Bio Sketch

Ann Marion is a Producer/Designer of Mediated Learning Environments, currently providing strategic solutions and production management. Her research interests have addressed: authoring tools and languages, computational representations, computer animation, systems integration for end-user customization, software design processes.

Her work is artifact-based research, investigating issues in learning through design of software languages and/or tools, particularly end-user customization; with special interest in multi-modal [gesture/haptic and motion-based representations]

Ann Marion was Principal Investigator for Houghton Mifflin College Division, responsible for an ARPA-NSF grant focusing on research and commercializing of next generation instructional titles, and a founding member of the Educational Object Economy http://www.eoe.org [website may have moved]. She was a also member of the Strategic Planning Team on Distance Learning. As the product manager responsible for development and customer support of CommonSpace ( a software authoring tool supporting peer collaboration, she worked to integrate customer feedback into product development through IT systems. She championing the company wide discussion group on customer and content databases. Such advances in systems integration require inter-industry ePublishing research. These are summarized in the on-line article at The Journal for Interactive Media in Education (JIME), requested by Dr. Kirstie Bellman (DARPA). The funding of novel persistence research at CECI and acquisition multi-media java based courseware. Participation in writing the White Paper on Distance Learning for the strategic planning process at the College Division.

Ann Marion founded an entrepreneurial venture, StonySoft Productions, to implement exemplary interactive titles show-casing new technologies. Through Bob Stein at Voyager she produced Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind: The CD-ROM, published for MIT Media LabÕs first 10.10. in October 93/Jan 94, was widely hailed as breakthrough, integrating a video talking head with a hyperbook. and received numerous awards. She guided Interval Corporation in applying the same techniques to a CD-ROM venture with Rick Smolan, Passage to Vietnam. Acquired by Corey & Co: Designers gave her the opportunity to work with the best and the brightest and launch new web-sites and digital media initiatives at Pleasant Company for American Girl, Viacom Nickelodeon, Turner Broadcasting, and Harvard.

Ann Marion has long been a champion of novel solutions in educational technology to accomplish the integration of 20th century science and technology subject matter into the curriculum. From 1982 to 1992, she was involved in building authoring tools at Apple Computer, Hewlett Packard Labs, and Atari Research. To teach cybernetics, evolution, eco-systems to children, she invented the Vivarium Program, realized through collaboration with Dr. Alan Kay, where a broad suite of projects explored different novel approaches for bringing integrated curriculum and new technologies into a public school in Los Angeles, one of Apple ComputerÕs model schools. Prototype programming languages enabled students to script animal behavior in ecosystems. She also demonstrated futuristic alternatives that students of 2015 may have on their desktops, such as a 3D version on a flight simulator. This experience underscored the essential requirement for life-long teacher training and the availability of good, robust infrastructures for software help desk. To evolve tools for educators to create new and substantive educational materials also required a long term strategy for evolving through student feedback the courseware, textbooks, and learning modules.

Ann spent seven years at MIT, involved in science communication efforts inspired by Dr. Jerome Weisner. She received a Masters Degree in Visual Studies under thesis advisor Ricky Leacock, the documentary filmmaker; working with Nicholas Negroponte at the Architecture Machine Group (later to become the media lab). She explored alternate i/o in a feasibility study for an Interactive Stage Set for the Joffrey Ballet, through an unusual collaboration with the biomechanical engineering department 3D whole body motion tracking. She also worked at MIT CAES (The Center for Continuing Education for Engineers) with John Fitch Science Reporter to produce lecture tape series with the Sloan Foundation Grant. Later, she worked withWGBH public television producers on a series based on Lewis Thomas Lifes of a Cell. She realized that this subject matter would be better conveyed through computer simulation.