Amon Millner
MIT Media Lab
PhD Program

Amon Millner enjoys the challenge of designing, developing and deploying activities and tools for informal learning environments. In his current research project, the Hook-ups Initiative, young people learn by designing and constructing Hook-ups - physical objects that can control games, animations, and other computer programs they create.

The Hook-ups initiative dovetails with (and draws upon) the Scratch graphical programming language our group is developing. Hook-ups adds a physical tinkering dimension to Scratch by supporting youth to construct both the programs on the screen and the physical controllers for interacting with them.

Amon comes to LLK as a long-time Clubhouse mentor. While earning his MS in Human Computer Interactions from Georgia Tech, he worked with LLK alumna, Amy Bruckman, on ethnographic-style studies of activities at the Atlanta area Clubhouses.

Evelyn Eastmond
Masters of Engineering Student
MIT Media Lab

Evelyn Eastmond is a Masters of Engineering student in the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. Two years ago as an undergraduate at MIT, she joined the Lifelong Kindergarten Scratch team. Her work on Scratch has focused mainly on its artistic applications, from the paint editor to the graphics effects blocks. She is very excited about Scratch's ability to bring art and technology together, especially at the hands of children.

Evelyn's prior experiences include freelance web design, graphic design and a programming internship at Pixar Animation Studios. She also enjoys teaching and is looking forward to the IDEAS institute and sharing Scratch with the rest of the world!

Geetha Narayanan
Director
Mallya Aditi International School and
Srishti School of Art Design and Technology

Geetha Narayanan has dedicated her life to finding and establishing new models of educational institutions that are creative, synergistic and original in their approach to learning. She has been involved in education for the past two decades as an administrator, teacher, researcher, facilitator, teacher educator, and instructional designer. She is the Director of Mallya Aditi International School and Srishti School of Art Design and Technology .

Geetha actively works to empower teachers in India by establishing action research and other participatory initiatives. Her new initiative is called Project Drishya (Vision) and it is a collaboration with NGOs, academics and designers. The project aims to create sustainable livelihoods by empowering and teaching the children of India's growing urban poor communities.

John Maloney
Research Associate
MIT Media Lab

John Maloney is a visiting researcher in the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. His primary focus is the Scratch project, an effort to build a programming environment for teenagers at Computer Clubhouses. Scratch will support multimedia programming including storytelling and game building. Scratch will also interact with the physical world via a sensor/actuator interface.

Before joining the Lifelong Kindergarten, John worked for Alan Kay, both at Apple Computer and later at Walt Disney Imagineering. John was one of the original team that built the Squeak Smalltalk system and EToys programming environment. His non-computer interests include Renaissance music and he attempts to play the sackbut (an early trombone).

Leo Burd
MIT Media Lab
PhD Program

Leo Burd focuses on the design of educational technologies and environments for social empowerment. He is particularly interested in the creation of scalable and sustainable community center models that promote contextualized uses of technology, support personally meaningful learning experiences, facilitate enriching collaborations among kids and adults, open space for innovation, and above all help people assume constructive attitudes toward themselves and the places where they live.

Prior to the Media Lab, Leo Burd was engaged in a series of projects that brought technology to public schools and low-income communities in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He has earned a M.Sc. degree about the design of software for educational activities (UNICAMP, 1999).

Mitchel Resnick
LEGO Papert Associate Professor of Learning Research
Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group
MIT Media Lab

Mitchel Resnick is LEGO Papert Associate Professor of Learning Research and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. His research explores how new technologies can help people (particularly children) learn new things in new ways. Resnick's research group developed ideas and technologies underlying the LEGO Mindstorms robotics construction kit, used by millions of kids around the world. He co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, a worldwide network of after-school centers where youth from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies.

Resnick earned a BA in physics at Princeton University (1978), and MS and PhD degrees in computer science at MIT (1988, 1992). He worked for five years as a science/technology journalist for Business Week magazine, and he has consulted widely on the uses of computers in education. Resnick was awarded a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1993. He is author of the book Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams (1994), co-editor of Constructionism in Practice (1996), and co-author of Adventures in Modeling (2001).

Natalie Rusk
Research Associate
MIT Media Lab

Natalie Rusk specializes in designing programs that allow young people to use digital technology to create projects based on their interests. She is currently a researcher and developer at the MIT Media Laboratory, working on the development of Scratch, a new programming language designed for use in community after-school centers.
For the past four years she served as Project Director of the PIE (Playful Invention and Exploration) Network, collaborating with the MIT Media Lab and six museums to develop a new generation of hands-on science activities that incorporate art, crafts, and computer programming.

She worked for more than 10 years for the Science Museum of Minnesota, establishing the Learning Technologies Center and guiding the development of educational websites, including the Thinking Fountain. In 1993, she co-founded The Computer Clubhouse, a model after-school learning program that engages young people in creating projects with the support of adult mentors.

Nothing inspires Natalie more than when someone gets an idea and says, “I know what I want to make!”

Rachel Garber
Director IDEAS Institute
Education Consultant
MIT Media Lab

Video interview with Rachel (1:13 min., 225k, Real Media)

Rachel Garber is an education consultant with the MIT Media Lab and is the Director of the IDEAS Institute. She has worked for many years developing after-school programs for young people with an emphasis on arts and technology. As a photographer, she has a special interest in helping young people express themselves through visual media.

Rachel started working with kids and technology as a mentor at the original Computer Clubhouse in Boston. She has worked on the staff of the Computer Clubhouse Network, focusing on mentoring, girls and technology, and the development of resources for educators. Rachel also directed a program at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to help Boston high school students pursue opportunities for higher education and financial aid.

Developing a program like the IDEAS Institute has been Rachel's dream for many years. She not only loves designing programs and institutes, she is committed to finding creative ways to support and connect people who work with young people. She is very excited about the upcoming IDEAS Institute.

Ximena Miranda
IDEAS Institute Cooridnator
MIT Media Lab

Originally from Costa Rica, Ximena is a biologist who fell in love with education when she was an environmental educator for kids in the small rural town of Purisil (Cartago, Costa Rica). She developed a program called “Econiños” (Ecokids), creating activities for youth to learn more about the tropical forest and to become stronger leaders of their community.

In search of a bridge between biology and education, she found a program called Mind, Brain and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, from which she recently graduated. She learned about the MIT Media Lab because of its links to projects in Costa Rica and was instantly attracted to its ideas and philosophy of learning.

Therefore, during her year in Cambridge she was a student in Mitchel Resnick’s class on technologies for creative learning, in which she explored the use of Scratch software for learning about biological processes. She also became a mentor for the Girls’ Day of the Computer Clubhouse at the Jordan Boys and Girls Club (Chelsea, Massachusetts). This was a very important experience for her to learn, in practice, how mentoring and creative technologies can give youth more self-confidence and can be an opportunity for exploring and strengthening their creativity. Convinced about the power of this kind of experience for social development, she’s proud to begin this summer as part of the team that is coordinating the IDEAS Institute