Digital Media and Learning

Elyse Eidman-Aadahl is co-director of the National Writing Project, where she manages national programs as well as several national/international action research projects. Her research interests include the design and experience of professional learning communities; practitioner inquiry in the U.S. and abroad; and the relationship between practitioner knowledge, policy work, and public engagement. A recipient of the Hollis Caswell Award for Curriculum Studies, her publications include studies of literacy learning in the context of state policy initiatives and school reform, as well as research into how teachers of diverse backgrounds reason together about literacy, equity, and agency. She is now pursuing those questions with a network of teacher-researchers in the newly democratic republic of Mongolia. In addition to her teaching, she is an adviser to the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Writing, the Elementary Science Integration Program, and several educational nonprofits.

Gee started his career in theoretical linguistics, working in syntactic and semantic theory, and taught initially at Stanford University and later in the School of Language and Communication at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts. After doing some research in psycholinguistics at Northeastern University in Boston and at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Holland, Prof. Gee's research focus switched to studies on discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and applications of linguistics to literacy and education. He went on to teach in the School of Education at Boston University, where he was the chair of the Department of Developmental Studies and Counseling, and later in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California. At Boston University he established new graduate programs centered around an integrated approach to language and literacy, combining programs in reading, writing, bilingual education, ESL, and applied linguistics. Gee’s work over the last decade has centered on the development of an integrated theory of language, literacy, and schooling, a theory that draws on work in socially situated cognition, sociocultural approaches to language and literacy, language development, discourse studies, critical theory, and applied linguistics. Gee's recent work has extended his ideas on language, literacy, and society to deal with the so-called "new capitalism" and its cognitive, social, and political implications for literacy and schooling. Gee received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara and both his M.A. and Ph.D in linguistics from Stanford University.

Mimi Ito is an international expert on how people use mobile technologies and new digital media in their everyday lives. A cultural anthropologist of technology use, she also is a leading authority on how social network technologies are shaping society. She is a Professor in Residence, Department of Anthropology and Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Ito has been named the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Chair in Digital Media and Learning. Created in 2009 from an endowment fund originally established by the MacArthur Foundation at the University of California, Berkeley, the digital media and learning initiative aims to determine how digital media are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. The result of this research was the book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (The MIT Press). She authored the recently published, Engineeing Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software, and co-edited Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life and co-edited the book series Technologies of the Imagination: New Media In Everyday Life. Ito has two doctorates from Stanford University, in education and anthropology.

Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He arrived at USC in Fall 2009 after spending the past decade as the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His newest books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. He is currently co-authoring a book on "spreadable media" with Sam Ford and Joshua Green. He has written for Technology Review, Computer Games, Salon, and The Huffington Post. Jenkins has a B.A. in Political Science and Journalism from Georgia State University, a M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.