Owners of character properties, mostly of the classic variety, continue to forge deals that bring their IPs into PreK-12 schools by way of educational content. Some of the efforts are targeted toward families at home, too, but all have at least some presence in school systems. In the past, such tie-ins would have been perceived negatively by many as too commercial and not effective for learning. But views have been changing over time, and characters are increasingly seen as bringing unique educational value, as well as, more importantly, providing kid appeal that could spur student interest in the content and thus foster learning.
Four new deals in this space have been announced in February and March of this year:
- The latest example came to light last week, when Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it had named Imagine Learning, a digital literacy solution, as its exclusive education technology partner. Thirty Dr. Seuss e-books are integrated into Imagine’s Language & Literacy platform, combining the familiar stories with research-based literacy tools, including monthly activities, specialized reading materials, and teaching resources, in an area of the site called Seuss Corner. Additional features, such as interactive reading activities, progress-tracking tools, and incentives, will be added as time goes on. Imagine Learning products serve 18 million students in more than half of school districts in the U.S.
- Sesame Workshop expanded its relationship with Discovery Education, adding an early-learning resource collection featuring Sesame Street content and characters to Discovery’s Espresso primary-school learning platform in the U.K. Materials include video resources, lesson plans, interactive activities, and family engagement tools focused on foundational literacy and math skills. The curriculum also features personal, social, wellness, and economic education topics. Discovery Education serves approximately 4.5 million educators and 45 million students worldwide.
- Rovio and its agent IMG paired with Legends of Learning to feature Angry Birds in STEM-focused educational games. The first two titles are Angry Birds Eggstraction and Angry Birds and the Multiplication Portal. Angry Birds’ game play is based on physics principles, making it a good vehicle for teaching a variety of STEM concepts, from forces to collisions. The Legends of Learning learning platform offers more than 2,000 curriculum-aligned math and science games to K-8 classrooms.
- Sanrio paired with Kahoot! to bring Hello Kitty and other characters (Kerokerokeroppi, Mr. Men and Little Miss, My Melody, and more) into the latter’s game-based learning platform, which is used by classroom teachers, college professors, businesses, and consumers around the world. Educators can create interactive lessons integrating the Sanrio content, which is focused on communication, collaboration, and cultural awareness skills. The global Kahoot! platform, founded in Oslo in 2013, has seen strong growth in Sanrio’s home country of Japan in recent years. Globally, it is used by more than 8 million educators in K-12 and higher education.
Of course licensing deals for educational materials aimed at consumers have long been the primary avenue for characters to be associated with learning content, and these also continue. A few of many recent examples include Sesame Workshop partnering with Nex for a collection of active educational games on Nex Playground; Moonbug licensing CoComelon, Little Angels, and Blippi to the early literacy solution Caterpillar Captions; and Moonbug and Mattel teaming with Paper Boat Apps to integrate Blippi and Barbie, respectively, into the Kiddopia platform.
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