Games & Learning

Connecting Families with High-Quality Digital Learning Tools

In the chaotic early days of the pandemic, as parents scrambled to keep their children engaged and learning remotely, Michelle Miller and Sadaf Sajwani found themselves inundated with pleas for recommendations. “What apps do you use? What games can you suggest for my struggling third grader?” fellow parents asked, and for good reason. The duo’s decade-long collaboration, which began at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, has made them the “go to” resource for impactful digital learning recommendations.

Miller and Sajwani have a wealth of knowledge to draw from when it comes to educational games and support for kids, but they were keenly aware of a big problem for parents without their background—the lack of a centralized, vetted homebase for parents to easily discover the best tools for their kids. Thus, Games & Learning, a new platform aiming to be the trusted source for high-quality educational digital content for every family, was born.

“Our mission is to create a more impactful ecosystem for learning games, apps, and tools that parents trust and kids love,” explains Miller.

“Cooney’s work in the late 1960s, exploring television’s potential to reach struggling learners, particularly those experiencing poverty, fundamentally changed the media landscape by bridging the equity learning gap,” says Sajwani.

Inspired by Cooney’s legacy, Miller and Sajwani are now aiming to do the same for the digital learning landscape. “We believe that we’ll be successful when we reach millions of kids, particularly those who are behind grade level, those who have learning differences, and those who are disadvantaged by poverty, with the hundreds of Best in Class tools that will actually help them learn and grow,” Sajwani says.

The problem they’re tackling is a daunting one. Despite an abundance of high-quality educational content, the market remains highly fragmented, making it nearly impossible for parents to navigate. “It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” Miller says of sorting through the thousands of apps, games, and tools available to parents. “There are 450,000 apps considered ‘kids educational’ in the app store alone.”

Meanwhile, the number of children starting school behind grade level has not improved in recent years, despite the increased use of digital learning tools . “Kids are not doing better. And parents are incredibly frustrated, not only because they can’t find what they’re looking for, but also they get pulled into these subscription processes that sometimes are deliberately confusing,” says Miller.

This is where Games & Learning steps in, providing a centralized, trusted platform that connects families with the best educational games and apps that meet their kids’ needs. The team evaluates each tool based on four key criteria: is it evidence-based, kid-tested, kid-safe, and ad-free?

“We want to be that place in the digital world, that trusted source, for digital games and learning that PBS Kids was for television,” Sajwani explains. By building a “world-class family brand” that empowers parents and kids, the founders hope to not only improve access to quality content but also catalyze new investments and research into underserved areas.

“We believe every kid should have easy access to the digital learning tools they need to help them navigate their world.”