Marina Umaschi Bers is the Augustus Long Professor of Education at
Boston College
Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classifie ...
. Bers holds a secondary appointment in Boston College's Department of Computer Science. Bers directs the interdisciplinary DevTech Research Group, which she started in 2001 at Tufts University. Her research involves the design and study of innovative learning technologies to promote children's positive development. She is known for her work in the field of early childhood computer science with projects of national and international visibility. Bers is the co-creator of the free ScratchJr programming language, used by 35 million children, and the creator of the KIBO robotic kit, which has no screens or keyboards.
Education
Marina Umaschi Bers went to
Buenos Aires University
The University of Buenos Aires ( es, Universidad de Buenos Aires, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Established in 1821, it is the premier institution of higher learning in the country and one o ...
in Argentina and received her undergraduate degree in Social Communications (1993). In 1994, she earned a master's degree in Educational Media and Technology from
Boston University
Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original campu ...
; she also has an M.S. from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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 ...
. In 2001, she earned a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Laboratory working under the mentorship of Seymour Papert. In 2001 Bers created her research group, the Developmental Technologies, or DevTech, at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University. In 2018 she was named the chair of the Eliot-Pearson Dept. of Child Development. In 2022 she moved to Boston College as the August Long Professor of Education at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development. Bers received an appointment in Boston College's Department of Computer Science and is an affiliated faculty with the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
Bers co-founded KinderLab Robotics in 2013, and has worked with
WGBH-TV
WGBH-TV (channel 2), branded on-air as GBH or GBH 2 since 2020, is the primary PBS member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is the flagship property of the WGBH Educational Foundation, which also owns Boston's sec ...
and
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
on content for children's broadcasting.
Research and work
Bers’ research centers around the potential of technology to foster the development of children. Her early work examined storytelling and language in children, robotics in early childhood education, and the development of values in virtual environments. In 2012 she developed the TangibleK robotics program to teach young children about the world of technology. Bers developed the ScratchJr programming language collaboratively with Mitch Resnick,
Paula Bonta
Paula Bonta is an Argentinian-Canadian computer scientist and educational software designer. She is known for developing programming environments for children, most notably contributing to the design of the Scratch programming language before it ...
, and
Brian Silverman
Brian Silverman is a Canadian computer scientist, the creator of many programming environments for children,Scratch which is used to teach programming to children from 8 to 16 computer programming. Bers also works to train childhood educators on the use of technology in the classroom and develops curriculum that can be used to teach programming and computational thinking. She developed the KIBO robot kit, a robot that young children can program with wooden blocks and serves as a tool to teach children computer programming.
Published books
*Bers, M. U (2012). ''Designing Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development: From Playpen to Playground.'' Oxford.
*Bers, M. U & Resnick, M. (2015). ''The Official ScratchJr Book''. No Starch Press.
*Bers, M. U & Sullivan, A. (2018) ''The Official ScratchJr Coding Cards''. No Starch Press.
*Bers, M. U. (2018). ''Coding as a Playground: Programming and Coding in the Early Childhood Classroom''. Routledge.
Awards and honors
In 2005, Bers received the
Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The White ...
(PECASE), the highest honor given by the U.S. government to outstanding investigators. She also received a National Science Foundation (NSF)‘s Young Investigator's Career Award, and the
American Educational Research Association
The American Educational Research Association (AERA, pronounced "A-E-R-A") is a professional organization representing education researchers in the United States and around the world. AERA's mission is to advance knowledge about education and p ...
(AERA) Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies. In 2015, Bers was chosen as one of the recipients of the
Boston Business Journal
The ''Boston Business Journal'' is a weekly, business-oriented newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts. It is published by the American City Business Journals.
The newspaper was founded by Robert Bergenheim and launched its first issue on ...
’s Women to Watch in Science and Technology awards, and in 2016, Bers received the Outstanding Faculty Contribution to Graduate Student Studies award at Tufts University. She was elected fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2022.