Eric Klopfer (born October 8, 1970) is a professor and Director of th
Scheller Teacher Education Program and the Education Arcade
at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

. Klopfer's research explores how educational technology, games, and computer simulations can be tools for teaching complex systems and developing cognitive and computational thinking skills. Klopfer and his research group developed

StarLogo StarLogo is an agent-based simulation language developed by Mitchel Resnick, Eric Klopfer, and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and Scheller Teacher Education Program in Massachusetts. It is an extension of the ...

and

App Inventor for Android MIT App Inventor is a web application integrated development environment originally provided by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It allows newcomers to computer programming to create application softw ...

and other

Visual programming language In computing, a visual programming language (visual programming system, VPL, or, VPS) is any programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements ''graphically'' rather than by specifying them ''textually''. A VP ...

platforms that build on the work of

Seymour Papert Seymour Aubrey Papert (; 29 February 1928 – 31 July 2016) was a South African-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, who spent most of his career teaching and researching at MIT. He was one of the pioneers of artificial ...

and

Constructionism (learning theory) Constructionist learning is the creation by learners of mental models to understand the world around them. Constructionism advocates student-centered, discovery learning where students use what they already know, to acquire more knowledge.Alesa ...

in education. He is also the principal investigator in the research and development of award-winning games designed for building understanding in science and math, connecting game play with scientific practice, problem-solving, and real-world issues. In 2014, Klopfer produced a series of four online courses on the edX learning platform, delivering videos, tools, and assignments for participants to create, implement, and evaluate projects in educational technology. Klopfer is co-founder and past president of the non-profit Learning Games Network, co-author of ''Adventures in Modeling'' and ''The More We Know'', and the author of ''Augmented Learning''.MIT Press author profile
/ref> He is a triathlete, the husband of Rachel Klopfer, and the father of two children.

References

External links

Eric Klopfer's profile page
Cornell University alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni MIT School of Architecture and Planning faculty Living people 1970 births Santa Fe Institute people {{US-academic-bio-stub