‘Sesame Street’ Widens Its Focus

Enter Super Grover 2.0. Out from his bottomless “utility sock” comes an enormous ramp, which, as the cow cheerily notes before clomping on down, is “a sloping surface that goes from high to low.”

Simple ABCs and 123s? So old school. In the last four years, “Sesame Street” has set itself a much larger goal: teaching nature, math, science and engineering concepts and problem-solving to a preschool audience — with topics like how a pulley works or how to go about investigating what’s making Mr. Snuffleupagus sneeze.

The content is wrapped in the traditional silliness; these are still Muppets. But the more sophisticated programming, on a show that frequently draws an audience even younger than the 3- to-5-year-olds it targets, raises a question: Is there any evidence that it is doing anything more than making PBS and parents feel good?

Officials at Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization that produces the show, believe the new approach has succeeded in introducing children — at least, the target-age audience — to scientific ideas and methods.

“This is working,” said Rosemarie Truglio, senior vice president, curriculum and content. Still, they acknowledge there are challenges in measuring a young child’s scientific understanding, and experts are only just beginning to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Each new season of “Sesame Street” starts with a curriculum, drawn up by educational consultants and a research staff, laying out concepts and ideas to be taught. The show’s writers incorporate these into scripts acted out by the beloved Muppets. The science curriculum began in 2009 with new programming that tried to capitalize on children’s natural interest in the world around them, an effort inspired by Richard Louv’s 2005 book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder,” Dr. Truglio said.

Bigger words, like “pollinate,” “hibernate” and “camouflage” were added to the “Word on the Street” rotation. In one episode, Jimmy Fallon played a “wild nature survivor guy,” who found water in leaves and shunned a coat in favor of warm feathers.

After the program’s educational consultants requested more emphasis on urging children to investigate, as opposed to simply explore, the show introduced the “Super Grover 2.0” segments. A blue Muppet known for confidently getting things wrong, Grover uses magnets, springs and “superpowers” of investigation, observation and reporting to solve problems through trial and error. Before settling on a ramp for the stuck cow, for instance, he tries a trampoline.

Elsewhere on the show, Murray Monster conducts mini-experiments on the streets of New York with children, discovering what bridge design holds the most weight and how a boat’s shape helps it float. Last season, Elmo began starring in a daily musical of his imagination that sneakily incorporates math; in “Guacamole,” he quizzes the “Rhombus of Recipes” and adds up the avocados on two trees.

On Sept. 24, the material — as well as new videos, online and mobile games, and parent and teacher resources — will find a new home online when Sesame Workshop unveils a hub on the “Sesame Street” Web site called “Little Discoverers: Big Fun With Science, Math and More.” In one game, little fingers manipulate a virtual spring to launch pieces of trash into Oscar the Grouch’s trash can, a “Sesame Street” version of “Angry Birds.”

“Sesame Street” is just one of many television programs trying to teach math and science to preschoolers. Even young children can learn basic scientific concepts, experts in educational development say. Most children are already curious about everything from weather patterns to what sinks and floats in the bath.

“They actually are already thinking about these things,” said Kimberly Brenneman, assistant research professor at Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education Research and an education adviser for PBS’s “Sid the Science Kid.” Educators, she said, can “create a show that is likely to meet kids where they are, and go a little further.”

Results of two studies with nearly 600 children conducted by the Workshop “demonstrate that children can learn sophisticated vocabulary and valuable science concepts from ‘Sesame Street,’ ” according to a presentation by Dr. Truglio and her colleagues at the International Communications Association in May 2011.

A just-completed third study with 337 children confirmed the results, said Jennifer Kotler, the Workshop’s vice president for research and evaluation. Ms. Kotler’s team tested elements of the show’s programming with children in low- and middle-income day care centers. Through one-on-one interviews, the researchers assessed what the children knew before watching the programming and what they retained afterward.

In a Slight Shift, North Korea Widens Internet Access, but Just for Visitors

Cracking the door open slightly to wider Internet use, the government will allow a company called Koryolink to give foreigners access to 3G mobile Internet service by next Friday, according to The Associated Press, which has a bureau in the North.

The North Korean police state is famously cloistered, a means for the government to keep news of the world from its impoverished people. Only the most elite North Koreans have been allowed access to the Internet, and even they are watched. And although many North Koreans are allowed to have cellphones, sanctioned phones cannot call outside the country.

Foreigners were only recently allowed to use cellphones in the country. Previously, most had to surrender their phones with customs agents.

But it is unlikely that the small opening will compromise the North’s tight control of its people; the relatively few foreigners who travel to North Korea — a group that includes tourists and occasional journalists — are assigned government minders.

The decision, announced Friday, to allow foreigners Internet access comes a month after Google’s chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, visited Pyongyang, the North’s capital. While there he prodded officials on allowing Internet access, noting how easy it would be to set up through the expanding 3G network of Koryolink, a joint venture of North Korean and Egyptian telecommunications corporations. Presumably, Mr. Schmidt’s appeal was directed at giving North Koreans such capability.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world, their economic growth and so forth,” Mr. Schmidt told reporters following his visit. “We made that alternative very, very clear.”

