Featuring GBH’s Yatibaey Evans! Listen here.
Author: wgbhkids
GBH reaches millions of children, families and teachers in Boston and across the country through engaging and interactive content available for free across multiple platforms. The GBH Kids Catalyst Fund supports the Foundation’s long-standing commitment to developing learning media approaches that will connect with and serve a broad and diverse audience and help close the learning gaps for marginalized communities.
Addressing the critical need for inclusive, research-based, widely-accessible quality children’s resources, gifts to the fund will allow our team to continue to produce both popular programming and community and classroom learning media tools for kids, as well as establish partnerships that help to advance this work.
For more information about supporting the GBH Kids Catalyst Fund, please contact:
Tatiana Burgos-Espinal
Associate Director of Major Gifts
tatiana_espinal@wgbh.org
For more information about including children’s programming in your estate plans, please contact:
Julie Hallowell
Director of Gift Planning and Endowment
gift_planning@wgbh.org
GBH Kids Digital is excited to announce the launch of “Search It Up: The Game” to complement their award-winning series of live-action shorts, Search It Up!
Funded by Comcast’s Internet Essentials, “Search It Up: The Game” is designed to help kids 4-7 safely explore and enjoy the world they’re already in, the world of computers, tablets, sharing, and the internet. It offers eight mini-games, each based on a fun, kid-friendly theme. Through lively gameplay, kids learn how to be a digital upstander; how to judge which photos should (and shouldn’t) be shared; how to have healthy boundaries for digital content; which calls and texts to respond to; and, surprisingly, that even cows can be connected to the internet!
“Search It Up: The Game” was created by Senior Executive Producer & Director of Digital Partnerships Bill Shribman, Senior Digital Producer Gentry Menzel, Senior Developer Jolin Yim, Senior Digital Designer Becca Quigley, Senior Digital Designer Jesse Haley, Associate Digital Designer Jenny DeMarines, Associate Digital Designer Lauren Kane, with support from Business Manager Kate Hewitt. Original music by Geoff Adams.
GBH Education is seeking a Director of Research and Evaluation. GBH is a public media leader, based in Boston.
This role reports to the Executive Director of Education and is responsible for leading the department’s research and evaluation efforts across a variety of interesting projects across school-based and out-of-school/community based educational settings. We’re looking for someone with excellent formative, summative, and market research chops, knowledge about edtech (K-12) or educational media (early childhood, youth), and associated quantitative and qualitative research methods expertise.
The role is social impact oriented, and requires grant writing, communication, and people skills. We need someone who brings a service mentality working with internal clients in multifunctional teams. Good candidates would understand the nonprofit ethos yet be facile with product development research, and be strategic thinkers yet detail oriented.
Advanced graduate degree in learning sciences, education, child/youth/human development, communication, or social sciences required. Candidates from underrepresented groups are particularly welcome to apply.
More details and link to apply here.
The GBH Kids Scriptwriting Fellowship is a program designed to mentor early-career writers, who are members of underrepresented groups in the greater children’s media industry (including individuals of African American, Asian, Latinx/Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander descent), in writing scripts for a GBH KIDS animated series focused on STEM learning.
The goal is to diversify the pipeline of writers for both this show and the greater children’s media industry, with a hands-on learning experience in television writing for children and an opportunity for their scripts to be produced for this new series.
To learn more visit, https://www.wgbh.org/gbhkidsfellowship.
Please spread the word to others who may be interested.
Celebrate at Lakewood Elementary with the BACK TO SCHOOL game! Arthur has new responsibilities helping Mr. Ratburn, and making sure the kindergarteners have a smooth transition to their new school.
Take care of classroom chores, hand out invitations, retrieve library books, and help everyone navigate the busy cafeteria. Along the way, collect decorations for the First Day Dance. Take it from Mr. Ratburn: school is the best place to have fun!
This game was made by Gentry, Nolan, Kal and Kate.
The ARTHUR team is excited to share news about three new digital games, all funded by PBS Kids with a research grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative:
- TOWER OF COWS (D.W.’s favorite game), where players stack cows in a series of increasingly difficult challenges;
- MUFFY’S PARTY PLANNER gives players the chance to join Muffy in designing parties, paying close attention to the clients’ needs; and
- KINDERGARTEN HELPERS lets players follow the Elwood City kindergarten kids’ preferences to create a fun school experience for all.
Since launching on the ARTHUR website and in the PBS Kids games app, all three games have garnered over 2 million plays.
The team was Gentry, Dan, Jolin, Nolan, Eric, Lauren, Sophie, Lizzie, Kate, Alan, Kimberlee, Isaac, Li, and Bill.
