ETR Associates' Dr. Jill Denner Presents at National K-12 Computing Teachers Workshop
Dr. Jill Denner, Senior Research Scientist at ETR Associates, recently gave the keynote presentation at the National K-12 Computing Teachers Workshop, held at the Portland Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Denner presented to more than 150 teachers about Getting Girls into the Game: Research and Practice to Increase Diversity in Computing. The K-12 Computing Teachers Workshop was hosted by the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), in partnership with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology's Grace Hopper Conference on Women in Computing.
While at ETR Associates, Dr. Denner has developed several after-school programs. Her applied research on these programs has contributed to an understanding of effective strategies for promoting youth leadership, building youth-adult partnerships, increasing girls' confidence and capacity to produce technology, and engaging girls in information technology. Her current focus is on how students learn while creating computer games, and the development of computational thinking. As part of a long-standing commitment to bridge research and practice, her research is designed and conducted in collaboration with schools and community-based agencies. Dr. Denner has been a Principal Investigator (PI) on several NSF grants, written numerous peer-reviewed articles, and co-edited two books: Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming, published by MIT Press in 2008, and Latina Girls: Voices of Adolescent Strength in the U.S., published by NYU Press in 2006. ETR Associates' Girls Game Company, for which Dr. Denner served as PI, was named a 2010 Best Practice Technology Education Program by the Bayer Corporation. Dr. Denner has a PhD in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a BA in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
For more information on the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), please visit http://csta.acm.org/
