Entertaining and Educating with Digital Shenanigans of All Kinds
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!”
Today sees the launch of the latest ARTHUR HTML5 game, Moonlight Mazes!
Buster and D.W. are visiting the Read family farm, exploring the corn mazes at night. It’s your job to help them collect animals and rocks in each maze, but be careful: the mazes get harder as they go along.
So bring your sense of adventure (and your sense of direction) to explore the quiet wonder of nature at night! And in case you get nervous, rest assured that Buster and D.W. will be with you all the way!
The team includes Jeff (Design) who heads off this week to begin a career in teaching. We’ll miss you and all the great work you’ve done for ARTHUR and so many other projects. We also had Eric (Tech), Elizabeth & Kimberlee (Editorial), Kate (Business Manager), and Gentry (Producer).
You’ll find the game on the ARTHUR web site and in the PBS Kids Games App.
The Pinkalicious Digital team has a new HTML5 game to share, and as you might imagine, we’re tickled pink about it!
In PinkaDance, players explore different movements and types of music as they create their own dance moves with Pinkalicious and play freeze dance with Peter!
Try your own dance moves and check out the game at PBS KIDS website or in the PBSKids Games App.
Here’s a big pink cheer for the creative and dedicated team: Melissa at the helm; Jolin on development; Sophie on design with support from Becca; with Anessa and Sienna for production support; and on the TV team: Dorothea, Nicole, Anthony, and Kacie.
In our new HTML5 game for PBS KIDS, Arthur’s Park, Arthur sees an empty lot and realizes it would make a great park!
In a board game setting with mini-features, players help Arthur give a speech to gather public support; clean up the lot; hold a bake sale to raise funds; purchase items; and finally build the park. Based on a curriculum of active citizenship and civic engagement, Arthur’s Park models one way to get involved with your own community!
Ready for an adventure? Come along with Molly as she explores Qyah, her village in Alaska! Kids will use informational text to solve different challenges, interacting with text such as books, apps, diagrams, and tables of contents.
Be sure to tune in for Molly of Denali,TM the animated series premiering on your local PBS station July 15, 2019.
This brand new website features an immersive, interactive world where kids can meet members of Molly’s community and go on missions such as picking blueberries or throwing treats to Molly’s dog Suki. Kids can also learn and practice their informational text skills across four games: Fish Camp, Sled Dog Dash, Beading Art, and Denali Trading Post.
Molly of Denali is designed to help kids ages 4-8 develop knowledge and skills for interacting with informational texts through video content, interactive games, and real-world activities. A foundational aspect of literacy education, informational texts are designed to convey information, and include written words, images, and oral language.
The digital team who created this incredible experience is Melissa, Bill, Anessa, Lizzy , Sienna, Kimberlee, Kit, Eric, Jolin, Mike, Jesse, Becca, Nolan, Amelia, and Kate.
Coming soon: an app and more games! Check out the podcast too!
MOLLY OF DENALI is produced by WGBH Kids and Atomic Cartoons in association with CBC Kids. Funding for MOLLY OF DENALI™ is provided by a Ready To Learn Grant from the Department of Education; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American People; and by public television viewers. The contents of this program were developed under a grant from the Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. [PR/Award No. U295A150003, CFDA No. 84.295A]
Dan, Kennedy, Jeff, Sophie, and Lizzy attended the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference in Philadelphia from June 23-25.
They presented their virtual reality game, “Mission: Water,” under the umbrella of Microsoft’s presence at the conference.
The ISTE Conference was very successful: close to 100 people demoed the game or chatted with the team about the project. Many educators and technologists expressed their excitement for the game and for the lesson plan, which will be published on PBS LearningMedia this fall. The team is very excited for the positive response and is looking forward to the official launch of all of the resources later this year.
The VR game is available already here for free.
The WGBH team, led by Bill Shribman, has been collaborating with Microsoft for the last year developing this game for a middle school classroom. The game consists of two networked apps: one VR game and one HTML5 game, both connected and communicating to each other.
In the experience, two players need to work together to travel through the solar system and collect samples of water at three destinations. The water samples provide data for the students to analyze and compare, and then the students can discuss which location provides the most abundant and accessible forms of water.
One high school teacher reacted to playing this as follows, talking about the children she teaches:
Dark Bunny Needs Your Help! is a new cooperative ARTHUR game.
Based on a video game that appears in an episode of ARTHUR, Dark Bunny brings players into the world of Dark Bunny – with Sue Ellen or Bionic Bunny as a sidekick – on a quest to save the people of The City from the bad energy of Dr. Aardvarkian.
Fly rocket scooters to collect fuel (and snacks!), protect others, and rescue citizens and pets who have been captured by the nefarious ne’er-do-well. This HTML5 game has one- and two-player modes, allowing for cooperation both between the characters AND between players.
So team up with Dark Bunny, Sue Ellen, and Bionic Bunny, and work together to defeat the infamous Dr. Aardvarkian once and for all!
You’ll find the game at: https://pbskids.org/arthur/games/dark-bunny
