digital youth network

All children when provided opportunities to develop their strengths can enrich the world with their gifts.

Nichole Pinkard is the Director of Innovation for the University of Chicago's Urban Education Institute (UEI) where she plays a leading role in UEI's engagement in creating optimal learning environments that span school, home and community. Dr. Pinkard has led efforts to implement 1:1 computing in urban schools, integrate new media into core instruction, and create new media learning opportunities outside of the school day.

Dr. Pinkard is a recipient of the Jan Hawkins Award for Early Career Contributions to Humanistic Research and Scholarship in Learning Technologies and an NSF Early CAREER Fellowship. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, and on the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Games Research program.

Her current scholarly interests include the design and use of pedagogical-based social networks, new media literacy learning outcomes, ecological models of learning. She holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University, an M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences from Northwestern University.