About Kidcitizen
KidCitizen introduces a new way for young students (K-5) to engage with history through primary sources.
Screen from the Congress and Child Labor Episode
In KidCitizen’s interactive episodes, children explore civics and government concepts by investigating primary source photographs from the Library of Congress. They also connect what they find with their daily lives.
KidCitizen episodes capitalize on the active and social nature of young children's learning. They use primary sources for rich demonstrations, interactions, and models of literacy in the course of innovative hands-on activities that make academic content meaningful, build on prior experiences, and foster visual literacy and historical inquiry. Each KidCitizen episode draws on a set of primary source photographs from the Library of Congress.
All KidCitizen episodes run on PCs, Macs, Chromebooks and iOS and Android mobile devices.
The KidCitizen Editor
The cloud-based KidCitizen Editor empowers educators to create their own episodes and share them with students. Using the KidCitizen Editor, educators can create activities using primary source photographs that are especially relevant to their students and community. The KidCitizen Editor runs on the cloud-based Muzzy Lane Author platform.
The Congress, Civic participation & Primary Sources Project
KidCitizen is part of the Congress, Civic Participation, and Primary Sources Project. It is supported by a grant from the Library of Congress, and is also part of the Teaching with Primary Sources program, the Library of Congress’s premier educational outreach program for teachers. TPS provides professional development for teachers focused on enhancing their ability to embed digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress into inquiry-based instruction that builds student literacy, critical thinking skills and content knowledge.
The KidCitizen Team
KidCitizen has been created by an interdisciplinary team of historians, educators, child development specialists, and game designers. We’d love to hear from you!
Principal Investigators
Bert Snow, VP of Design, Muzzy Lane Software
Dr. Ilene Berson, University of South Florida
Dr. Michael Berson, University of South Florida
Development
Dave McCool, CTO, Muzzy Lane
Sam Paulino & Mike Gingrich: KidCitizen Editor Developers
Bretton Varga & Julie Chappell: Episode Creators
Andrew Bosley: Ella Character Design
Fiona Barnett-Mulligan: Voice of Ella
Historians
Dr. Spencer Crew, George Mason University
Dr. Edward Ayers, The University of Richmond
Content and curriculum consultants
CIRCLE: Dr. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, Director, & Dr. Peter Levine, Associate Dean of Research, Tufts University
TPS at Waynesburg University & Eastern Region: Barbara Kirby, Director, & Sue Wise, Associate Director
Daryl Saunders, Elementary Social Studies Supervisor, Hillsborough County Public Schools
Independent evaluator
Dr. Cynthia Char, Principal of Char Associates, Independent Evaluator