Morgan G. Ames draws on training in anthropology, communication, and computer science to research the ways we make sense of new technologies in our everyday lives. She is a doctoral candidate in Stanford University's Department of Communication and a former National Science Foundation graduate fellow.

For her dissertation research, Morgan is investigating the social meanings of the One Laptop Per Child project, tracing its intellectual history and assessing its deployments across the Americas. She spent six months in 2010 conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Paraguay, and is also involved with OLPC research initiatives in Peru, Uruguay, Haiti, and Birmingham, Alabama. With the support of Nokia Research, Morgan previously explored how middle- and working-class families with young children use media and communications technologies. She has also collaborated with research teams at Google, Yahoo!, and Intel.

Morgan is advised by Professor Fred Turner at Stanford, and has completed the requirements for a PhD minor in anthropology. She earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from UC Berkeley in spring 2004 and a Master's degree in information science from UC Berkeley in spring 2006.

 Alex is a doctoral student in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. His chief research interests involve how LGBTQ youth of color use social media in their daily lives, motivated by questions of affect and public feelings. He is a research assistant in the Connected Learning Research Network, where he conducts ethnographic fieldwork in Austin-area schools focusing on teens' digital media and learning ecologies as well as coordinates his team's qualitative data analysis efforts.

He has written on racial segregation in Austin's cultural geography and access to digital technology in the recent book Inequity in the Technopolis (University of Texas Press, 2012), on Lady Gaga's queer performance politics for the journal FlowTV.org, and about queer-of-color subjectivity in graduate school for GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Prior to his doctoral work, Alex was a prolific magazine editor and writer in the LGBTQ press, serving on the editorial staffs of The Advocate and Instinct, which he guided to two consecutive Western Publications Association Maggie Awards as Managing Editor. As the Editor-in-Chief of Southern California's Frontiers Newsmagazine, he secured the worldwide exclusive coming-out interview with George Takei. When he is not in Austin, Alex enjoys spending time in his native Los Angeles with friends and family searching out the best dim sum in town.

Aaminah Norris is a PhD Candidate in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her interest is in teacher professional development with digital technology, classroom instruction utilizing digital resources, and digital literacies as tools for access and civic engagement for underrepresented students.

Her interests stem from the trajectory of her 15 year career in education and youth development in both schooling and out of school contexts. Prior to study at Berkeley Aaminah’s work experience included teaching and administration of public and private schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. As Project Manager with Alameda Unified School District, Aaminah was responsible for assisting the Superintendent and Executive Staff in the development of a five-year strategic plan to target student achievement and community engagement. In 2011-2012 Aaminah was awarded the prestigious UC Regents Fellowship  and was lauded as a distinguished Graduate Fellow at UC Berkeley.  Aaminah’s dissertation study will investigate the design and implementation of professional development provided to teachers whose goal is to integrate appropriate and effective digital texts and tools in their classrooms. It will concurrently document and analyze the actual teaching practices that are shaped by this approach to professional development in order to capture the impact and outcomes on the learning of these teachers' students. A third focus will be on the nature of digitally mediated civic engagement projects that students create and the impacts on learning.

Tamara Shepherd received her PhD in the Joint Doctorate in Communication at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. She has published and presented papers on aspects of labour, literacy, and rights in user-generated content and new media policy, from a feminist political economy perspective. Her dissertation is titled “Persona Rights in Young People’s Labour of Online Cultural Production: Implications for New Media Policy” (2012).

Jacqueline is a PhD candidate in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin and will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of North Texas starting Fall 2012. Her research focuses on teens’ digital media practices and the intersection of issues such as digital equity, communities, identity politics, and digital literacy.

She is currently working on her dissertation which analyzes how discourses of risk structure teens' opportunities, limitations, and engagement with digital media at home, with peers, and in school. She is also a Graduate Research Assistant for “The Digital Edge” in Austin, which is part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Connected Learning Research Network.

Her work is published in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, online journals, and encyclopedias and has been presented at many national and international conferences. Additionally she is a former Managing Editor of the online journal FlowTV.org and is a former facilitator for the Teen Reporter Intern Program for Latinitas magazine in Austin, Texas. Outside of research she enjoys training for marathons, playing with her dog, and discovering new craft beers.