that, that can be a huge step forward. Because now I believe the technology is in the hands of the students, and the teachers don't know how to deal with that.
