Hiller Spires

Dr. Hiller A. Spires is a Professor of Literacy and Technology at North Carolina State University. She received her Ph.D. in literacy education with a cognate in English from the University of South Carolina. She served as the founding director of The William and Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation from 2002-2006 and currently serves as FI Senior Research Fellow. In 2012, she was awarded NC State University's Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professorship. Her research focuses on the effects of digital literacies on learning and project-based inquiry, including emerging literacies associated with gaming environments and Web 2.0 applications. She is a co-PI on the NSF-funded projects, Crystal Island and Narrative Theatre.

Hiller's publications have appeared in Journal of Educational Psychology, Cognition & Instruction, Journal of Educational Computing Research, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Literacy Research & Instruction, Computers & Education, and Journal of Research in Technology Education. She coordinates the K-12 literacy certification for the New Literacies & Global Learning master's program and the C & I Ph.D. Literacy & English/Language Arts program. She co-directs the Friday Institute’s New Literacies Collaborative (newlit.org),where she and her colleagues conduct professional development sessions for teachers in new literacies, including teachers at the Beijing Royal School. She was one of the original creators of the NLI in 2009. Hiller's hobby is non-representational painting; she's conducted two art shows at Third Place Coffee Shop in Raleigh: "Emergence" and "Awake."