Sony Wonder and every baby inc., Explore Play in New Infant Development DVD Series Designed to Enrich a Baby’s Natural Learning Process

eebee’s adventures™: the First Infant Learning Property to Focus on the Real Developmental Skills that Lay the Foundation for All Future Learning

–Concept Grounded in Latest Research on How Babies Learn and Grow;
Offers Parent Opportunity for More Active Role and Real-Time Insights into Child’s Development–

(New York, NY) – What to Expect When You’re… a baby ? Certainly not infant learning videos that actually reflect the way in which babies learn…until now. Sony Wonder today announced a partnership with every baby company, inc., to deliver eebee’s adventures™: the industry’s first infant learning property designed to playfully engage, delight and support both infants and their parents through the exciting process of building the real, basic skills of infancy.

eebee’s adventures™ focuses on the foundations for learning: those new and emerging behaviors that form the basis of a wide range of important—and complex—social, physical and cognitive skills. The products respect that a baby’s learning experience should not start with the alphabet, counting or other academic skills, but rather with the idea that every baby learns by doing.

eebee’s learning adventures are based on real foundational skill-building games and activities such as rolling a ball, crumpling paper, or scaling a pillow mountain. Unlike many current infant videos that simply focus on displaying moving objects or situations beyond the child’s experience, the content in eebee’s adventures™ is authentic to the baby’s own world.

The new DVD series features real babies, parents and a baby-like puppet named eebee exploring a range of everyday objects such as balls, blocks, containers and paper. Each DVD includes 3 adventures, each of them 10 minutes in length. Each of the playful “adventures” centers on eebee and the babies discovering new ideas about themselves and the people and things around them.

Based on the latest child development research, the “eebee” concept was created by Stephen Gass, a leader in the field of children’s media , educational innovator Don Burton, and a panel of expert advisors specializing in early childhood development. Designed to encourage a baby’s innate curiosity and provide parents with insights into how and what their child is learning, the videos are choreographed to spark real-world explorations and interactions—both during and after viewing—that provide the intuitive experiences necessary for the successful development of academic as well as life skills.

eebee’s adventures™ is crafted to help parents recognize their baby’s developmental milestones as well as participate in the learning process. DVD bonus features include on-screen developmental tips, “play-by-play guides,” behind-the-scenes commentary from early learning experts that feature insights into the benefits of each “eebee moment,” and ideas for taking eebee’s adventures from the screen to the playroom floor. Additional background and parenting information is available on the project’s web site, www.eebee.com.

”While there are many infant videos that claim to be educational, we saw a need for a product that invites parents to have fun, [that] truly meets babies where they are developmentally in a warm, playful, and essentially human way, and [that] helps them to learn and grow together,” said every baby company president and co-creator, Stephen Gass.

eebee’s adventures™ will launch with three DVD releases targeting six-month-old to two-year-old children:

• Exploring Real Stuff: eebee and playmates explore a range of materials and everyday objects (developed for babies aged six months and up)
• All in a Day’s Play: The many teachable, unplanned and unscripted learning moments that fill a baby’s day (developed for babies aged six months and up)
• Figuring Things Out: What happens when a child’s newfound motor skills support his/her natural curiosity and interest in making things work and achieving goals (developed for babies aged 12 months and up)

eebee’s adventures™ will be initially sold through amazon.com and SonyMusicStore.com.

Babies’ Eye View of Their World

eebee’s adventures™ is shot from a baby’s visual and developmental perspective. The action is simple, but exciting from an infant’s point of view. The pace is gentle, but true-to-life active.

Each adventure employs a number of research-based techniques that allow infants to focus on the ideas behind the actions and the words that describe them. These techniques include: showing the context for an action, reframing an idea and repeating a process. eebee’s adventures™ is careful to show viewers who is speaking and the things about which they are speaking.

“Although listening to Mozart can be calming, and watching moving images drift across a screen might be mesmerizing, meaningful learning requires an actively engaged child,” says eebee advisor, Dr. Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Director of the Infant Language Laboratory at Temple University and author of Einstein Never Used Flashcards. “eebee is the ‘every baby’, who, like a scientist, experiments to learn about the world. eebee’s adventures™ is designed to naturally invite infants into that learning process. It lets babies be babies—these incredible beings who are wired to learn—and recognizes that it’s playing with ideas, not memorizing them, that leads to understanding and growth.”

