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 Episode!
Episode 4: What if the Games We Play Exclude You?
Haeny and Nathan welcome Aaron Trammell, Associate Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine. He has recently published two books on play: Repairing Play, A Black Phenomenology, and The Privilege of Play. Both of these books — and this conversation — explore the challenging elements of play, and ask questions about how various communities understand play and access to different types of play. And of course they have fun talking about which classic games are right for which scenarios and going deep on games like Dungeons and Dragons.
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
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.
