Penn communication professor Amy Jordan strongly believes “educational television is not an oxymoron.”
Max Goodman came to Jordan’s Children’s Media Policy class Monday afternoon to examine this idea further and explain how this belief has shaped his career.
Goodman is a 2001 Penn graduate and currently serves as the coordinating producer of Nickelodeon’s new pre-school show Team Umizoomi. Goodman took a course taught by Jordan during his time at Penn and was inspired by the challenging task of mixing educational value with entertaining television.
Jordan recalled that when Goodman was in her class, “he created a spectacular final paper that focused on creating an educational television program.” With this paper as inspiration he eventually found himself at Nickelodeon.
Team Umizoomi, the program for which Goodman is a producer, debuted in January 2010 and has consistently held the number one position of pre-school age programming, a more complex television genre than one might expect.
Goodman explained that “preschool shows tend to be educational in that they have a specific curriculum” and Team Umizoomi focuses primarily on its viewers’ mathematical advancement. He said producers make sure that each episode will help its viewers understand concepts better.
Each episode is screened to 18-24 pre-school age students from schools in the tri-state area as producers collect important data. While children are learning to count or look for patterns, producers gather data pertaining to children’s attention, their interaction with the program and the group’s comprehension.
After nine months of hard work in the scripting and the producing processes, the Team Umizoomi episodes are ready to air and educate children while entertaining them.
Ten episodes have been released, and there are two episodes shown each day on Nickelodeon. Goodman noted happily that the children do not care about reruns.