The Play’s the Thing

eebee’s adventures™ brings to life “eebee moments” – everyday, teachable moments during play which build the foundation for future learning. Among the many “eebee moments” spotlighted in the videos:

• Making “music” with a spoon and bowl, which teaches baby that objects can be tools to accomplish a goal – the foundation for complex problem-solving abilities and creative thinking
• Paper play, which helps baby explore ideas such as parts and whole, more and less, bigger and smaller – the foundation for conceptual understanding of mathematics
• Filling and dumping containers with little objects, which helps baby explore relationships between objects and predict outcomes – the foundation for understanding patterns and symbol systems like numbers and letters
• Pouring and scooping cereal, which lets baby explore the properties of materials and experiment with ideas such as cause and effect – the foundation for a deeper understanding of the physical world of objects
• Rolling balls and sliding blocks, which encourage baby to test hypotheses and draw conclusions – the foundation for developing innate scientific, logical thinking skills

Sony Wonder is the children’s and family division of SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.

About SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT is a global recorded music joint venture with a roster of current artists that includes a broad array of local artists and international superstars, as well as a vast catalog that comprises some of the most important recordings in history. SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT is 50% owned by Bertelsmann A.G. and 50% owned by Sony Corporation of America.

For further information, contact Tamara Jacobs, 770/971-0677, tamarajacobs@elsix.com

About eebee’s Creators

Trained as a child psychologist, Stephen Gass is an innovator in the field of children’s media. His experience includes over 20 years in the design, development and distribution of learning products, including computer software, online applications, toys, games, books and video. Don Burton has been creating educational innovations for consumer markets for more than a decade. He has developed strategies for video, print, online and kit product lines. He is also a founder of ParentPartners, one of the first online sites exclusively focused on child development and parenting issues, as well as Aha! Learning Partners: play, explore and learning centers for infants and toddlers.

The team of expert advisors who guided eebee’s development includes:

• George E. Forman, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, University of Massachusetts, and CEO, Videatives, Inc., is a well-known author of books on Jean Piaget and early childhood education, including The Child’s Construction of Knowledge, co-authored with David Kuschner and Constructive Play, co-authored with Fleet Hill.
• Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University, where she serves as Director of the Infant Language Laboratory. Her most recent book, Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less, (Rodale Books) won the prestigious Books for Better Life Award as the best psychology book in 2003.
• Deborah Linebarger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, has conducted research for the past 10 years examining the impact of media use on the development of young children.
• Diana (Dee) Smith teaches in the Early Childhood Program at the University of Vermont, and is Head Teacher with the Campus Children’s Center’s Infant/Toddler Program.

The transformation from infant to toddler takes place in an instant (or so it seems to parents). The cooing and dribbling baby suddenly starts trying to climb the dresser to reach a favorite toy.

Early childhood is the most important developmental stage of a child’s life, and parents are naturally eager to use all the educational tools available-videos, for instance. And yet many of the highly touted videos really are no more than out-of-context shots of toys to covet and animals in motion strung together against a backdrop of the majestic sound of Mozart reduced to a music-box tinkle.

Other videos seem to be designed to drill the alphabet into the brain of a being who is just beginning to grasp what language is. The former will immobilize a small child while producing the vacant, slack-jawed look of an early couch potato; the latter will be received either with consternation or total lack of interest.
Thanks to the vision and persistence of Stephen Gass, a part-time resident of New Milford and Don Burton, there is an alternative: “eebee’s adventures,” a new series of DVDs that will have parent and child actively engaged together, learning by playing and laughing while learning.

Eebee is a colorful, infant-like puppet with gentle eyes and a pert nose, who serves as a model for transforming simple everyday play such the rolling of a ball into something constructive, instructive and fun. And eebee (the duo insist that the puppet remain gender ambiguous so that children can decide what or who their new playmate is) was born because its creators noted a severe lack in the field of children’s video-nothing was reaching out to support and encourage children’s innate curiosity.

The name, eebee, a diminutive of “every baby,” was chosen because the pre-verbal set can say it. And, eebee is native of Litchfield County by virtue of the fact of having been built and operated by New Preston-based puppet artists Bob Fappiano and Lisa Buckley. The puppet is the size of a 9-month-old and coos and gurgles much like a child that age. “It was really important for us that unlike other characters that are designed for infants, we were really building an infant.” Mr. Gass stated.

