KLRU Spark Speaker Series

Big Bird 2.0: Sesame Street Workshop's Miles Ludwig is redefining education fortoday's youth

In today's rapidly matriculating information culture, plopping the kids in front of the boob tube for hours of educational TV doesn't cut it anymore.

Kids are more proficient than their parents at using the family's iPad, and teachers are struggling to keep up with the interactivity of the internet. If you can learn everything you need to know from Wikipedia, why bother reading a boring, static textbook?

These unique challenges are the type that Miles Ludwig faces in the uphill battle to keep ahead of the internet curve. He and his team at Content Innovation Lab lead the charge on digital and interactive developments for the children's television giant, Sesame Street Workshop, keeping the popular brand relevant and effective in the new digital age.

Ludwig comes to Austin Tuesday as the next keynote speaker for KLRU's Spark Speaker Series at ACL Live. The Emmy, Webby and Peabody winner will speak to the unique challenges of keeping one step ahead of the kindergarten set, making the internet a tool that equalizes parents, teachers and their wily, technology-savvy students.

Prior to his arrival, we asked Ludwig a few specific questions about his approaches to educational technology and learned a few interesting facts about the man who knows better than anyone how to get to the new Sesame Street. (Here's a hint: it's online.)

CultureMap: With the increasing push toward online mediums in children's education, how does the Sesame Workshop emphasize the relationship between the Sesame Street television show and the Sesame Street website?

Miles Ludwig: When children experience characters, storylines and educational themes across multiple media, they engage more deeply and learn more. So we’ve tried to apply the principles of good ‘transmedia’ to capitalize on this opportunity to expand our impact. For example, when we introduced “Super Grover 2.0” last season to teach STEM — science, engineering, technology and mathematics — we did so on a variety of platforms.

Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network are also hip on combining the internet with their television programming. How is the Sesame Street Workshop staying competitive in the heavily saturated children's market while also staying education-focused? Is it tough to negotiate those two principles, especially with the speed at which technology advances?

As a non-profit, we’re not really trying to ‘compete’ with commercial companies. Parents know that our sole goal is to help their children reach their highest potential, so they (hopefully) choose to include Sesame Street in the mix of content that their children enjoy. To some extent, we do have to compete for children’s attention, but fortunately our incredibly talented writers, producers and performers keep our programming ‘must-see’ for a lot of kids!

With all of these options available, do kids still gravitate more to their favorite characters in person, on TV, or in interactive web programming? How do you all capitalize on these preferences?

We do see that students still want [to see their favorite characters] on sesamestreet.org. We designed the site for preschoolers to be able to navigate it by themselves, and by far the most popular ‘search strategy’ that kids use to find content is by character. Kids also love to create their own Muppet characters, and we’ve used interactivity to provide engaging ways for them to do so. One example is the “Elmo’s Monster Maker” app.

It seems the divide grows wider and wider everyday between parents' and children's aptitude on the web. What would you most recommend to parents and teachers to best utilize these new mediums for their child's development? Is it different at various stages of development?

If they can find the time, it’s great when parents and teachers can watch or play with their children. We know from our research that children learn more when an adult watches a show or plays a game along with them. That’s why we’ve always created Sesame Street content on two levels, so that all ages can enjoy it. We’re doing that now with Xbox Kinect games like “Once Upon A Monster” that are designed to be fun and appropriate for the whole family to play together.

Is your answer any different for lower-income families that may not have access to the internet at home?

Reaching all children — with a special emphasis on those children that may be at a disadvantage for one reason or another — is core to our mission and always a priority for us. We think it’s important to create products and programming for new technologies and devices, because most of them will eventually become ubiquitous and be used by all families, just as the television did. A recent Pew study found that 58 percent of U.S. 18- to 29-year-olds with a household income of less than $30,000 per year are smartphone owners — many of those people are either parents already or will be very soon.

I've always been jealous of the brilliant folks who work on and for Sesame Street. You may have one of the most interesting, creatively demanding jobs in the country. If someone wanted to follow down your path, which field(s) of study would you encourage for them?

I’m very proud and very fortunate to work for Sesame Workshop. One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to really make a difference working for a non-profit, it’s best to have experience in the for-profit world. I think almost any field of study can prepare one for work in the worlds of either non-profit or media; what’s been helpful to me is to be realistic about my strengths and limitations, and never go more than a week or two without being challenged at work.

What are the best aspects of your job? What do you look forward to the most going to work each day?

Well, like most people I grew up with the characters, and they bring me great joy, truly. I’m still moved to laughter or tears by our content all the time, so that’s pretty terrific.

Along those lines, then, who is your favorite Sesame Street character, and why?

I really don’t have a favorite. When I was a kid myself I might have singled out Grover for his enthusiasm and vulnerability, but now perhaps I know them too well, and I love them all.

