What about Sesame Street: What's Under the Hood?

Google Tech Talk March 28, 2013 (more info below) Presented by Nadiene Zylstra. ABSTRACT Sesame Street seems like a simple, straightforward kids program. In fact, it's the conjunction of many streams of work in technology, education research, production, international politics and intense creativity. In this talk, Nadine Zylstra, VP Sesame Street Production and Programming and Supervising Producer of Sesame Street takes us under the hood. Through the lens of Sesame Street's recent STEM (Science-Technology-Education-Math) and STEAM (STEM + Arts) initiatives Nadine will break down the Sesame Street Production Model for inspection. How do preschoolers learn? How does one create compelling preschool content that teaches complex educational goals? How can you use the digital eco-system to deepen impact? What will content innovation look like ten years from now? Speaker Info: Nadiene Zylstra, Vice President of Sesame Street Production, Sesame Workshop As Vice President of Sesame Street Production Zylstra supervises the creative direction of the video content produced for both linear and digital platforms. Zylstra joined the Sesame Street family as a director and producer on the South African version of Sesame Street. She was part of the team that initiated and executed the show's first HIV-positive Muppet. Moving to the United States, Zylstra joined the Workshop as the Executive Producer for the Sesame Street productions in Bangladesh and India. Before taking her position as the Supervising Producer for Sesame Street, Nadine led the Digital Media Programming team. In this role she provided the strategic vision to deliver content to all of Sesame Street's audiences (including children and their caregivers, teachers, fans, funders, and business partners) via direct digital distribution. She is currently also one of the directors on Sesame Street. Zylstra has worked as a producer, director, and writer in the television and documentary industry for over a decade and has focused much of her effort in the realm of educational television. Her body of work has been distinguished by numerous awards. Amongst these are a Peabody Award and Webby Award for her work with Sesamestreet.org, numerous Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing in a Children's Television Series, several South African Avanti Awards, and the United Nations/NHK/Japan Prize for Courage in depicting Youth in Difficult Circumstances. In 2001, she produced and directed The Summit- No Substitutes, South Africa's first reality television show for E-TV (a national network). As a writer, Zylstra has focused much of her work on youth and education. She has written for a number of edutainment-focused series including the International Award Winning drama series, Soul City and South African award-winning series Tsha Tsha Tsha. Zylstra earned a BA Honors in Dramatic Art at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. There she received The Edgar Bold Award for the Best Television Student, the Questek Award for Excellence in Editing, and a University Merit Award for Scriptwriting. She was awarded a scholarship to study video editing at Quantel in London. Zylstra resides in New York City with her husband Jonathan, their daughter Ella and son Jack.