“Everybody was working on skills that kids weren’t ready for,” Mr. Gass explained. “The preschool agenda was being force-fed at infancy … and we know from both our backgrounds that it was about building the foundation for future learning. We knew, for example, that when a baby is tearing a piece of wrapping paper, that’s early division … when a baby is rolling a ball or trying to move something along, that is playing in the physics lab.”

So, instead of expending energy worrying about why a child has not yet mastered the alphabet, you and your child could be romping around on the floor while learning about basic skills like building and taking apart or filling and emptying. These are things that kids actually do. When your child is dumping things out of the laundry basket or tugging on the nearby curtain to see what will happen, he or she is fulfilling that old adage, “play is the toddler’s work” except that via “eebee’s adventures,” it can become part of their education too. It is learning by doing.

“Eebee’s adventures” also demonstrates how to build on the examples of play provided by the DVDs. For example, as Mr. Burton explained “there are all these variations on simple ball playing, which every parent does with a child, but now we are showing the creative range of all the variation that really challenges the babies in different ways.” Mr. Gass concurred, adding, “That is what “eebee’s adventures” were designed to do. To move from the screen to the floor.”

The idea is at once simple and yet completely innovative in terms of the educational video market for children: Creating “adventures” based on children’s actual natural behaviors. Take that notion of rolling a ball. By introducing another kind of ball or by sliding the ball down a ramp or through a tube, you are engaging a child’s curiosity and teaching that child to stick to a task, in this case, seeing what will happen with the ball. Other adventures involve playing with light and shadow as well as making music with pots, bowls and spoons. How were these adventures chosen? Again, by actually watching what kids do. “We spent months on the floor with babies,” Mr. Gass explained, “playing, seeing what was interesting to them.”

Through the types of explorations offered on the video, children “get all of these intuitive understandings [which] create the foundations for future learning,” Mr. Burton noted. “If you are trying to hijack them all the way to preschool and academic readiness … you are really missing all those explorations that really give them the fodder by which to think more abstractly.”

Parents may be interested to know that this video uses original music with a heavy beat meant to underscore the action and make a child want to bounce along. This music, composed by Michael Sweet and members of an organization called Audiobrain and featuring lyrics by Mr. Gass, should not grate on parents’ nerves if they have to hear it 2,000 times-they might actually bounce along too.

For the past three years eebee has been the central focus in the lives of its creators, each seasoned innovators in the child media industry. Between them, Mr. Burton and Mr. Gass have worked for the most important names in the children’s education and entertainment fields including Sesame Workshop, Disney and Nickelodeon. Aside from bringing their own considerable experience to the project, the duo also brought in academics from prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania to contribute their expertise in child development to the development of “eebee’s adventures.”

Admittedly slightly cynical, this reporter applied a little research of her own and tested out an eebee DVD on her favorite rambunctious 16-month-old Elmo addict. At first the normally non-stop toddler just moved to the music, rocking back and forth to the beat. But soon, carefully watching the puppet play with balls of various sizes, she began to point at the screen, saying “ball, ball” and “baby ball.” We then began as much of a discussion as a recently verbal child and a harried mother can have about a ball at 5 a.m. And when the DVD ended, an actual ball was repeatedly requested, suggesting that the toddler was in fact inspired by what she had seen. A joyful half-hour ensued as we rolled the ball between us and bounced it off different surfaces, curious to see what would happen.

As of Aug. 23, many more children will have the chance to experience eebee. That’s the date that Sony Wonder will release the first three adventures: “Exploring Real Stuff,” “All in a Day’s Play” and “Figuring Things Out.” These DVDs, which are listed at $14.98 each, will then be available via www.sonywonder.com, www.amazon.com and eebee’s own Web site, www.eebee.com, which was set to go live Aug. 11 at midnight.

For Mr. Burton and Mr. Gass, the launch of the videos is about much more than selling DVDs. The release of “eebee’s adventures” is about getting their message out to parents and children. “We’re evangelists for the power of playing and all the rich learning that goes on through that,” explained Mr. Burton. “And it is more fun for a parent. Why grill your child on ABCs and 1,2,3s when you can get on the floor and play with them and the learning is so much more rich.” Instead of a way to preoccupy your child, “eebee’s adventures” offers a way to occupy you together in discovery and fun.

