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Idit Harel Caperton

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Human Scientists

               Idit Harel Caperton
   Israeli-American researcher and entrepreneur
   Born September 18, 1958
        Tel Aviv, Israel

   Idit Harel Caperton, Ph.D. (born September 18, 1958 in Tel Aviv,
   Israel) is an educational psychologist and epistemologist specializing
   in the study of the impact of computer-based new media technology on
   the social and academic development of children. Her research, along
   with that of Seymour Papert, has contributed to the development of
   constructionist learning theory, a hands-on approach to the use of
   technology as a tool in juvenile education and acculturation.

   She is the founder and CEO of MaMaMedia Inc., the executive director of
   the MaMaMedia Consulting Group (MCG), and founder and president of the
   World Wide Workshop Foundation. Additionally, Caperton is an advisor
   for several non-profit educational initiatives and is a regular
   featured speaker at universities and educational conferences worldwide.

Personal life

   Born Idit Ron to Jewish parents from Poland and Czechoslovakia, Idit
   Harel Caperton was reared in Israel in a family that included several
   Holocaust survivors. Her parents, Rachel and Yehuda Ron, who were
   educators, authors, and book publishers, influenced her early life.
   Before turning to academics, Harel Caperton served in the Israeli Army.
   Additionally, as a high school student, she was a modern dance
   performer and was a member of the Israeli national rhythmic gymnastics
   team.

   She was also strongly influenced by the development of the young
   Israeli state, often comparing the early years of the state to a
   business startup. Israel, a mere 10-year-old democracy when she was
   born, was in the process of building socio-political systems that
   combined leftist philosophies of cooperation and mutual reliance with
   free enterprise entrepreneurship. While a youth in the Levant, she
   experienced the Six Days War, the Yom Kippur War, and the 1982 Lebanon
   War. These events, along with other regional conflicts, such as the
   Gulf War, the First Intifada, and the Al-Aqsa Intifada, have led
   Caperton to actively support efforts to foster, build, and sustain
   peace in the Middle East and throughout the world.

   In 2003, she married her second husband, Gaston Caperton, former
   Governor of West Virginia (1989-1997) and current President of the
   College Board, the organization responsible for the Advanced Placement
   (AP) programs and SAT examinations. They live in New York City and
   together have five children and five grandchildren. In addition, they
   continue to own a residence in West Virginia.

Academic career

   Along with her first husband, David Harel (an Israeli investor,
   ex-fighter pilot, and Harvard MBA), she moved to the United States in
   1982 for graduate study at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in
   Cambridge, Massachusetts after having previously received a Bachelor of
   Arts in Psychology and Philosophy from Tel-Aviv University. She earned
   two graduate degrees from Harvard: an EdM in Technology in Education
   (1984) and a CAGS in Human Development (1985). In 1988, Harel Caperton
   was one of the first students to receive a Ph.D. in Epistemology and
   Learning Research from the new MIT Media Lab at the Massachusetts
   Institute of Technology after helping to formulate a new,
   constructionist-inspired educational model called "Instructional
   Software Design Learning Pradigm."

Constructionism

   During her time at MIT, Harel Caperton co-wrote and published several
   articles with Seymour Papert (creator of the Logo programming
   language), and in 1991 they co-edited and published Contructionism, the
   first book about constructionist learning. This book includes their
   articles and several other works by the first generation of MIT Media
   Lab researchers in the (then emerging) fields of Media Technology Arts
   and Sciences, and Epistemology and Learning. She continued to work at
   the Media Lab with Papert and Nicholas Negroponte until 1994.

Children Designers

   In 1991, she published a book, Children Designers, which won the 1991
   Outstanding Book Award from the American Education Research
   Association. In her research, Harel Caperton introduced several
   disadvantaged fourth grade children from the Boston area to the Logo
   programming language. She then facilitated their use of the language to
   allow them to create their own mathematical software applications that
   would help third-graders learn fractions. The students, who included
   children with different levels of mathematical prowess, worked on their
   own pieces of software for four to eight hours per week for 15 weeks.

