Idit Harel Caperton

2007 Concise Encyclopedia. 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.