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eebee moments – how to take advantage of those everyday learning opportunities

Every day and every waking moment, babies work at figuring out how the world works. Everyday moments such as babbling, rolling, stacking and taking turns are a baby’s first real-life learning adventures. Experiences such as these lay the foundation for all future learning. These are eebee moments, the basis of the learning that lasts.

eebee moment : A child wearing mommy’s shoes

• What the baby is doing: understanding mine, yours, me, and you; expressing social awareness through sense of humor; and building self-esteem
• The importance of this moment: experts say that the understanding of self and other is the foundation of social intelligence. A strong sense of self coupled with acute social awareness (the ability to see the world through another’s eyes, or in this case, shoes) are critical skills for success both at school and in life.
• Joining the eebee moment: describe what your baby is doing; point out how the clothing is big, how he/she looks taller (in the shoes), how he/she can’t be seen under a big hat, etc. Try on a piece of your baby’s clothing—sure to get a big laugh. Extend the play by setting a new goal, such as walking to a new place or buttoning both of you into the same piece of adult clothing. Talk about “me,” “mommy,” and “daddy” and “you,” “my,” and “your.”

eebee moment : Filling a container and dumping it out

• What the baby is doing: exploring relationships, predicting outcomes, exploring patterns
• The importance of this moment: experts say that development of strong spatial and sequential ordering skills (how both objects and ideas fit together and relate to one another) is essential for understanding patterns that make up such symbol systems as letters, numbers and shapes, as well as for developing strong organizational skills.
• Joining the eebee moment: while your baby is working on the logic skills in this play scenario, it’s a great time for building language skills too. Rather than asking questions that the pre-verbal child cannot answer, just narrate your baby’s actions: “You dropped the red block into the bowl…there goes the green ball…and boom! There’s the pink cup. It fell onto the red egg!” Without interrupting your baby’s activity, if there is a natural place to participate, take a turn and drop one of the objects into the container; use sound effects, be silly, and describe what is happening. Your child most likely will enjoy your participation, anticipate your next move, and may even offer you things to drop in, making this exploration into a social exchange.

eebee moment : Pouring solids (sand, grains etc.)

• What the baby is doing: exploring cause and effect, discovering properties of materials, and understanding that solids can act like liquids
• The importance of this moment: experts say that sustained investigation of a material results in a deeper understanding and more useable knowledge about the real “stuff” in the baby’s world. These types of explorations also can lay the groundwork for future fields of interest.
• Joining the eebee moment: filling, emptying and transferring stuff can lead to highly practical skills. How much of this? How little of that? Which bag, box, or toy truck should I use? Is this heavy? Light? Will it squeeze down? How does it move? Encourage the exploration by introducing tools, such as different size bowls, cups, and funnels, that teach babies that the sand etc. doesn’t stay inside them; also try introducing tall things and short things, using their size difference to teach babies that it takes more to fill the tall one! Talk about what’s happening. If the grains of sand or rice end up on the floor, appreciate the fact that, for infants, if they pour it back into the big bucket, “my sand” and “my water” will blend into that source and they will not be able to immediately “see” or understand what happened. Acknowledge what happened (“the sand made a little hill on the floor”) and then set the limits (“sand stays in the container”). (For water, provide a bucket to fill; for solid material, clear a space onto which the baby can pour.)

eebee moment : Drumming and banging on objects

• What the baby is doing: exploring physical properties, creating patterns, appreciating an audience and using objects as tools
• The importance of this moment: experts say that using a tool to accomplish a goal represents an important problem-solving milestone. Using an object for something other than its intended use (a bowl as a drum, for example) also sets the stage for future creative and flexible thinking.
• Joining the eebee moment: babies love to “make music.” Banging, knocking and clapping things together give them a lot of information about the materials. To extend this moment, use another “tool” and drum along, hit the object at different points, point out differences in sound, put out other objects (such as bowls) of different sizes and materials (such as wood, plastic, etc.) and compare the sounds. Try making simple rhythms for your baby to listen to and imitate. Remember, it’s not a test; it’s a discovery. Talk about what is happening!

eebee moment : Pulling and tearing paper

• What the baby is doing: seeing that the whole is made up of parts, exploring “division” concepts, and understanding that his/her actions can change something
• The importance of this moment: experts say that academic math skills are not the result of memorizing numbers and counting to 10. Rather, it’s the intuitive understanding of the underlying mathematical ideas that come through play, ideas such as more, less, next, many, few, bigger, smaller, etc., that lead to deeper conceptual understanding.
• Joining the eebee moment: Describe what your baby is doing: making smaller pieces from a larger one, dividing the big piece into little pieces, etc. As you narrate the process, use quantitative words such as “more” and “another.” When it appears that your child is finished with the tearing game, try crumpling a piece of paper and then stretching it out to model another transformation. Give your baby the paper (open or crumpled) to play with. Does he/she make it “smaller” or “bigger” or explore it in a different way?

