Amy S. Bruckman

Infobox Scientist


caption = Amy Bruckman in December, 2001
name = Amy Susan Bruckman
birth_date = Birth date and age|1965|12|21
birth_place = New York, NY, USA
death_date =
death_place =
residence = Atlanta, Georgia
citizenship =
nationality = American
ethnicity =
field = Online communities,
Learning sciences,
Constructionist learning,
Information ethics
work_institution = Georgia Tech,
GVU Center
alma_mater = MIT Media Lab,
Harvard University
doctoral_advisor = Mitchel Resnick
doctoral_students =
known_for = MediaMOO,
MOOSE Crossing
author_abbreviation_bot =
author_abbreviation_zoo =
prizes = "Technology Review" TR100
AERA Jan Hawkins Award
religion =
footnotes =

Amy Susan Bruckman (born December 21, 1965) is an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center. She is best known for her pioneering research in the fields of online communities and the learning sciences. In 1999, she was selected as one of "Technology Review"'s TR100 award, honoring 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35.

Biography

Early life

Amy S. Bruckman was born in New York, New York. She attended the Horace Mann School, an Ivy Preparatory School in New York City, graduating in 1983. Following that, Bruckman attended Harvard University for her undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics in 1987. She received a master's degree in 1991 from the Interactive Cinema Group at the MIT Media Lab, where she was advised by Glorianna Davenport. Her master's thesis described the Electronic Scrapbook, an intelligent home video editing system. [Bruckman, Amy (1991). "The Electronic Scrapbook: Towards an Intelligent Home-Video Editing System." Master's Thesis, MIT Media Lab.] Bruckman went on to pursue a Ph.D. at the Media Lab in Mitchel Resnick's Epistomology and Learning Group. On January 20, 1993, Bruckman established MediaMOO, an online community for new media researchers and educators. [Bruckman, Amy and Mitchel Resnick (1995). "The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and Professional Community." "Convergence" 1:1, pp. 94-109.] The community, managed chiefly by Bruckman, developed a significant following for its time, eventually closing down seven years later. [Bruckman, Amy and Carlos Jensen (2002). "The Mystery of the Death of MediaMOO, Seven Years of Evolution of an Online Community." In "Building Virtual Communities". Edited by Ann Renninger and Wesley Shumar. Pp. 21-33. Cambridge University Press.] During this time, Bruckman also worked as a research assistant for Sherry Turkle on Turkle's influential book, "Life on the Screen" (1997). For her dissertation work, Bruckman developed MOOSE Crossing, a MOO-based constructionist learning environment in which young children could learn computer programming skills while building virtual objects. [Bruckman, Amy (1997). "MOOSE Crossing: Construction, Community, and Learning in a Networked Virtual World for Kids." PhD dissertation, MIT Media Lab.] Upon her graduation from MIT in 1997, Bruckman accepted a position as an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing.

Georgia Tech

As a new Georgia Tech faculty member, Bruckman founded the Electronic Learning Communities (ELC) Lab and began setting up a program of research incorporating her interests in online communities and constructionist learning. She founded the Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Computing (UROC) program at Georgia Tech in 1998, modeling it after MIT's UROP. [ cite news | work=BuzzWords | publisher=Georgia Tech Alumni Association | accessdate=2007-10-11 | date=2001-04-02 | url=http://gtalumni.org/buzzwords/apr01/article8pr.html | title=Program Involves Undergraduate Students in Research Projects ] In 1999, Bruckman's research was supported by a prestigious grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. [ cite web | url=http://www.cc.gatech.edu/inside/stats/faculty-honors-awards | title=Faculty Awards — College of Computing | publisher=Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing | accessdate=2007-10-10 ] That same year, she was selected as one of "Technology Review"'s 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35. cite news | url=http://www.technologyreview.com/tr35/Profile.aspx?Cand=T&TRID=520 | date=November 1999 | accessdate=2007-10-10 | work=Technology Review | publisher=MIT | title=1999 Young Innovator: Amy Bruckman ] Her work at this time was described as "the most notable MOO research in education."

On July 22, 1999, Bruckman and graduate student Joshua Berman released The Turing Game, a multiplayer online game inspired by the Turing test that challenged players to explore issues of online identity. [ cite pressrelease | url=http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/TGAME.html | accessdate=2007-10-11 | date=1999-09-09 | title=YOUR ONLINE IDENTITY: RESEARCHERS STUDY HUMAN INTERACTION ONLINE THROUGH GAME PLAYED IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITY | publisher=GT Research News ] The game received national attention [ cite news | publisher=CNN.com | title=Can you prove you're not a machine? | url=http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/13/turing.test/index.html | accessdate=2007-10-11 | date=2004-10-13 | last=Boese | first=Christine ] and was played by over 11,000 people from 81 countries and all seven continents. [cite journal |last=Berman |first=Joshua |authorlink= |coauthors=Amy Bruckman |year=2001 |month= |title=The Turing Game: Exploring Identity in an Online Environment |journal=Convergence |volume=7 |issue=3 |pages=83–102 |id= |url=http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/convergence-tg-01.pdf | accessdate=2007-10-12 |quote=11,158 people used it over a one-year period. Players from 81 countries on all seven continents used the game to learn about issues of identity and diversity online through direct experience. |format=PDF]

In 2002, the American Educational Research Association presented Bruckman with the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies. [ cite pressrelease | url=http://cct.edc.org/news_release.asp?numNewsReleaseId=13 | title=Georgia Tech University Professor, Bruckman, Wins 2002 Jan Hawkins Award | accessdate=2007-10-10 | date=2002-04-26 | publisher=Center for Children & Technology ] A year later, Bruckman received tenure and was promoted to the position of associate professor.

Bruckman currently directs the ELC Lab, the UROC program, and the Web Science initiative at Georgia Tech. She has published dozens of scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and has given invited presentations at high-profile academic conferences such as ICLS and CHI. Bruckman's most recent work, often done in conjunction with graduate students she advises, has dealt with topics in information ethics, game studies, computer-supported collaboration and wikis, and women in computing.

ee also

* Constructionism (learning theory)

References

External links

* [http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/ Amy Bruckman's Home Page at Georgia Tech]
* [http://www.cc.gatech.edu/elc ELC Lab Home Page]