Dixie Ching
Personal Information
Howdy! I'm a doctoral student in the Educational Communication and Technology program at New York University, where I'm a member of the Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education (www.create.alt.ed.nyu.edu) and the Games For Learning Institute (www.g4li.org), a multi-university research consortium that develops STEM games for middle school students. In 2011, my colleagues and I were awarded the Collegiate and Impact prizes at the National STEM Video Game Challenge for our number sense games (numbaland.com). Find me on Twitter! (@dixie_nyu)
I'm a doctoral student in the Educational Communication and Technology program at New York University, where I'm a member of the Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education (www.create.alt.ed.nyu.edu) and the Games For Learning Institute (www.g4li.org), a multi-university research consortium that develops STEM games for middle school students. In 2011, my colleagues and I were awarded the Collegiate and Impact prizes at the National STEM Video Game Challenge for our number sense games (numbaland.com).
Previous to NYU, I was senior manager of research and communications at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, where I oversaw the Center’s research projects, publication activities, website (www.joanganzcooneycenter.org), and fellows program. At the Center for Children & Technology, part of the Education Development Center, I examined the potential of novel educational technology products, including a series of NSF-funded science simulations for secondary school students. Prior to my career in the educational technology field, I've helped produce science documentaries for clients such as WGBH/Boston and Discovery Communications. From 2001-2004, I lived abroad in Beijing, China, where I created an English instructional series for Beijing TV and served as the Arts & Entertainment Editor for that's Beijing magazine. I have a B.A. in Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley, receiving an I.L. Chaikoff Award for the quality of my research. My undergraduate and post-graduate research at UC Berkeley and the National Institutes of Health has resulted in publications in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. I also have a master’s degree in Science Journalism from Boston University, which I attended on a GenCorp Foundation scholarship.
As a HASTAC Scholar, I would like to gain deeper insight into questions such as: How can we harness the potential of social and technological phenomena such as crowd sourcing, cloud computing, and location-aware applications? How can we best incorporate social networking sites, virtual worlds, simulations, and digital games into our formal and informal learning spaces? And how does the emerging “digital theories” of learning align with, improve upon, or contradict more established notions? Overall, I hope to contribute useful information and stimulating dialogue that will lead to more engaging and meaningful learning for youth.