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 Founder and President Idit Harel has been introducing new media technologies to kids for fifteen years. Since the earliest days of the personal computer, Harel has been at the forefront of educational innovation, creating meaningful ways to marry the power of the computer with the potential of the child. One of the first graduates of the MIT Media Lab, Harel has played a leading role in major research projects designed to integrate technology with kids' learning, including seminal work with elementary schools sponsored by IBM, Apple, Lego, Nintendo, and the National Science Foundation. Her areas of expertise include playful computational learning environments; multimedia design and programming; and interactive learning programs for math and science. Harel has also consulted on numerous projects for companies such as WGBH-TV, Children's Television Workshop, HarperCollins and Compaq. In founding MaMaMedia, Harel has assembled a management team of specialists in the areas of kids' media, technology and learning to bring to the home market the breakthrough methodology and techniques pioneered at the Media Lab. Harel holds a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab, two Masters degrees from Harvard University (Interactive Technologies & Education and Human Development) and a B.A. from Tel Aviv University. She speaks frequently to business and academic communities throughout the world and has taught at MIT and Harvard. Harel is co-editor with Professor Seymour Papert of the book, Constructionism, and is the author of Children Designers, winner of the 1991 Outstanding Book Award from the American Education Research Association. Born and raised in Israel, Harel studied and worked in Cambridge, Massachusetts for over a decade. She founded MaMaMedia in 1995 in New York City, where she lives with her three children. |