Vanbertozzi

Vanessa Bertzzi does all media all the time. "Too much is never enough."

Bertozzi is a qualitative researcher in with a background in innovative practices, emergent technology & new media. She has a special interest in open-source content and tools for education. She's currently located in Cambridge, MA.

This summer she's working for MIT's Comparative Media Studies department, from which she recently graduated with a Master's degree. She's producing a short educational documentary about Wikipedia for one of CMS's research projects, ProjectNML (New Media Literacies).

For her Master's thesis, Bertozzi conducted qualitative research on the unschooling community. Her thesis, "Unschooling Media: Participatory Practices among Progressive Homeschoolers," examines this type of homeschooling, which for the most part eschews curricula in favor of lifestyle based on a 'love of learning,' child-led learning,' or 'informal learning.' Unschoolers seek to extend the learning environment certainly beyond the school, but beyond the home as well, by integrating the child's homelife with the community and increasingly the world at large through the internet. You can read a pdf excerpt of one of her five original case studies on her website.

For fun, Bertozzi and her filmmaking collaborator Hanna Rose Shell are making an experimental documentary about the history of used clothing and the immigrant experience, featuring the turn-of-the-century Jewish rag-peddler and contemporary Haitian pèpè dealer.

Vanbertozzi 19:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)