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Miles Ludwig speaks Tuesday at 6:30pm at ACL Live as part of KLRU's Spark Speakers Series. Tickets are $45.00 and available through the KLRU website.

an app for that

Texas entrepreneur creates AI-powered app for healthy cooking tweaks

A Better Meal app screenshot

Photo via abettermeal.com

The app mostly focuses on adjusting recipes for things like heart health and allergies.

After many years of living to eat, a large swath of American society is now facilitating a seismic shift to the healthier alternative, eating to live.

But here’s the rub: eating healthy is confusing, time consuming and, unfortunately, oftentimes pricey.

So, anyone that can come in and cut through the healthy eating machine can carve out a necessary niche in the marketplace.

Enter Houstonian Mark Semmelbeck, founder and CEO of A Better Meal, a platform created to help busy families plan healthy meals easier and to make gradual improvements to their health and well-being.

“My vision is to use rapidly expanding AI technology together with the knowledge and wisdom of an active community to take the stress out of meal planning and improving nutrition,” says Semmelbeck, a seasoned oil and gas executive with over 30 years of experience in founding companies. “While developing the technology for the app, my daughter gave me two beautiful grandkids who both have significant food allergies. Combine that with the fact I now have five cardiac stents and the significance of eating well while paying attention to the details has only grown in importance.”

All-in-one app
Billed as the one-stop meal planning companion, A Better Meal promises users no additional stress in finding the time to look for recipes, make grocery lists, or prepare meals quickly. Families need healthy options and to be able to provide them with ease and that’s where this new application comes in.

“So, when I started A Better Meal, I wanted to answer two questions or help people answer two questions,” says Semmelbeck. “That is, a family gets home in the evening and they don't want to order out and they don't want to go out to eat, they can open up this app and it can tell them, ‘here's three things that you can make with what you have on hand that you like.’ The other question is, 'how can I make small changes to how I prepare my food, how I cook it, the ingredients that I use and small changes that can make my meals healthier.'

“So that was where we started. And then as we built the app out, got a minimum viable product out to people and in front of them, and we started seeing more as they used the app, what they actually wanted when they went to a meal planning app, so the last year and a half has been a process of refining the app to really set what people want in a meal planning and recipe app.”

When users download the app, which is a subscription-based tool, it starts with the simple things like, how many meals they’d like per day, if they have preferences in the types of food that they like, and, of course, if they have allergies.

Custom experience
Semmelbeck says that users are able to personalize the app and set up their own dashboard with meal planning. You can also use the app to analyze a new recipe you'd like to try.

"You can take a picture of, say a recipe written down, and you'd like to put that in your own personal database, you can take a picture of it, and it will interpret it and bring that into the app and then the app will calculate the calories and macros and the macro nutrients that that meal has in it so that you can see that information also," he says.

When it comes to food and meal planning, inserting the word “healthy” invariably invokes a litany of personal definitions, up to and including weight loss.

That definition isn’t wrong by any means, but for A Better Meal, it’s all about introducing healthier options into people’s everyday lives. The app won’t give you a specific diet to follow, but if users prefer a vegetarian, keto or paleo diet, the app will recommend recipes that will satisfy those disciplines.

“For a lot of people that's a huge help,” says Semmelbeck. “They just want to cook and eat healthier. They may like to have vegetarian days mixed in, but don't know where to find those recipes, the app can suggest recipes for a vegetarian meal. It can also recommend that substituting whole wheat flour for conventional flour for making pancakes, things like that.”

And for those users who don’t necessarily have a planned out starting place for meal preparation, they can search the internet or social media for meal plans and diets and then simply import those into the app.

“We also use AI to analyze recipes that would satisfy a certain type of diet that you would want to participate in,” says Semmelback. “But I will say that one of the main things we want to do is help you make small changes because again diets are great and a lot of people are on them, but few people maintain them for long periods of time because, in general, they can be very restrictive.

“So, we really want our goal to be able to help you make small changes with the things that you like to eat to make them healthier. And again, by healthy, certain kinds of fats are good, others you want to limit, certainly processed foods you want to limit, you want to limit the amount of added sugar, and you want to limit the amount of processed foods. That’s why we have our own nutritionist that helps us with those diets.”

Starting a journey
Currently, the nutritionist for A Better Meal is working just for the app in general, but as the platform grows, users will be about to ask direct questions or at least have access to educational materials about specific health issues, and specific diet recommendations for various health use.

“The app has been live for about a year and early on, we found that what people said they want is much different than what they actually use in the app. So, a lot of our work has been over the past year modifying the app, the way you move around in the app," says Semmelback. "We really want to use AI in ways that are helpful to people.

"I personally have dealt with heart disease, and I know that my doctor recommends less added sugar and processed foods. And so those are the kinds of things that we are using AI to do to help take recipes that you might like and make substitutions to those recipes so that they fit the kind of lifestyle you want," he continues. "What we're really concentrating on is the recipe part of the app and improving those and allowing them to be adaptable to the desires of the users. Finally, we really want to push into more education and more gamification where it actually makes it fun to use the app.”

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This article first appeared on our sister site InnovationMap.

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