For additional information, please contact Tamara Jacobs, 770/971-0677, tamarajacobs@elsix.com

Behind the Music…
Mozart Not In Tune with How Babies Learn and Grow

–Everyday Play is Key to Cognitive Development; Child Development Experts Sing eebee Praises–

Parents take note. No scientific evidence exists that links the exposure of infants to Mozart with an increase in their IQ. In fact, the original 1993 study connecting listening to Mozart with an increase in spatial reasoning ability was based on a sampling of 79 college students—not babies. In 1999, the findings of that study were officially refuted in the two top scientific journals, Nature and Psychological Science.

“The notion that every infant needs to tune into classical music to have brain cells turned on is yet another myth about the way in which infants learn and grow,” says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., author of the award-winning book Einstein Never Used Flash Cards and advisor to new infant learning property, eebee’s adventures™. “ All sorts of music as well as other types of early sensory experiences are important for an infant’s development.”

According to Hirsh-Pasek, myths such as the Mozart Effect are a result of a cultural climate in which parents are driven to give their child any competitive advantage. The effect of this atmosphere, according to Hirsh-Pasek, is that parents fill their child’s day with academics, most of which focus on memorization rather than natural play experiences through which the child will learn broad sets of conceptual, as well as life skills.

“Current research confirms that babies are born wired to learn. In fact, we have 30 years of research showing that children learn best through plain and simple play,” says Hirsh-Pasek. “Children are scientists. They need time to explore, and sometimes, that’s even more important than getting the right answer. If we want to build a generation of creative problem-solvers, we must allow our children—from infancy on—to explore, experiment and play.”

It’s All About Play…

eebee’s adventures ™ is based on the concept that it’s the everyday, teachable moments during play which build the foundation for future learning.

• “When children play, they’re in a particular state of mind. They are more relaxed. They are more focused. They let one act set the stage for the next act… We often hear experience is the best teacher, but it’s not, really. It’s reflection on experience that’s the best teacher and it’s these little ordinary moments. What you’re doing is, over time, you’re helping the child to see, ‘Oh, here it is again. You know…last time I did that, I had this problem, and now I remember’ and yada yada yada… So, I think that’s how they build over time and develop intelligence.”

George E. Forman, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor,
University of Massachusetts and CEO, Videatives, Inc.

• “Play is the work of babies. Babies need opportunities to explore their environment through play… If situations are set up in which kids are encouraged to play, that’s how they’re going to learn things. They are going to experiment, try things out. They are going to look at things in different ways, and we need to allow them time to explore and follow their lead, rather than say, ‘ok, now it’s 8 o’clock and it’s structured academic time.’”

Deborah Linebarger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor,
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

• “Children learn through play. Play equals learning… A six-month-old’s play is not what you’d expect. It’s sticking your hands into a sink and getting them wet and realizing that you can make a puddle somewhere else in the room. Six-month-old play is crawling on the couch and feeling what the texture of the couch is and the different kinds of fabric. Six-month-old play is finding an object under a towel. Six-month-old play is peek-a-boo.”

Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., Director of the Infant Language Laboratory,
Temple University

Behind the Moments…

Grounded in the latest infant research and early education practices, every aspect of eebee’s adventures™, from staging and props to parent interaction and the design of the puppet itself, is carefully attuned to the ways in which infants actually learn.

Among expert insight and review:

• “I think the features that distinguish eebee’s adventures, or set it apart from other kinds of media, are the attention to the curriculum that it has and making sure that the practices that both the play partner and eebee do are both evidenced-based practices, meaning, there’s research that says this is what babies do and there’s research that says when parents do this or when adults do this, these are the kinds of outcomes that you can have. So I think that when you take that sort of formative evidence-based approach to making something, it’s a much better product than sort of slapping some things together that are visually appealing.”“…Most people would say, well, that’s just an everyday thing. Well, in those everyday situations, where a child is doing what comes naturally, that’s when learning occurs .”

Deborah Linebarger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor,
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

• “These ordinary moments, and a lot of times we don’t recognize that the curriculum is embedded in these ordinary moments—pouring sand, tearing paper… As an educator, [eebee] had a lot of curb appeal, because I could almost recognize from a distance that this is going to do more than attract children to watch, but it’s going to get them to ponder and to wonder.”

