Faculty Directory

Marina Bers

Augustus Long Professor of Education

Secondary appointment in the Department of Computer Science

Affiliated faculty at the Schiller Institute for Science and Society

Department

DFE Department of Formative Education

Biography

Marina Umaschi Bers is the Augustus Long Professor of Education at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer Science and affiliated faculty at the Schiller Institute for Science and Society. She is director of the interdisciplinary Developmental Technologies (DevTech) research group, which she started in 2001, when she was a professor at Tufts University’s Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. Her research involves the design and study of innovative learning technologies to promote children’s positive development as a new literacy of the XXIst century. Prof. Bers has conceived and designed diverse technological tools ranging from robotics to virtual worlds. Her current research focuses on robotics and programming languages that promote new ways of thinking and learning in early childhood alongside with socio-emotional development. For example, she co-developed the free ScratchJr programming language and she developed the KIBO robot kit that can be programmed with wooden blocks without keyboards or screens.

Bers’ philosophy and theoretical approach as well as the curriculum and assessment methods she developed can be found in her books “Beyond Coding: How Children Learn Values through Programming” (MIT Press, 2022); “Coding as Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classroom” (Routledge, 2018;2022); “The Official ScratchJr Book” (2015; No Starch Press); “Designing Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development: From Playpen to Playground” (2012, Oxford University Press); and “Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom” (2008; Teacher’s College Press)

Bers is from Argentina, where she did her undergraduate in Social Communication at Buenos Aires University. In 1994 she came to the US where she received an MA in Educational Media and Technology from Boston University and an MS and PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory working with Seymour Papert.

Scratch Jr 1 LP 1050

ScratchJr turns 10

The DevTech Research Group hosted a 10th birthday celebration for ScratchJr, an interactive learning platform (with more than 57 million users) designed to teach children coding. The party featured a Q&A session with founders Mitch Resnick and Augustus Long Professor of Education Marina Bers.

Scratch Jr 3 LP 1050

A decade of bringing computer literacy to kids

ScratchJr, a programming app for children aged 5-7 co-developed by the Augustus Long Professor Marina Umaschi Bers and the Developmental Technologies Research Group now housed at the Lynch School, marks its 10th anniversary

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Marina Bers (1)

Project aims to interest rural Navajo youth in STEM

Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, researchers from BC's Engineering Department and Lynch School, in collaboration with Utah State University, will design and test a mobile resource station and associated computing curriculum for use in rural and indigenous pre-K and kindergarten classrooms

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Pensamos en tecnologías que sean como plazas o parques de juegos, donde los chicos puedan crear con otros

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