At NOGGIN, we believe that media should be more than just safe and amusing. Like preschool itself, media can offer varied, purposeful experiences and can foster the feelings of accomplishment that encourage new learning. By bringing serious preschool subjects and familiar activities into the context of engaging stories and characters, NOGGIN helps young children find learning in everything they do.

Using a "connected learning" approach, NOGGIN links key educational content with experiences children know and love. Through a detailed, network-wide curricular framework, guided by national standards in preschool education, NOGGIN makes the most of the time children spend watching TV and playing online.

WHAT IS "CONNECTED LEARNING?"
Like preschool, media can help children make connections between essential curricular content and the world they know…. And like a preschool, media can foster the feelings of accomplishment that encourage new learning.

NOGGIN’s mission is to provide media of that quality. We’re guided by the principle of Connected Learning.

Connected Learning is helping young children find learning in everything they do. We do this by helping children…

…connect their passion with their learning.
Connected Learning starts with topics and tales that grab children’s interest, using these to present concepts and skills that help them dig deeper and construct richer understandings.

…connect their learning with real-life experience.
Connected Learning offers learning opportunities in places children know, in contexts they may well encounter on any given day.

…connect what they’ve learned to new experiences.
Connected Learning helps children make their own connections as they investigate their world and communicate about their findings.

Connected Learning is:

• Active. We use TV formats that are both interactive and involving to introduce and demonstrate new skills and concepts. Web activities designed around the same set of educational objectives (and characters), provide opportunities to apply, practice, extend and demonstrate learning.


• Iterative. Repeated exposure to the same learning situation; an extra word defined; a different aspect of the challenge highlighted; a new situation that’s similar but slightly more complex-preschool educators understand that methods like these advance learning. They also provide "multiple points of entry" for children with different backgrounds, learning styles and developmental positions. NOGGIN provides a wide variety of same/repeated and slightly-different experiences….


• Contextual. learning is most effective when it rises from concrete, relevant situations and challenges; in a dependable, familiar context; and when its promises and products are explicit to the learner.


• Grounded in research. We’re committed to applying state-of-the-art understandings about the ways young children learn and the ways they use media. -- not only in shows and online activities, but in the short pieces between shows, the navigation of our website, the way we schedule.


• Curriculum-based. NOGGIN builds media around a culturally diverse, developmentally appropriate preschool curriculum-including (though not limited to) language arts, science and technology, mathematics, social studies and the creative arts.


• Applicable. NOGGIN takes young children’s big questions as seriously as they do. We introduce knowledge children can use-to make or do, to figure out, to use as the basis for further learning.


• Multidisciplinary. A child’s world isn’t neatly divided into science, math, and social-emotional competencies. Like the best preschools, NOGGIN addresses information, skills and beneficial habits of mind from across traditional disciplines.


• Demonstrable. When learning is demonstrable, young children have a happy sense of accomplishment and capability. By providing opportunities for demonstration, Connected Learning helps children stay eager to learn more.