Laurie McCarthy is a Ph.D. candidate in the Cognitive Studies in Education program at the University of Washington and a research assistant in the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Science of Learning Center. Through home-centered ethnographic studies of families and young people, she is exploring learning across everyday activities and settings. She is particularly interested in the social and contextual influences on how people frame a problem or task and how they think about and use technology. Prior to coming to Seattle, Laurie was a research scientist in advanced instructional systems using virtual environments and intelligent agent technologies.