George E. Forman, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor,
University of Massachusetts and CEO, Videatives, Inc.

• “eebee has this wonderful creative quality that babies really do have. eebee knows how to laugh, eebee knows how to explore, and, I would imagine that, when I put on the eyes of a child, that eebee would just make me smile… eebee shows us all how we can slow down the pace of our lives and recognize the magic and the miracles in what we have everyday around us… Kids love it. They’re engaged.”

Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., Director of the Infant Language Laboratory,
Temple University

Stephen Gass

Stephen Gass is an innovator in the field of children’s media. His experience includes over 20 years in the design, development and distribution of learning products, including computer software, online applications, toys, games, books and video. Trained as a child psychologist, Gass began his career teaching science, language arts, and crafts at the elementary level. He served as Director of Education for the Sesame Street theme park, Sesame Place; a founding editor of Electronic Learning Magazine; and Editorial Director of the CBS Interactive Learning Unit. As Vice President of Research and Development at Coleco, Gass launched an educational toy division. In his role as Senior Vice President of Product Development for Viacom New Media, he built and managed a team of 30 people whose responsibilities included planning, acquisition, development and production of CD-ROMs and console games for Viacom’s entry into the software entertainment market. He also served as a senior creative executive for Viacom’s research and development efforts in the home learning market, including its initial explorations for the learning network, Noggin. Recently, Gass held the position of Group President, Online at Sesame Workshop.

Currently, Gass serves as president of every baby company, inc., an organization he founded with Don Burton for the development of early learning products, the first of which is eebee’s adventures™. He has also served as the principal of The Gass Company, a children’s media strategy and production studio he founded in 1988, serving clients including: All Kinds of Minds, American Museum of Natural History, Cisneros Television Group, Citibank, Discovery Communications, Houghton Mifflin, IBM®, Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sesame Workshop, Simon & Schuster and Tiger Electronics. Gass served as co-director of the Markle Foundation Forum on Children and Media, a project created to encourage a positive flow of information and ideas between leaders in the fields of media development and production, marketing, retailing, child development, health and education. He is an adjunct faculty member at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he teaches a course on child development and interactive design. In addition, Gass is a member of both the Education Committee at PBS-affiliate WNET-TV in New York as well as the board of trustees of the Toy Industry Foundation.

Gass received a B.A. in psychology from New York University, an M.A. in developmental psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University, and completed work toward a Ph.D. in educational psychology at The City University of New York.

Don Burton

Don Burton has been creating educational innovations for consumer markets for more than a decade. He was head of business development for Disney Educational Productions, a Walt Disney Company initiative to enter the formal core curriculum markets of pre-K through 3rd grade with multiple media integrated educational products that could be sold both into the school and the home. He developed strategies for the video, print, online and kit product lines and the business unit. He worked extensively with creative producers and “Imagineers” to understand and apply the educational principles and learning differentiation sought by Disney’s new brand of offerings. He then founded ParentPartners, a creative Internet start-up focused on learning, growth and development issues. The company signed up almost 100,000 members before it was sold to The Washington Post and Kaplan Education in 1999. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Global Education Network (GEN) as CEO and President. GEN, founded by media financier Herbert Allen and Williams College professor Mark Taylor to bring the finest of higher education to the Internet, experimented with innovative formats to create the highest quality online learning.

Prior to Disney, Don graduated from the Harvard Business School, worked in M&A at Goldman, Sachs & Co, and worked for the McKinsey & Company consulting firm. He has frequently been an adjunct professor for Duke University and their Leadership in the Arts program in New York City and has completed coursework in teaching and learning at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), Bank Street College and Columbia Teachers College. He has also served on the board of advisors at HGSE and on the Committee on University Resources (COUR) for Harvard University.

Burton recently founded A-Ha! Learning Partners: play & learning centers for children and their families based in New York City. A-Ha! creates sensory rich environments, called PlayLabs, for kids 0 to 4 years old. Families enjoy the power of play through a wide range of open-ended materials including clay, paper, water and ice, balls and ramps and foam. As children explore and solve developmentally appropriate challenges, parents gain insight into how play sets the foundations for thinking and learning. A-Ha! PlayLabs are guided by developmental experts who partner with both parent and child to enrich the play experience and a parent’s understanding of their baby at play. These PlayLabs are hands-on workshops for all the ideas and skills presented in eebee’s adventures™.

