Smart Choices

February 1, 2010 World Screen
This article originally appeared in the NATPE 2010 issue.
 
For decades, PBS KIDS has been providing entertaining educational programming that has helped millions of children learn how to count, read, resolve conflicts and other basic skills through endearing shows and characters they can relate to—all the while keeping true to the maxim that children learn best while having fun.
 
Always willing to experiment and find new ways of engaging children wherever they may be, PBS offers two different strands for children: PBS KIDS for preschoolers, and PBS KIDS GO! for early elementary school kids. Each provides youngsters the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television, online and with outreach programs.
 
“At PBS we use the power of media to unlock the learning potential for every child, and we believe that media can open windows to new opportunities and that children can learn and discover new possibilities,” says Lesli Rotenberg, the senior VP of children’s media at PBS.
 
“We are particularly excited about the potential of new media and the idea that new technology can help children to learn in all new ways,” she continues. “So not only are we using the Internet to create games for children to learn interactively, but we are using all kinds of new media like touch screens, iPhone and iTouch devices, and interactive white boards to unlock the learning potential in new environments so that any place can be a learning place and any time can be a learning time.”
 
PBSkids.org and PBSkidsgo.org are two of the most popular online destinations for children. These sites are often parents’ first stop when their children are ready to experience the Internet.
 
In September 2008, PBS KIDS GO! launched its video player PBSkidsgo.org/video, which features hundreds of video clips and dozens of full-length episodes. Since then, visitors have streamed more than 52 million videos. In 2009, PBSkids.org attracted on average more than 8.6 million unique visitors and 394 million page views per month. A little more than a year later, in December 2009, PBS launched its preschool video player. It, too, offers clips and full-length episodes of all the preschool series, online and on demand. 
 
In addition, PBS KIDS has been launching new original web properties. “This is part of our experiment to see how we would create content differently for different platforms, and we’ve asked ourselves what are the technologies that are available to us online that are slightly different from the way we would be creating things for television,” says Sara DeWitt, the senior director of PBS KIDS and PBS KIDS GO! Interactive.
 
The first property made its debut in November and is called Fizzy’s Lunch Lab. It consists of two-minute webisodes and focuses on health and nutrition. “It’s animated and a lot of fun,” says DeWitt. “Professor Fizzy runs a lunch lab where he teaches kids different recipes, he interviews different foods like the Natural Nut peanut-butter rapper, and he has a villain, Fast Food Freddy, so these webisodes will have a narrative arc.”
 
The second property is from The Jim Henson Company and is called Wilson & Ditch: Digging America. It features two gopher brothers traveling across the country and uses a combination of webisodes, a blog, online postcards and games to teach children about the geography, history and culture of the United States.
 
The third property is called Lifeboat to Mars and is funded by the National Science Foundation. “It targets kids 9 to 11 and focuses on biology concepts,” says DeWitt. “So it’s helping kids go through different games about ecosystems and microorganisms.”
 
PBS KIDS knows that children are using both television and the Internet. “TV consumption has increased among children and so has web consumption, but the web is not cannibalizing TV, children are just spending more media hours in general,” says Rotenberg. “That leads to the question, is this good or bad? And the answer is, what is the medium they are consuming and what is the context?”
 
PBS KIDS has done considerable research into the impact of the content it makes available to young viewers. A recent study on the preschool series Super Why!, conducted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, illustrated that the series strengthens the literacy skills of preschoolers. Children who watched Super Why! showed statistically significant improvement on standardized literacy tests. “Our charge is to create the very best content because we know that media can teach,” says Rotenberg, “and we want to use them in a way that will help children.”