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

Photo of Marina Bers

Marina Bers

Ph.D.

Contact

Telephone: 617-522-4200

Email: marina.bers@bc.edu

Education

  • Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • M.Ed., Boston University
  • B.A., University of Buenos Aires

Courses

Tech Tools for Playful Learning
Design, Innovation and Formation
Readings and Research in Formative Education

Expertise

  • Design of Learning Experiences and Technologies
  • Formative and Whole Person Education
  • STEM Teaching and Learning
Curriculum Vitae

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听,听which she started in 2001, when she was a professor at Tufts University鈥檚 Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development. Her research involves the design and study of innovative learning technologies to promote children鈥檚 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鈥� philosophy and theoretical approach as well as the curriculum and assessment methods she developed can be found in her books 鈥淏eyond Coding: How Children Learn Values through Programming鈥� (MIT Press, 2022); 鈥淐oding as Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classroom鈥� (Routledge, 2018;2022); 鈥淭he Official ScratchJr Book鈥� (2015; No Starch Press); 鈥淒esigning Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development: From Playpen to Playground鈥� (2012, Oxford University Press); and 鈥淏locks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom鈥� (2008; Teacher鈥檚 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.

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