For additional information, please contact Tamara Jacobs, 770/971-0677, tamarajacobs@elsix.com

George E. Forman, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor, University of Massachusetts and CEO, Videatives, Inc., is a well-known author of books on Jean Piaget and early childhood education, including The Child’s Construction of Knowledge, co-authored with David Kuschner and Constructive Play, co-authored with Fleet Hill. Dr. Forman has also published books in the areas of early symbolic development (Action and Thought) and the educational value of computers (Constructivism in the Computer Age, co-edited with Peter Pufall).

Dr. Forman served as a research psychologist at Project Zero at Harvard University. Internationally, he has worked with the Indian government to develop participatory exhibits for young children throughout India. He is also co-inventor of The Gravity Wall, which can be found in over 200 children’s museums worldwide.

Since 1986, Dr. Forman has been working with the city of Reggio Emilia in Italy to bring the city’s educational model to prominence in the United States. He has published extensively on this topic and lectured internationally as well.

Dr. Forman is a past-president and charter member of the Jean Piaget Society and served on its board for ten years. He served on the board of directors for the Association for Constructivist Teaching as well as on the editorial boards for The Journal of Research in Childhood Education and Early Childhood Research Quarterly. He currently serves on the editorial boards for the ERIC electronic journal Early Childhood Research and Practice, Revista Portuguesa de Educação, and Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Exchange. Dr. Forman has also served as an early education advisor to The Lego Group.

Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University, where she serves as Director of the Infant Language Laboratory. Kathy received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Hirsh-Pasek has written nine books. Her popular press book with Dr. Roberta Golinkoff entitled How Babies Talk, New York: Dutton/Penguin (2000) received wide acclaim and has been translated into Italian, German, French and Spanish. Her recent book, Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less (Rodale Books), won the prestigious Books for Better Life Award as the best psychology book in 2003. The book speaks to ways in which scientific findings in child development literature can translate into educational practice. Professor Hirsh-Pasek has published 100 professional articles and has given over 80 invited lectures around the world. Her research is funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). She is a Fellow to the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society and also serves as the Associate Editor of Child Development, the leading journal in her field, as well as treasurer of the International Association for Infant Studies.

Kathy has a strong interest in bridging the gap between research and application. To that end, she served as an investigator on the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and is on the research council for America’s Promise, an organization started by Colin Powell. She has been a spokesperson on early development for national magazines and newspapers (TheNew York Times, People, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, Parents, Parenting) radio (NPR) and television (The View, Good Morning America, 20/20, ABC News, The Early Show on CBS), and is a consultant for Fisher-Price Toys, Highlights, K’NEX, The Cartoon Network, and a host of children’s museums across North America. Finally, she is co-founder of An Ethical Start, a curricular program in moral development for children ages three through five. This program, created for the Jewish Community Centers of North America, was funded by Stephen Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation.

Deborah Linebarger, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, has conducted research for the past 10 years examining the impact of media use on the development of young children. During this time, her work has focused on describing the effects of early and concurrent television viewing on adolescent academic and social outcomes, the use of print on television to improve literacy skills in children in preschool through third grade, and the relationship between media use and language development in infants and toddlers. Her interests include the features found in children’s educational television, computer software, the Internet, and video games that evoke and sustain attention as well as the contextual factors (e.g., perceptions of media, mediation of the experience, gender) that potentially mediate this attention and subsequent comprehension. Currently, her research combines interests in basic research using eye movement technology with intervention research examining how applications of media relate to the acquisition of literacy skills for American Indian Head Start children in New Mexico.

Diana (Dee) Smith teaches in the Early Childhood Program at the University of Vermont and is Head Teacher with the Campus Children’s Center’s Infant/Toddler Program. She is actively engaged with staff and students in the study of documentation as a process that promotes inquiry, reflection, and collaboration among all the protagonists of a learning community. Dee has published in early childhood education journals and books such as Early Childhood Education Journal, Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Exchange, First Steps Toward Teaching the Reggio Way, Teaching and Learning: Collaborative Explorations of the Reggio Emilia Approach, and Poking, Pinching and Pretending: Documenting Toddler’s Explorations with Clay. She is also studying how other disciplines (e.g., geography, qualitative research, anthropology, and media explorations) inform our understanding of and practice with children.

For additional information, please contact Tamara Jacobs, 770/971-0677, tamarajacobs@elsix.com