Research Partners
Stanford University Research Partners
Brigid Barron is a developmental psychologist who studies processes of collaborative learning in and out of school. She studies how individuals work together to create joint products and how what is learned and created is related to the quality of their interactions. In a five year NSF supported CAREER award she documented adolescents' learning ecologies (e.g. learning opportunities across home, school, libraries, virtual communities, clubs, camps) for technological fluency development across diverse communities in the Silicon Valley region with the goal of understanding how to design more equitable opportunities for learning. She co-leads the LIFE center (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments), funded by the National Science Foundation in 2005. Barron is PI for a grant funded by the MacArthur Foundation that will follow students longitudinally as they participate in programs designed to develop their technological fluency through activities such as game design, robotics, and digital movie making. The theoretical goal of this work is to articulate conditions that lead to the diversification of a child's learning ecology through increasing activity in learning activities across settings. She is currently an Associate Professor of Education at Stanford University. Her work appears in books and journals including Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Human Development, Journal of the Learning Sciences, and Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, and the International Journal of Technology and Design.
Caitlin Kennedy Martin received her a masters degree from Stanford University in 1999 in learning, design and technology. Since then Caitlin has worked at Stanford University creating research, assessment, and media design for educational technology projects. Starting in 2003 she has been the lead evaluator in a formative assessment of technology projects funded by the Oracle Education Foundation in local community centers and schools. Since 2000 she has been the project director of the Bermuda Computing Curriculum project, the design of a project-based programming and multimedia curricula, development and implementation of professional development to support the courses, and research into student learning, interests, experiences, and future plans. Caitlin is also involved with Professor Barron’s learning ecologies research, documenting exemplary technology education tools and practices found in diverse communities. Prior to graduate work she was a graphic designer of children's books at Farrar, Straus & Giroux in NYC.
Maryanna Rogers is a doctoral student in the psychological studies in the education program at Stanford University. Her current research investigates the psychosocial experience of working on design projects, including intrinsic motivation, empathy, and mindfulness. She is also interested in how the design process intersects with mental and public health intervention design. In practice, Maryanna has worked on design projects involving HIV/AIDS social marketing in Ethiopia, the Caribbean, and domestically. She has also collaborated on new media design projects developed to treat and prevent anxiety disorders, depression, and eating disorders. Maryanna received a bachelor’s degree in Radio/TV/Film from Northwestern University and an M.A. degree in learning, design, and technology from Stanford University. Prior to her graduate career, she worked in the film and television industry in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, taught English in France, and researched youth depression and anxiety in the clinical psychology department at University of California at Los Angeles.
Daniel Stringer focuses his research on youth participation in out-of-school educational programming, with a focus on youth development and community empowerment. Daniel is a doctoral student at Stanford University’s Learning Sciences and Technology Design program and psychological studies in education. Daniel received a B.S. degree from Stanford University in science, technology, and society where he studied contemporary issues in social equity and information technology. Prior to graduate school, Daniel worked for Google in Mountain View, California, and worked in small business development in New Orleans. He as also helped to organize and direct multiple academic enrichment and youth development programs in California and North Carolina.
Lori Takeuchi received her doctorate in 2008 from Stanford University where she completed the Learning Sciences and Technology Design program. She is now a research fellow at the Joan Cooney Ganz Center, a newly established research and development organization based at Sesame Workshop. During her graduate program she worked with Barron’s YouthLab group on studies of children’s learning ecologies for technological fluency development. She is extending this work during her SESEME fellowship by studying very young children’s learning at home. For her dissertation research, Lori compared how scientific practices emerge around the use of geographic information systems in two settings: a professional marine science laboratory and an eighth grade science classroom. Before Stanford University, Lori spent seven years designing and producing science curriculum software in the greater Boston area for companies including BBN Educational Technologies, LOGAL Software, and Riverdeep Interactive Learning. She received a Ed.M. degree in technology in education from Harvard University, before which she managed the Instructional Television Department at New York's Thirteen/WNET. Lori has a bachelor's degree in communication from Stanford University.
University of Pittsburgh Research Partners
Kimberley Gomez is a learning sciences researcher whose research efforts are focused on helping children of color experience more equitable opportunities to learn in formal and informal learning environments. At the center of her research and design efforts is the support of literacy to achieve equity which is reflected in three interrelated lines of work: (1) access to rigorous, state of the art learning materials that meet students’ literacy and language needs and scaffold and transform their learning; (2) access to engaging and motivating learning environments; (3) interaction with teachers who have knowledge, training, and skills that can meet literacy and learning needs. Her currently funded research projects include a study of the relationship between reading achievement and science achievement in 9 through11th grades in seven urban high schools and an ethnographic study of a charter school afterschool program with a particular focus on digital media learning and design. Her work has appeared in the Linguistics and Education, Reading Psychology, Phi Delta Kappan, the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Education and Urban Society, and The Journal of Negro Education and in numerous chapters. She is also the author of an edited volume The Work of Language in Multicultural Classrooms: Talking Science, Writing Science (Routledge/Erlbaum, 2008).
University of Illinois at Chicago Research Partner
Kim Richards is a research assistant on the DYN project from 2007-2009. She is a doctoral student and research assistant in the learning sciences program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests include transformative learning and critical media literacies. Kim is a certified 6th through12th grade social studies teacher with a master’s degree in education from DePaul University. She taught six years in Chicago Public Schools district and Catholic Archdiocese as a reading instructor, social studies teacher and finally, as a curriculum and instructional coordinator at an alternative high school. Richards has a B.A. degree in sociology with a minor in history from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Urban Education Institute, University of Chicago Research Partners
Kimberly Austin is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Chicago. Her research interests center on organizational change in education from an institutional perspective with an emphasis on the interface between classroom instruction and organizational along with institutional environments. Kimberly has explored this topic through a variety of research projects. In addition to her work on the Digital Youth Network project, Kimberly worked as a research assistant on the Information Infrastructure System research study, an effort sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Science Foundation led by Dr. Tony Byrk, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and Dr. Louis Gomez, Director of Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh. Kimberly is also a contributing author to the Monograph on Chicago Schooling edited by Dr. Stephen Raudenbush at the University of Chicago and Dr. Elizabeth McGhee-Hassrick at the University of Chicago. She has bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University with a concentration in print journalism and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Chicago. Her experience also includes teaching at the elementary and university-level as well as working as an educational consultant.
Nichole Pinkard is the DYN Program Founder and the Director of Innovation for the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute (UEI) where she plays a leading role in UEI's engagement in creating optimal learning environments that span school, home, and community. Nichole has led efforts to implement one-to-one computing in urban schools, integrate new media into core instruction, and create new media learning opportunities outside of the school day. Nichole is a recipient of the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies and an NSF Early CAREER Fellowship. In 2009, the Chicago Matters media series named Nichole as one of 15 Chicago Visionaries. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and on the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Games Research program. Her current scholarly interests include the design and use of pedagogical-based social networks, new media literacy learning outcomes, and ecological models of learning. She holds a B.S. degree in computer science from Stanford University, a M.S. degree in computer science from Northwestern University, and a Ph.D. degree in learning sciences from Northwestern University.