Meet the Workshop Participants 


Maria Trangbæk Ahrensburg      Audrey G. Benett       Elizabeth "Beth" Bonsignore      Ron Eglash     Moriah Harling
  
 Leshell Hatley      Regan Mandryk        Nitya Narasimhan      Onyi Nwosu      Mike Pierre      Tamara Peyton      Nitin Sawhney

Josh Sheldon      Lana Yarosh      Jason Yip     Glenda Revelle     Helene Gelderblom     Karen Hart     Audubon Dougherty

Nitin Sawhney, Assistant Professor of Media Studies
The School of Media Studies, The New School

Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The New School. His research, teaching and creative practice engages the critical role of technology, artistic interventions and DIY cultures among communities in contested spaces. Nitin previously taught at the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) and conducted research at the MIT Media Lab on networked collaboration for sustainable product design, ubiquitous computing and responsive media in urban spaces. Nitin is affiliated with the MIT Center for Civic Media where he established the Department of Play, a research collaborative to design participatory media tools for marginalized youth. Since 2006 he has conducted research and digital storytelling initiatives (Voices Beyond Walls) with Palestinian youth in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. He recently completed a documentary film, Flying Paper, about the participatory culture of kite making and flying among children in Gaza, with support from National Geographic. Nitin established the Engage Media Lab initiative at The New School to support civic engagement through creative media learning and participatory research among youth in New York City.

Links:
  • Workshop Position Paper: Aago for Mobile Media Narratives Created by Teens: Lesson from Co-Design, Prototyping and Evaluation (/uploads/1/7/2/9/17294376/aago_idc2013_final.pdf)
  • Sawhney, N., 2009. Voices Beyond Walls: The role of digital storytelling for empowering marginalized youth in refugee camps. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. pp. 302–305.
  • Sawhney, N., 2012. Making Sense of Participatory Video: Approaches for Participatory Content Analysis. The Handbook of Participatory Video, AltaMira Press. 
  • Engage Media Lab, youth media initiative at the New School: http://www.EngageMediaLab.org
  • Aago Mobile Media Project at MIT: http://civic.mit.edu/blog/audubon/developing-aago

Lana Yarosh
AT&T Research Labs

My work focuses on understanding and creating new technologies for families. During my Ph.D. at Georgia Tech, I worked on the ShareTable -- a system for connecting parents and children separated by divorce. Now, I am at AT&T Research Labs, looking at how sensor technologies in the home can be leveraged to support social connectedness, designing immersive remote collaboration experiences, and thinking about the role that participatory design with children could play in an industrial research setting.

Links: 

Josh Sheldon
MIT Center for Mobile Learning

I'm an educator and technologist who believes firmly in the power of youth to create their own learning artifacts and come together with other learners in communities of practice to enhance learning.  Over my time at MIT I've worked on a number of different projects which share the common theme of allowing students to construct digital artifacts (games, simulations, or apps) in the context of learning, be it formal, informal, or just for fun learning.  My current projects include working on App Inventor, a tool that allows youth, or anyone, to create their own apps for Android Smartphones, and a project utilizing StarLogo TNG, in which teachers and students are able to create their own simulations for science learning.  In both projects, youth voice in the learning process is crucial.  

Links:

Jason Yip
College of Education, Human-Computer Interaction Lab; University of Maryland - College Park

I am a fifth year doctoral candidate for Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Maryland.  My advisor at Maryland is Allison Druin.  My work explores how we can integrate Cooperative Inquiry with children into design-based research.  Cooperative Inquiry is a method of participatory design that views children as full design partners in the development of technology.  Specifically, my work with Cooperative Inquiry seeks to develop ways to integrate this method into design-based research for STEM-based curricula and technology.  I seek to explore how children, adolescents, and adults can act as co-researchers through Cooperative Inquiry of life-relevant learning environments that help learners engage in science inquiry in the pursuit of their personal goals.  For this workshop, I am seeking ways to understand the role of video and media in supporting co-design with children and adolescents.  

