This Episode will air at 5:30 pm EDT on Saturday August 20th
Early Childhood Learning at Scale with Joseph Blatt, Kim Foulds, and Shanna Kohn
For more than half a century, Sesame Street has pioneered and evolved a model for early childhood learning at scale. This episode will discuss the key role of research and evaluation in Sesame’s success and evolution, including new forms of evaluation for work in developing regions with refugees and through the pandemic. Thoughtful evidence-based design has ensured that its brand is very distinctive and highly trusted across the world. International programming has become part of Sesame’s DNA, with an essential ingredient being the participation of indigenous collaborators. Its newest international projects include Ahlan Simsim and support for Rohingya in Bangladesh. Our guests will provide advice on developing early childhood learning through media.
More about our guests below the video
Episode Guests
Joe Blatt is Senior Lecturer in Education and Faculty Co-Chair of the Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). His research and teaching focus on the effects of media content and technology on human development, learning, and civic behavior. Blatt’s particular focus is helping to define and develop the emerging field of informal learning. His current work includes creating digital resources to promote literacy among underserved families with very young children, and research to assess and rate the educational quality of online resources for children and young people.
Blatt has created television series and interactive media for many types of informal learning environments. Before serving as executive producer of the long-running PBS series Scientific American Frontiers, he made documentaries for NOVA, and close to 100 other programs for public television broadcast, including the popular statistics series Against All Odds. Blatt is engaged in consulting and advising relationships with major media and technology companies, including Sesame Workshop, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, WGBH, and Google. He has received HGSE’s highest faculty honor, the Morningstar Award for Teaching Excellence.
Kim Foulds is the Vice President, Content Research & Evaluation at Sesame Workshop, the media and education nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street. She oversees research and evaluation on Sesame Workshop’s co-productions and community engagement interventions across the globe focused on a variety of curricular areas and media. Using a variety of methodologies to support projects throughout their development and working with academic and research institutions to evaluate efficacy, Kim works to translate data to provide specific recommendations to maximize the impact of Sesame Workshop’s multimedia content.
Kim holds a Ph.D. in Education and a M.A. in African Studies from University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.A. in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College.
Shanna Kohn is Director, International Education at Sesame Workshop. She leads educational content development for Ahlan Simsim, a localized version of Sesame Street in the Middle East, and manages the design of multimedia teaching and learning materials for Sesame Workshop’s humanitarian programs. The Workshop’s two large-scale humanitarian programs, generously funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the LEGO Foundation, deliver early learning and nurturing care to children and caregivers affected by the Syrian and Rohingya refugee crises and comprise the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response.
Prior to working on humanitarian programs, Kohn managed curriculum, content, and program design in collaboration with on-the-ground partners for global programs focused on a variety of outcomes–including shifting parents’ perceptions and capacity around meaningful play, improving global health outcomes, and promoting a whole-child curriculum–in Jordan, Lebanon, the Kurdish Region of Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, South Africa, and Mexico. She also worked as Editorial Assistant for the Sesame Learning team, creating multimedia content for preschool classrooms in the United States. Kohn was recently selected to join the Workshop’s senior leadership Operations Team through an inaugural effort led by the President & CEO to broaden and diversify the voices that impact business decisions and operations. Kohn holds a BA in American Studies from Vassar College and an EdM in Education Policy and Management from Harvard Graduate School of Education.