Deborah Fields Email and Phone Number

Inspires, designs, and advocates for children's creative expression with digital media, coding, and everyday craft materials.Dr. Fields works to break down stereotypes regarding who can create with digital media and computing. This includes projects which create educational opportunities to design with sewable electronics (e-textiles) or the popular programming environment, Scratch. This interest carries over into the growing phenomenon of child-generated digital content in online environments.

My research focuses on understanding the relationship between learning, identity, and motivation and in creating educational environments that create positive intersections between these. In particular I am studying "constructionist" learning situations, where kids make animations with Scratch or their own light-up clothes with the LilyPad Arduino. How do aesthetics relate to learning? How does personal expression in computational artifacts contribute to identity? I also have a habit of studying participation in massive websites designed for kids, like Whyville and Scratch.I teach online classes and continue research in these areas.

My research focuses on understanding the relationship between learning, identity, and motivation and in creating educational environments that create positive intersections between these. In particular I am studying "constructionist" learning situations, where kids make animations with Scratch or their own light-up clothes with the LilyPad Arduino. How do aesthetics relate to learning? How does personal expression in computational artifacts contribute to identity? I also have a habit of studying participation in massive websites designed for kids, like Whyville and Scratch.

Educational research focusing on children, youth, and creative technologies. I contribute to grants and related research endeavors to provide, analysis, implementation, data collection, conference and journal writing, presentations, professional development.

Program manager for two computer science education projects where students design, program, and sew computational textiles, or learn computational thinking through creating and socially networking with Scratch (a visual, media-rich programming environment) in a massive online site project sharing site. I develop educational curricula, lead local interventions, develop research methods to trace learning, identity, and creativity development across local and online settings, and mentor graduate and undergraduate researchers. I also collaborate with the Scratch Teams at Penn and MIT to leverage design changes in the Scratch site to promote deeper engagement in project creation, cooperation, and social networking. These projects are funded by the National Science Foundation(#1027736, #0855868): Preparing the next generation of computational thinkers: - Transforming learning and education through cooperation in decentralized networks. - Computational textiles as materials for creativity: Participatory design communities in afterschool and classroom programs for economically disadvantaged youth.

Reviewed several websites designed for kids and helped critique and evaluate the rubric for learning opportunities used for all websites/apps/video games.

Developing the components of the web representation of the learning sciences programs available internationally so that prospective students and other scholars can compare them.

Projects: Investigating Immersive Simulation Science Activities in Large Scale Multi-User Online Environments; Tweens and Reproductive Health in Virtual Worlds Project Investigator: Yasmin Kafai, Ed.D. I analyzed data and co-authored publications on a study of gender differences, identity, ethnicity, romantic relationships, and experiences of a community-wide virtual epidemic in a virtual world (Whyville.net) for youth ages 8-16. Analyses included developing new qualitative methods to study learning and peer pedagogy across spaces. I also edited portions of Beyond Barbie to Mortal Kombat. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation (#0411814) and the MacArthur Foundation. Graduate Student Researcher 2006 - 2008 Project: Community Mapping ProjectProject Investigator: Noel Enyedy, Ph.D. I collaborated in developing and analyzing a culturally relevant statistics curriculum utilizing GIS (geographical information systems) software to explore how interest, identity, and differences in the argumentation practices of students from different cultures promoted or limited Los Angeles urban students’ engagement with statistics. The curriculum drew on youths’ local communities and language of argumentation to develop statistical arguments regarding social justice advocacy. This study was supported by a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship. Graduate Student Researcher 2005-2006 Project: Center for Embedded Networked Sensing Education Infrastructure (CENSEI) Supervisor: William Sandoval, Ph.D. I designed inquiry modules and performed data analysis for multiple classroom implementations. The inquiry modules are standards-based, multi-week curricula that use embedded network sensing technology to engage students in active inquiry, data analysis, and scientific practices of argumentation. CENSEI is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Program Evaluation and Research Branch Los Angeles Unified School District Supervisors: Julie Slayton, Ph.D. & Rosa Valdes, Ph.D.I contributed to the data collection, analysis, and reports of two longitudinal project evaluations, the Reading First Assessment and the Secondary Literacy project. The Reading First Assessment concerned ethnographic research of fifty elementary schools, focusing on professional development, classroom practices, and school leadership. The Secondary Literacy project concerned ethnographic research of professional development meetings through various district levels.