DevTech Projects

Current Projects:

Prof. Marina Bers and her students in the DevTech research group focus on two different, but related, research areas:

Virtual Community of Learning and Care | Early Childhood Technology

Virtual Community of Learning and Care (VCLC)

We are exploring the potential of virtual environments to promote positive youth development by enabling users to become active creators of computational projects and participants in virtual communities. In particular, we are interested in how virtual environments can serve to complement and augment face-to-face psychoeducational programs for children and youth. We have several NSF-funded on-going projects that use our Zora 3D virtual environment:

- Zora @ Hospitals: a virtual community of transplant pediatric patients using Zora to create a peer-support network and improve medical adherence & school adjustment. This project is funded by NSF and has received additional funding from the Deborah Munroe Noonan Memorial Fund.

- Zora @ Camps: a virtual community of youth affected by cancer and blood disorders that use Zora to maintain camp friendships built at Camp For All (Burton, Texas) and to improve their sense of hopefulness and social connectedness.

- Zora @ Computer Clubhouses: a virtual community for pre-teens and teens participating in the national and international network of after-school computer-based learning environments, who use Zora to develop cultural awareness and respect for cultural diversity.

- Zora @ Tufts: a pre-orientation for incoming freshman students who use Zora to create the campus of the future and explore connections between campus and community.

Early Childhood Techology (ECT)

We are looking at the role of computational technologies that are developmentally appropriate for young children and that help them learn about new things in new ways. In particular, we focus on how robotic tools can help children explore concepts of math, science and technology in a fun and creative way, by enabling them to make connections with ideas that are both personally and epistemologically meaningful. We are re-examining the notion of what is "developmentally-appropriate" in the light of the opportunities for inquiry and active construction of knowledge offered by new technologies. Several research projects are ongoing:

- Tangible Kindergarten: investigating the use of innovative new technologies to teach computer programming in early childhood education

- Early Robotics Outreach: summer programs for young children and early childhood teachers

- Project Inter-Actions: parents and very young children learning about robotics

- Robotics Academy: child development and engineering students collaborating in robotics-based projects for education

- Investigating the impact of engineering projects on first grade students' problem solving

Past Projects

• Kaleidostories: a narrative web-based on-line environment
• Bridging the gap through design: Technological learning environments to engage marginalized populations in SMET
• Virtual friends: self-disclosure as a factor in adolescents' online friendships (pdf brochure)