Workshop Faculty
June Ahn
June Ahn is an Associate Professor at UC Irvine School of Education and a member of the Connected Learning Lab at UCI. He conducts research on the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning technologies. He is interested in designing and understanding sociotechnical systems - or how social, cultural, and institutional factors intersect with the affordances of new technologies - to create enhanced and equitable learning opportunities for all learners. His current research includes designing social media and public displays to facilitate the noticing of science learning across neighborhood settings; designing and studying the efficacy of alternate reality games for playful learning; and researcher-practitioner partnerships with school districts to use data and analytics to understand the impact of educational software and blended learning.
Philip Bell
Philip Bell is a Professor of Education at the University of Washington Seattle and holds the Shauna C. Larson Chair in Learning Sciences. He pursues a cognitive and cultural program of research about how people learn about science and technology in ways that are personally consequential to them both in and out of school. His current work involves design-based research on novel learning experiences and resources that promote educational equity as well as broad-scale design-based implementation research conducted through collaborative partnerships of researchers and practitioners. He serves as the Executive Director of the UW Institute for Science and Math Education that conducts equity-focused R&D projects in STEM education and as the Co-Director of the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Science of Learning Center. Bell has a background in human cognition and development, science education, computer science, and electrical engineering.
Daniel Gallagher
Daniel Gallagher is Director of Career and Technical Education at Shoreline Public Schools. He has cultivated several productive research-practice partnerships, most recently serving as co-Principal Investigator for two NSF DRK-12 projects and as Principal Investigator of a Washington State Math-Science Partnership (MSP). In the MSP, multiple school districts, STEM professionals, a regional PD provider, and science education researchers are co-developing resources supporting implementation of the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices.
Alicia Grunow
Alicia Grunow is a senior partner and director of the improvement science and analytics groups at Carnegie. In that role, she oversees the core capacities that support all networked improvement communities: analytics, developmental evaluation, design and development, program technologies and improvement research. Before coming to Carnegie, Alicia was an instructor in Stanford’s Teacher Education Program (STEP), where she taught practices to support the academic achievement of English language learners. She has a master’s degree in economics and a doctorate in educational administration and policy analysis from Stanford University. Before graduate school, she taught for seven years in transitional bilingual and dual language elementary school programs in both Denver and New York City. She completed the Bilingual and ESL Teachers Leadership Academy at Bank Street College. At the core, she will always identify as a practitioner.
Kylie Peppler
Kylie Peppler is an associate professor of learning sciences in Informatics & Education at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on the intersection of arts, computational technologies and interest-driven learning. In addition to serving as the Director of the Creativity Labs, Peppler is the Chief Learning Officer at Collective Shift/LRNG, the former lead of the MacArthur Foundation’s Make-to-Learn initiative, and a member of the 2016 and 2017 National Educational Technology Plan Committee, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. Peppler was on the original NSF-sponsored Scratch team during the initial design and early study of the Scratch platform. Since this time, she has specialized in studying e-textile design with the LilyPad Arduino.
Nichole Pinkard
Nichole Pinkard is an associate professor of learning sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She is the founder of Digital Youth Network, co-founder of Inquirium LLC and Remix Learning, home of iRemix, a social learning platform that connects youth’s learning opportunities in school, home, and beyond. In collaboration with the Chicago Public Library, Dr. Pinkard helped found YOUmedia, a public learning space that immerses high school students in a context of traditional media – books – to make and produce new media artifacts like music, games, videos, and virtual worlds. Her current scholarly interests include the design and use of pedagogical-based social networks, new media literacy learning outcomes, ecological models of learning, digital badging, computational-making learning environments for underrepresented groups, and designing city-level learning ecologies. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, an M.S. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University.
Jennifer Lin Russell
Jennifer Lin Russell is an associate professor of Learning Sciences and Policy in the School of Education and a research scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research examines policy and other educational improvement initiatives through an organizational perspective. Her recent work examines two primary issues: (1) how schools create social and organizational structures that support reform; and (2) how inter-organizational collaborations can be structured for educational improvement.
Workshop Organizers
Barry Fishman
Barry Fishman is Professor of Learning Technologies in the University of Michigan School of Information and School of Education. His research focuses on: video games as models for learning environments, teacher learning and the role of technology in supporting teacher learning, and the development of usable, scalable, and sustainable learning innovations through design-based implementation research. He is the creator of GradeCraft, a game-inspired learning management system, and principal investigator of the A-GAMES project studying the ways teachers employ video games to support formative assessment practices. Dr. Fishman was co-author of the 2010 U.S. National Educational Technology Plan, and served as Associate Editor of The Journal of the Learning Sciences from 2005-2012. He received his A.B. from Brown University in English and American Literature in 1989, his M.S. from Indiana University in Instructional Systems Technology in 1992, and his Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University in 1996.
Bill Penuel
Bill Penuel is Professor of Educational Psychology & Learning Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on teacher learning and organizational processes that shape the implementation of educational policies, school curricula, and afterschool programs. He examines learning and development from sociocultural, social capital, and complex social systems perspectives. One strand of his research focuses on designs for teacher professional development in Earth science education. A second strand examines the role of research-practice partnerships in designing supports for teacher learning in school districts. A third strand examines how children's interest in science develops over time and across different kinds of settings. This third strand includes a focus on young children's learning through digital media, including public television programs. He is currently on the editorial board for Teachers College Record, American Journal of Evaluation, and Cognition and Instruction.
Tiffany Clark
Tiffany Clark is a research scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education. She is committed to broadening participation and building the field's capacity to carry out effective research-practice partnerships to improve learning opportunities for all youth. She engages in educational research, evaluation, and consulting activities and serves as an advisor to several non-profit organizations including the Woodland Park Zoo and United Way of King County. Tiffany received her Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from the University of Washington College of Education, where she was a member of the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center. Prior to joining CU, she worked as a researcher at the University of Washington and was the Director of Education at Teaching Channel.