Links: 

Leshell Hatley
Uplift, Inc. 

Leshell is a passionate computer engineer, educator, and researcher who is dedicated to finding effective methods of reaching and teaching PreK-12th grade students.  Her dedication to the discovery and implementation of instructional strategies and learning technologies to transform their learning experiences is evident in her professional successes as well as her research.  

Links: 

Maria Trangbæk Ahrensburg
Social Development Center SUS (Denmark)

In our projects we have been working with providing persons with disabilities new opportunities for communicating and participation in the world around them through technologies.  We have especially been focusing on: Skype, YouTube, Herbor (a special e-mail program for persons with learning disabilities), Apps, Wii and Kinect. 

Links:

Audrey G. Benett and Ron Eglash
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

The student work discussed in this presentation stems from a Google-funded CS4HS workshop at Rensselaer that taught high school art teachers and subsequently their students computational thinking with art.  

Links: 

Regan Mandryk, Associate Professor
University of Saskatchewan

The goal of our current work is to allow very young children (preliterate, ages 0-5) to use technology to connect with their remote friends and relatives, without the need for a parent to mediate the interaction - putting the power and responsibility right into the hands of the children. Our previous IDC-related work has focused on exergames for children and biofeedback games for special populations.

Links: 

Nitya Narasimhan
Mobile R&D

After spending over a decade in industry R&D with a focus on early-stage technology development for mobile and video platforms, I branched out this year as an independent developer with an interest in exploring the value of mobile, sensor and web technologies in the EdTech domain. My current focus is on supporting parent awareness and involvement in overseeing children's learning behaviors by leveraging emerging activity streams standards and adapting ideas from the quantified-self movement to provide parents with better visualizations/recommendations for their child's learning behaviors. 
With respect to the theme of this conference, I am interested in two primary areas: children as "creators" of media (telling stories to expose or re-inforce their understanding of concepts) and personalized games for learning (using learning templates for mathematics/science that can be themed to suit a child's specific influences or interests).

Links:

Elizabeth (“Beth”) Bonsignore
College of Information Studies (“Maryland’s iSchool”) and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) , University of Maryland, College Park

Elizabeth Bonsignore is a PhD candidate in the iSchool at the University of Maryland, and a research assistant in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). Her research is focused on the design and use of collaborative sense-making technologies and experiences that support lifelong learning, participatory literacies, and personal expression, whether in formal education or informal contexts (school, library, home). Specific work has included the study of mobile storytelling applications (StoryKit) and hybrid communities for educators and children (online/offline) that promote professional development (Classroom2.0), scientific inquiry ("Kitchen Chemistry"), and personal expression (Sci-dentity.org). Her dissertation research investigates the design of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) as collaborative learning platforms that promote information literacy practices and participatory culture. 


Links:

Tamara Peyton
Penn State University

It's challenging to engage teenagers in health-related research. Our research group is currently investigating the use of mobile video collages and online storytelling to enhance the voices of teens with special healthcare needs as they transition from pediatric to adult  care.

Onyi Nwosu
Sesame Workshop

 Sesame Workshop produces games and applications for children and we’re always looking for new ideas on how to get our products out to kids effectively.

Mike Pierre
Sesame Workshop

QA Analyst. I assist with the development and deployment processes of sesame mobile games across multiple platforms.

Glenda Revelle, Ph.D.
University of Arkansas

My research interests focus on using technology to facilitate communication among young children and their family members.  Particular areas of interest include intergenerational communication and the potential for technology-based remote interaction to increase the quality of relationship for grandparents and their young grandchildren.   

Helene Gelderblom
School of Computing
University of South Africa

Karen Hart
Picsterbooks

Audubon Dougherty
MIT Center for Civic Media

Audubon Dougherty is a multimedia producer interested in the role of technology for international and community development. She works on projects that focus on mobile technologies as an accessible medium for civic engagement.

Moriah Harling