   Harel Caperton then observed and quantified the effect of the
   experience on their mathematical understanding and overall learning
   behaviour. Her research indicated that children who learn fractions
   using a combination of Logo programming and the techniques of
   constructionist learning scored on average 8 to 18 percentage points
   higher on standardized post-test examinations than those taught using
   traditional techniques. She identified the tendency of Logo-based
   programming to allow for individual variations in "learning, mastery,
   and self-expression" in children, and further called for an expansion
   of research into the nature of these differences by education scholars.
   Such exploration would help to uncover the long-term benefits of
   similar academic models on the subjects as they develop into young
   adults. These results were later expanded upon by Yasmin Kafai, who
   found in a similar six-moth project with inner-city forth graders that
   learning through design resulted in statistically-significat
   improvements in mathematical development.

The World Wide Workshop Foundation

   Idit Harel Caperton is also founder and president of the World Wide
   Workshop Foundation for Children’s Media Technology & Learning, a
   501(c)(3) non-profit organization that collaborates with educators and
   leaders worldwide in order to incorporate new technologies into their
   country's curriculum. Much of the Foundation's work looks at ways to
   create new online educational applications or overhaul existing
   Internet programs, designed for kids and youth, to inspire them to make
   their communities and our world a better place for everyone.

GLOBALORIA Program

   The Globaloria Program was established by the World Wide Workshop
   Foundation in the spring of 2006 to develop projects that work with
   people in the developing world and other underprivileged communities so
   that they may experience elements of democracy and globalization
   through learning Internet technology skills, including accessing
   information, participating in real-time communication with a
   multicultural global community, and collaborating on useful technology
   projects. As a first step, young people experience first-hand what they
   can do with a web browser and Internet connectivity and discover how to
   become digitally literate cybercitizens.

   The first project of the GLOBALORIA Program is My Global Life, a
   worldwide network of educational, programmable websites and related
   wikis. The goal of MyGLife.org is to help the world’s youth experience
   and master technology tools and methods for necessary in a world of
   expanding democracy and globalization. Site users are mentored to learn
   Internet technology skills (including wiki development, graphic design
   and Flash programming skills) and build global awareness, while
   simultaniously experiencing positive communication with other
   communities. The MyGLife.org network is intended to provide a
   replicable and scalable model for the empowerment of youth online.
   Cisco Systems has provided the seed funding for MyGLife.org.

Recent scholastic pursuits

Clickerati

   Much of Harel Caperton's recent work in the past decade has focused on
   what she calls the development of the "Clickerati Generation" (a play
   on the term Literati) - the new generation of young people who were
   born—or will be born—between 1991 and 2010. She advances the notion
   that children born during this time will grow up immersed in new media,
   and will not be able to imagine a world without Internet technology.
   Therefore, she contends that there is a need for a radical, global
   paradigm shift relating to education and acculturation of this
   generation in comparison to the methods used with the youth of bygone
   eras. In other words, where people of the past worked with print-based
   literature, current and future generations will click their way through
   technologically-based mediums of digital information and communication
   – and will need to be prepared adequately with digital literacy skills
   for their successful development, citizenship, and leadership within
   such physical-digital blended environments.

Non-profit work

   Harel Caperton has been active with consultation work for several
   non-profit educational entities. She has spent a great deal of time and
   effort with the Aspen Institute's FOCAS and Info-Tech policy programs
   and is a member of the board of directors for the ATLAS Institute.
   Furthermore, in 2004, she reunited with former colleagues Negroponte
   and Papert for One Laptop Per Child, the organization responsible for
   the oversight of MIT's controversial $100 laptop project. OLPC seeks to
   ensure that every child in the world has access to inexpensive,
   hand-cranked computers that can operate in areas with little or no
   electrical utilities.

Other recent endeavors

   Her primary focus during 2005-2006 has been the establishment of
   educational links between the United States and the rapidly growing
   technological infrastructure of China by working with individuals,
   corporations, and educational organizations (like Saybot, ECNU, BNU,
   and OLPC). In doing so, she has been a featured speaker and lecturer at
   numerous universities in Beijing and Shanghai. During the fall 2005
   academic term, Caperton and her youngest daughter lived in Shanghai
   while she was a visiting professor and consultant at the Software
   Engineering Institute at East China Normal University, where she
   developed and modeled a student-centered, project-based curriculum for
   their graduate schools.
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