Season 5
This March 11th, another season of Pop and Play is about to roll into your podcast feeds! This season, Haeny and Nathan are exploring children’s media. By talking with game designers, performers, artists, and kids, we’ll examine what it takes to make children’s media and how kids relate to it. And of course they play games and find out “what’s poppin.” Follow now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or search “Pop and Play” wherever you listen to Podcasts and subscribe!
New Pop Off!
The Impacts of Cutting Federal Funding For Research
Nathan and Haeny are back for another Pop Off about recent cuts to funding for federal research. And they brought in a special guest: Vice Dean for Digital Innovation at Teachers College, Managing Director of the Digital Features Institute, and Pop and Play producer, Lalitha Vasudevan. What is being cut, what are the impacts and implications, and what can people who are concerned about these cuts do? Where was that research money going and why does it matter? Tune in to find out and get ideas about how to take action.
Previous Episodes:
- Episode 1: Making a TV Show as a Family with EcoLeaders
- Episode 2: How Does Fandom Shape Our Lives and Politics?
- Episode 3: Can the Arts Save Education?
- Episode 4: What if the Games We Play Exclude You?
- Episode 5: How Children’s Media Is Changing
- Episode 6: Children as Creative Collaborators with Story Pirates
- Episode 7: Centering Play in Children’s Media with Teletubbies Co-creator Andy Davenport
- Episode 8: What Media Do Kids Like? (With Kids!)
- Episode 9: What’s Poppin’ at the End of the World: A Story Episode
Collections
Pop Offs
- Are AI Tools Good for Teaching?
- Do We Need Checklists for Children’s Play?
- Special Halloween Bonus!
- Is It Okay to Play in Difficult Times?
- Why Are We Hearing So Much about “Parents’ Rights?”
- Offering Hope about Gun Violence Research with Sonali Rajan
- Goodbye 2024! New(ish) Year’s Bonus Episode
- FAQs from Adults about Kids’ Play and Pop Culture
- Curriculum Is Everywhere with Curriculum Encounters
Past Seasons
- Images were generated by Canva's AI Image Generator.
Meet Your Hosts
Haeny Yoon is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Dept. of Curriculum and Teaching. She works with both pre and in-service teachers in designing spaces for children’s play and inquiry. She is also the faculty co-director of the Rita Gold Early Childhood Center, serving children from infant-PreK. The center provides a play-based, emergent curriculum model that forefronts children agency and imagination as central to children’s development.
Haeny Yoon is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education in the Dept. of Curriculum and Teaching. She works with both pre and in-service teachers in designing spaces for children’s play and inquiry. She is also the faculty co-director of the Rita Gold Early Childhood Center, serving children from infant-PreK. The center provides a play-based, emergent curriculum model that forefronts children agency and imagination as central to children’s development. In her role at the Center, she facilitates professional development on curriculum, equity, and racial justice. Her research points towards a pedagogy of play or what she defines as those practices that blur boundaries, destabilize hierarchies, and disrupt traditional ways of knowing. She extends conceptions of play to reach beyond curricular design in early childhood settings and argues for more expansive practices that include our own personal, political, cultural, and low brow activities within all the spaces we (as adults) inhabit. She brings this perspective into her work with doctoral students who study early childhood, literacy, media/pop culture, childhood/youth studies, and curriculum. Dr. Yoon is committed to the merging of public space and academic space, engaging in opportunities where productive conversations converge. As an affiliated faculty member of RESI (Reimagining Education Summer Institute), she maintains a focus on equity, race, and social justice in schools, alongside teachers. Stemming from her work with teachers, she has launched a new website, Using Our Teacher Voice, which serves as a public platform for teacher stories, particularly in the pursuit of racial justice, reckoning, and healing.
Nathan Holbert is a dad who designs stuff and builds stuff. He also plays a lot of games. He’s quite lucky to be able to design, build, and play as an Associate professor of Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design at Teachers College, Columbia University. Nathan likes to build and study playful tools and technologies that help kids make things they care about or ask questions about the world around them.
Nathan is co-editor of Designing Constructionist Futures: The Art, Theory, and Practice of Learning Designs and Founding Director of the Snow Day Learning Lab.