GBH enriches people’s lives through programs and services that educate, inspire, and entertain, fostering citizenship and culture, the joy of learning, and the power of diverse perspectives.
DEPARTMENT OVERVIEW
GBH Children’s Media is an international leader in creating compelling educational and engaging media for a wide variety of audiences. The group develops content for all major platforms and, please note, this position is focused on digital games development. The department’s work in digital reaches a huge online and mobile audience, in and out of homes and classrooms. This vibrant digital work for kids keeps public media relevant in the 21st century and the collaborative, team-based approach to creating these products makes GBH a dynamic, friendly and exciting place to work. The team also partners with learning scientists to build the research base for understanding early learning with interactive technology. This position would be in the Children’s Media department, supporting a variety of digital kids apps and game-based projects.
JOB OVERVIEW
The Digital Coordinating Producer will work in close collaboration with the Executive Producer and Senior Producers to manage the production of educational games, websites, and other digital learning resources to ensure projects are completed on time and on budget and at an industry-leading level of quality.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Work with Executive Producer and Senior Producer to manage production timelines for digital games and features: schedule and manage resources, run production meetings and standups, oversee sprint planning and JIRA ticketing, distribute deliverables to reviewers and coordinate feedback.
- Support Executive Producer and Senior Producer in executing the creative direction for digital features.
- Manage specification documents, plans, and deliverables for digital features.
- Work with Senior Producer and Producer to produce and write content for digital features.
- Manage play testing with children.
- Act as point person for voice records: coordinate casting materials and scripts; liaise with studio; attend records.
- Oversee Quality Assurance process.
- Support collaboration with researchers and advisors; help manage client and vendor relationships; act as point person across GBH departments.
- Work closely with Executive Producer and Senior Producer on content planning for future projects.
- In general, support the production team: attend series-related meetings and creative reviews; work with Executive Producer and Senior Producer to create presentations; submit materials for award opportunities.
- Mentor Production Coordinator and interns.
SKILL SET
- Digital games and website production experience essential.
- Must have demonstrated ability to motivate and manage production staff and promote teamwork.
- Ability to deliver high-quality product within time, scope, and budget constraints.
- Must have excellent management skills, writing ability and interpersonal skills.
EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
Bachelors or equivalent work experience. Candidates should have strong digital production experience, with an affinity and enthusiasm for working with technology, education and children’s media; experience developing ideas for digital learning products; ability to work collaboratively across diverse teams and with all levels of staff and stakeholders. Creative problem solver with strong sense of initiative. Four to five years of production experience.
JOB SPECIFICS
This is a staff position
GBH is an equal opportunity employer. The community and audience we serve is diverse, and we wish to foster that diversity in our workplace. Toward that end, GBH does not discriminate against individuals in hiring, employment or promotion on the basis of race, religion, color, sex/gender, gender identity and gender expression, age, marital status, national origin, sexual orientation, citizenship, handicap or disability, veteran or military status, political belief, pregnancy, genetic information or any other characteristic protected by law.
GBH Kids has launched Small Wonders, a free app developed for Reach Every Reader, and supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Small Wonders offers families a co-play experience of original games, activities, and songs with embedded prompts to help parents support language development through conversation, a key pre-literacy skill. A special Grown-Ups section also offers language-rich activity ideas and animated dialogues illustrating ways to make the most of the app and to extend learning beyond the screen experience.
This project began in Fall 2018 and was completed during the pandemic. The app’s approach is based on current research in children’s early language and literacy development and is published by our partners at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, marking their first foray into publishing content for families.
The project involved Children’s Media and Education and Digital Services, including over 30 GBHers as we conducted formative research in public housing, completed extensive prototyping and user testing at HeadStart day care centers and the Boston Children’s Museum, and finalized twelve digital games, four songs, five guide videos, and supporting print materials.
The app is available for free at Apple and Google Play.
An Associate Digital Designer combines three core Practices…
- Visual Design — the fundamentals of composition, typography, graphic form, color theory, and motion design / kinetic art
- Experience Design for Children — conceiving an end-to-end experience for kids, mapping out the sequence of game flow in concert with research and engagement goals
- Design Production — mastery of Adobe Creative Suite and other essential design tools to output deliverables, including wireframes and motion graphics
… in service of three key Functions…
- Children’s Game Designer — apply educational and/or learning goals to engaging games for kids
- Web Designer — design for websites, apps, social media, and other digital environments
- Graphic Artist — create new graphics, either by manipulating existing or illustrating original art
Digital Things! 