North Koreans will get some benefit from the 3G service, as they will be allowed to text and make video calls, The Associated Press said. They can also view newspaper reports — but the news service mentioned only one source: Rodong Sinmun, the North’s main Communist Party newspaper.

IHT Rendezvous: North Korea Widens Internet Access, but Just for Visitors

Jon Chol Jin/Associated Press North Korea said it will allow Koryolink to give foreigners access to mobile Internet service. In January, above, tourists inquired about cellphone rentals at Pyongyang Airport.

HONG KONG — North Korea will finally allow Internet searches on mobile devices and laptops. But if you’re a North Korean, you’re out of luck — only foreigners will get this privilege.

Cracking the door open slightly to wider Internet use, the government will allow a company called Koryolink to give foreigners access to 3G mobile Internet service by March 1, The Associated Press reported.

The decision, announced Friday, comes a month after Google’s chairman, Eric E. Schmidt, visited Pyongyang and prodded officials on allowing Internet access, noting how easy it would be to set up through Koryolink’s expanding 3G network. Presumably, his appeal was directed at giving North Koreans such capability.

“As the world becomes increasingly connected, their decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world, their economic growth and so forth,” Mr. Schmidt told reporters after arriving at Beijing International Airport following his visit to North Korea. “We made that alternative very, very clear.”

Foreigners were only recently allowed to use cellphones in the country. Previously, they had to surrender their phones with customs agents.

Nokia Loss Widens as Customers Wait for Windows Phone 8

One analyst said the results had shaken his confidence that Nokia would be able to reverse its decline with Lumia, its line of Windows smartphones. The company said it sold 2.9 million Lumia smartphones in the quarter, down from four million in the second quarter, the first quarterly decline since the line was introduced in late 2011.

“This is probably the first time that I have started to doubt the Nokia comeback story,” said Pete Cunningham, an analyst at Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England. “These numbers were poor and worse than I expected.”

Nokia’s overall loss in the third quarter compared with a loss of 68 million euros in the period a year earlier. Revenue fell by 19 percent, to 7.2 billion euros in the three months through September, driven by declining sales of smartphones and its more basic cellphone line, which makes up the bulk of its sales. Company officials and analysts attributed the slowdown in Lumia sales to consumers waiting for handsets that run Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 software, which it plans to start selling this year.

The existing Lumia lineup runs on Windows 7.5 software, and the phones cannot be upgraded to Windows 8.

“It was not a surprise that the Lumia results in the third quarter demonstrated that people were delaying new purchases,” Nokia’s chief executive, Stephen Elop, said in an interview on Thursday.

Over the next year, Nokia plans to expand its lineup of Lumia smartphones to cover the complete range of buyers. The larger lineup, Mr. Elop said, will give retailers, including mobile phone network operators, a solid alternative to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones.

“Next year is going to be a very interesting year,” he said. “A number of operators around the world are increasingly frustrated with the two strong ecosystems in their shops today. As they see a full portfolio of products with Lumia from Nokia, this will represent for them a credible third alternative.”

Mr. Elop declined to say how many new Lumia handsets would be introduced, but he said they would cover a wider range of prices, including lower-priced devices.

Mr. Cunningham, the Canalys analyst, said Microsoft’s coming worldwide introduction of Windows Phone 8 had stopped Nokia’s initial momentum with Lumia.

“The Windows Phone 8 announcement was a massive kick in the teeth for Nokia’s high-end products,” Mr. Cunningham said.

Since January, Mr. Elop has announced plans to cut a third of Nokia’s work force, or 21,000 jobs, as part of the company’s transition away from its own operating system, Symbian.

Nokia has amassed more than four billion euros in losses since announcing its Microsoft alliance in February 2011, as demand has dried up for Symbian-based phones. Nearly two years into the transition, Symbian handsets still make up a majority of Nokia’s smartphone business. The company sold 3.4 million Symbian handsets in the third quarter, 54 percent of the 6.3 million smartphones it sold over all.

With Chinese manufacturers churning out low-cost phones for its competitors, Nokia will have to make inroads with the more lucrative smartphone segment to survive.

“The real problem for Nokia continues to be the smartphone segment,” Mr. Cunningham said. “If they lose there, they are going to end up trying to compete with Chinese vendors and have a slow death.”

Nokia’s shares closed up 1 percent in Helsinki after the company, based in Espoo, Finland, confirmed the turnaround in its Nokia Siemens Networks telecommunications equipment venture, which reported a second consecutive quarterly operating profit. The venture with Germany’s Siemens, which made up 48 percent of Nokia’s sales in the third quarter, has amassed 5.3 billion euros in combined operating losses since its creation in 2007.

“The good news at Nokia Siemens has outweighed the bad news in Nokia’s smartphone business,” said Ilkka Rauvola, an analyst at Danske Bank in Helsinki.

American investors were less optimistic, however. Shares of Nokia trading in New York fell 4.8 percent, to $2.80.