Nichole Pinkard, research associate and director of educational technology at Center for School Improvement at the University of Chicago, and Reed Stevens, assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, received the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies for 2003 at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, April 21-25.

The award, created to honor the memory of Jan Hawkins, a developmental psychologist well known for her respectful, humanistic conceptions of appropriate roles for using technology in K-12 learning environments, recognizes an individual, individuals or small collaborative teams engaged in research that combines in some way with practice and advocacy. The award carries a stipend of $500 and the expectation that the award winners will present a talk at AERA in 2004.

Dr. Pinkard's research focuses on the development of culturally responsive computer-based learning environments. She is particular attuned to cultural contexts affecting learning (broadly) and literacy, specifically, urban education and gender and technology.

Dr. Stevens' research investigates how people learn "in the wild." His studies span classrooms, workplaces, and museums. He is particularly interested in the how people learn to interpret and act in discipline-specific ways and in how technologies influence these types of learning. Building from his research, he designed a learning and communication medium called Traces, which allows users to easily annotate a digital image, either still or moving, by speaking and pointing. The resulting "traces" can be then shared, exchanged, and further annotated by others. For more details, visit his Traces project page.

Dr. Pinkard's University of Chicago homepage will soon be available.