Category: Awards
Our pilot video series Search It Up just won a Public Media Award at the 2021 NETA Conference. “The Public Media Awards honor our members’ finest work in education, community engagement, marketing/communications and content. This year saw a record number of entries from stations across the country as new categories were introduced recognizing excellence in podcasts and digital media use as well as awards in each category specific to the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
WGBH has been recognized with three George Foster Peabody Awards for excellence in broadcasting in 2019, including the prestigious Institutional Award for the documentary series FRONTLINE. WGBH’s Children’s Media and Education team was honored for the children’s program Molly of Denali and FRONTLINE was also recognized for the Academy Award-nominated documentary For Sama.
“The distinguished Peabody Awards reflect the highest standards of broadcast and digital media that bring to light the issues that matter today,” said WGBH president and CEO Jon Abbott. “This recognition of both FRONTLINE and Molly of Denali is a testament to the important work of these teams, committed to representing a diversity of voices and exploring critical topics that might otherwise go overlooked.”
Each year, the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors honors the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio and digital media. Peabody Awards are bestowed upon a curated collection of stories that capture society’s most important issues. Sixty nominees were selected from approximately 1,300 entries from television, radio/podcasts, and the web in entertainment, news, documentary, children’s and public service programming. Thirty of these entries were honored with a Peabody award.
The WGBH’s Children’s Media and Education team was honored for MOLLY OF DENALI, the first nationally distributed children’s series with an Alaska Native lead character. The action-adventure comedy follows resourceful 10-year-old Molly Mabray, who helps her parents run the Denali Trading Post in interior Alaska. She and her friends explore the epic surroundings and rich Native culture that is home. Like many kids today, Molly is conversant with all forms of technology and has a vlog where she shares her discoveries with others.
“Molly of Denali’s animated series, podcast and games have been embraced by audiences everywhere,” said Executive Producer Dorothea Gillim. “We are grateful to the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors for this honor, which is shared with the entire team that brought Molly and her family, friends, and community to life.”
Over 60 Indigenous writers, advisors, producers and musicians are involved across the production, which is designed to help kids ages 4-8 develop informational text skills through video content, interactive games, and real-world activities.
”The stories we tell through Molly of Denali are a reflection of the heart and values of Alaska Native peoples — our truths, our histories, and our experience,“ said Creative Producer Princess Daazhraii Johnson. “For the first time, our children are able to experience the joy in seeing themselves reflected in a positive light and this is why representation truly matters.”
The American Library Association today announced the 2020 Youth Media Award winners.
The 2020 Excellence in Early Learning Digital Media Award winner is Molly of Denali. This award is given to a digital media producer that has created distinguished digital media for an early learning audience.
As Molly would say, “Gwinzii! That’s awesome!”
Our award-winning apps for Plum Landing have received a fresh coat of digital paint. Find the latest version of Plum’s Photo Hunt and the Plum’s Creaturizer at iTunes!
Design Squad has been nominated in the Outstanding Interactive Media category for this year’s Emmy awards!!
http://emmyonline.com/day_45th_nominations
Congratulations to everyone on the team!
… for three dangerously heavy, but beautiful awards.
For Community Engagement – Community Impact with “Design Squad Global Clubs. “
For Instructional Media – Open Educational Resources with “Arthur Interactive Media (AIM) Buddy Project”
For Instructional Media – Games & Apps with “Arthur Interactive Media (AIM) Buddy Project”
Award Review:
Based on the Parents’ Choice Foundation and Emmy-Award winning PBS Kids TV program, Design Squad Global is a hands-on engineering website created for innovative middle-school students who are fascinated by solving real-world problems.
The Design Squad Global homepage offers easy-click links to categories such as Wow, Watch, Enter and Play, plus a top-of-page menu that includes Games, Build and Design. So, from the start, the direction is clear: Young, creative, problem-solving future engineers will eagerly dive in.
How can you not start with the Wow category? On this particular day, the “wow” is definitely there in a compelling feature about “plant cocooning,” a low-tech invention created by a Dutch engineer that enables trees to grow in the dessert. You’ll be impressed.
Then, go ahead and click on More Wow, and you can access stories about How a Slinky Works; a student who designed a barrier that collects the ocean’s plastic trash without harming sea life; robotic chefs; and more.
The Watch links lead to videos about everything from inflatable sculptures and kayak construction to making compost tumblers and solar backpacks. The Play category provides step-by-step moves with voice-over instructions to handling engineering challenges. In Games, the challenges are demanding and still fun to figure out—from solving real-life problems during natural disasters to learning how picking different string tensions produce different sounds.
The Enter link leads upstart engineers to project challenges in which they can submit their own designs, from rubber-band tools and balloon cars to toothpick bridges and coins sorters. The Design function lets kids create their own contraptions; the Build link leads kids to instruction on how to make all sorts of things.
One of the extraordinary aspects of this website is the Global Kids connection where users can discover what engineering-inclined students worldwide are up to or about what ideas they want to hear from other reader/users.
This is a fun, hands-on site where designing and building is the bottom line, its contagious activities giving kids insight into engineering’s impact on real-world problems. Kids can create a free account; and the Parents and Techers section allows adults to monitor and lend a hand when needed.
Award review:
It’s about half-way through summer as I write this review and that’s just long enough for the “I’m bored!” and “What are we doing today?” to start. And, there’s only so much time the kids should be spending playing Minecraft and Terraria or watching seemingly infinite amounts of YouTube videos, no matter how educational they may be. Our family likes to spend time outdoors, but sometimes, it’s hard to come up with ideas for what to do, especially with children of various ages. Enter PBS Kids’ new app, Outdoor Family Fun with Plum. The app features over 150 missions that can be viewed all at once or as daily offerings. All the missions are designed to get families out and about exploring the environment around them. There are counting activities (e.g., counting squirrels, flowers, clouds, etc.) as well as Scavenger Hunts (e.g., cloud shapes, colors at the park, leaves, etc.). Some of the missions even entail snapping pics of animals and environments (e.g., leaves, sunny spots, etc.). No worries if your family starts a mission and can’t complete it, you can easily stop and pick it right back up another day, because the app tracks progress against any and all missions— even multiple missions going at the same time.
And the Plum Landing website also snagged a Silver:
Congrats to Marisa, Melissa and the whole crew on Design Squad Global.
Also congrats go to our many friends across PBS KIDS. Yay public media!
Digital Things! 