Jeremy Roberts is Senior Director of Learning Technologies for PBS KIDS Digital, where he works closely with award-winning content properties such as Curious George, Dinosaur Train, and The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! to deliver innovative educational media and real-world experiences to kids aged 2-8 across multiple platforms including web, phone, tablet, whiteboards, video and the real world. Roberts helps to oversee development of playful learning experiences utilizing newer and promising technologies for learning including personalized and adaptive content, voice and facial recognition, conversational user experiences and more.

One of Roberts’ core initiatives is the development of the PBS KIDS Learning Analytics Platform, designed to help parents and educators track kids’ progress and proficiency across a skill framework aligned to educational standards by capturing, storing and analyzing game play data for individual kids and groups, and to provide a quality measurement foundation upon which personalized and adaptive learning experiences may be pioneered. The system also includes tools to help game developers continue to improve the educational effectiveness of their games, and provides academic researchers access on an unprecedented scale to the granular in-game activity of millions of PBS KIDS. 

A physicist by training, Roberts’ passion for research and discovery has driven his extensive involvement with leading-edge technologies and has defined his work as strategist and developer. Over the past 20 years, he has cultivated a deep understanding of a quickly evolving information technology landscape, with a focus on media, entertainment and learning — helping bring to life the AOL Entertainment, Music and Video Games channels in the early 90s; pioneering online video, mobile content delivery for PBS in the early 2000s; and guiding some of the era’s first interactive television trials.

Outside of his time in media and education, Jeremy has applied his technological insights to building physics simulation software for the astronomy department at George Mason University, plays the trombone with Washington, D.C. soul, ska, and reggae band The Pietasters, and has been known to moonlight on trombone with other artists including the late James Brown.