Biography

 

I’ve been writing about technology and education since 1995, first as a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education and then as a staff writer for the Circuits section of The New York Times. In 2002, when my first daughter was born, I became a freelance writer, contributing to The Times, The Chronicle and other publications. (Check here for a list of recent articles.)

 

I live in Alexandria, Va., with my husband, two daughters, two cats and a dog. Our girls -- Janelle, almost 5, and Gillian, nearly 3 -- are drawn to the computer and TV screen like moths to a flame, a reality that is both understandable and unsettling. There’s nothing like parenthood to make you look at technology and education a little differently.

 

My career path has gone something like this: In 1995, when the World Wide Web meant Netscape, my job was to help launch the Web site for The Chronicle of Higher Education. I had just finished writing my master’s thesis using HTML. (My degree is in English/American Studies at the University of Virginia.) I was fascinated with the promise of connectivity and interaction that the Web afforded, and I was curious about how libraries, publishers, professors and students would start to use it. My work touched on many of these topics, and when I moved to The New York Times, I started to peer into the world of K-12 education as well, following the up and downs of new edutech firms and online search companies. My favorite stories were the ones that looked at how real people – real students, real teachers, real families – were grappling with the questions of etiquette, privacy and ownership that were, and still are, sprouting up on the digital frontier.

 

I must admit that the technology of TV had not entered my professional consciousness until I was holding my children in my arms. That’s when I awoke to the burgeoning “baby video” market and found myself asking a million questions about how very young kids learn, how technology changes the way they learn, and what scientific, empirical research might exist on whether electronic media was having any effect on the formation of their brains and minds.

 

The subject has become my latest obsession. I’ve written a book on the topic, Into the Minds of Babes (Basic Books), that will be released in September. I wrote it to dig for answers to my own questions about how screen time was affecting my kids. Before I embarked on the research, I felt like I was being pulled between two extremes -- with hype over the cognitive stimulation of baby videos on the one hand, and dire predictions about the harmful consequences of TV viewing on the other. Much of what I discovered was surprising and reassuring. (For more about the book, read here.)

 

Doing research on technology and child development has led me to wade deeper and deeper into the fields of cognitive science, neuroscience, developmental psychology, education, communication and computer science. I can’t hope to keep up with every new discovery that comes out of these fields, but when I see something that catches my eye, I’ll post it on my blog.  And if you think there’s something missing, or want to just get in touch, please do.