2010 Keynote Presenter

Sugata Mitra
Professor
Newcastle University




If the World Belongs to Our Children Then Why Don't We Just Give It to Them
Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in the UK. He works in the areas of Cognitive Science, Information Science and Educational Technology. In 1999, Sugata dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). He then watched kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other. In the following years he replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results that challenge some key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge.

2010 Rapid Fire Presenters

Stephen Breslin
Chief Executive
Futurelab




Building Capacity for Innovation: When the Status Quo Is No Longer Relevant to Learning
Breslin's background is in engineering, and he has over 15 years' experience in commercial software development, working with many of the world's largest blue-chip organizations in a variety of fast-moving technology sectors. Prior to joining Futurelab as Chief Executive in 2008, he was Chief Executive of The Kelvin Institute Ltd, which was formed as a joint venture between two of Scotland's leading universities as a vehicle for the commercialization of university-generated intellectual property.

Sharyn Gabriel
Principal
Ocoee Middle School



Answer to the Teenage Literacy Crisis: Keep Them Engaged
Gabriel began her career in education as a high school math teacher. She went on to become an Assistant Principal at both the elementary and middle school levels before being named as the Principal of Ocoee Middle School. OMS is Florida’s State Demonstration School for Technology and the largest middle school in the 10th largest district in the nation. Believing that it is our responsibility to engage our 21st century learners, Gabriel motivates, educates and frees teachers to deliver instruction in a way that empowers students to think deeply and learn creatively. She ensures that challenge, creativity, and technology are a regular part of the school day for every student at OMS.

Trung Le
Principal
Cannon Design

The Third Teacher: The Entanglement Between Learning and Design
A key leader for Cannon Design’s education group, Le creates spaces encouraging student inquiry, imagination and a sense of what it means to be part of a global community. Le is widely recognized for his boundless energy and passion for learning. During his 20-year career he has incorporated multiple intelligences and learning styles in the design of education environments. His design philosophy has yielded awards from the Chicago and national chapters of the AIA and has been featured in such publications as Architectural Record, Contract Design and Edutopia. He also teamed with Bruce Mau Design to publish The Third Teacher, a book focused on how design can transform teaching and learning.

David Merrill
Co-founder, President
Sifteo

Making the Digital Physical: The Siftables Design Story
Building the future of play, Sifteo's first product is Siftables: a tabletop game system made of active physical+graphical tiles. Merrill is a graduate of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab, where he studied with professor Pattie Maes and developed the first prototype of Siftables. His work explores how human interactions with computers can leave the limitations of the desktop interface behind, through the development of physical-digital tools that operate comfortably in our real-world environment to enable new forms of play, expressivity, problem-solving and collaboration. He has lectured in computer science at Stanford University and led music controller design workshops at the MIT Media Lab.

Christopher Rush
Co-founder, Chief Product Officer
School of One




When Success Means Not Having All the Answers
Rush oversees product solution, design and development of School of One while working as the Executive Director of Consulting Services at Wireless Generation. Previously, Rush worked directly for NYCDOE’s Office of Accountability leading their parent, teacher and administrator facing longitudinal data and collaboration system (ARIS). Rush previously co-founded two small IT solution firms before joining IBM as a Business Analyst Team Lead. Prior to his technical experience, Rush worked in the Philadelphia area for over 5 years as a Head Teacher and Outdoor Education Chairperson with a focus on middle school science.

Jennifer Anastasoff
President, Founding CEO
EnCorps

Designed to Open Doors: Transitioning STEM Professionals to the K-12 Classroom
Anastasoff has significant experience engaging the corporate sector in pro-bono projects as well as in education. In her capacity as CEO of BuildingBlocks International (BBI), a San Francisco-based nonprofit that is working with multinational corporations to develop what Business Week calls a corporate "Peace Corps," she created the corporate and programmatic infrastructure to support professionals transitioning into the public sector, conducted a national public education campaign, and successfully built strategic relationships
with companies like Pfizer, UPS, Cisco and PwC.

Constance Steinkuehler
Assistant Professor
University of Wisconsin



Creating Powerful Learning Environments Through Games: Don't Colonize My PlaySpace
Steinkuehler is an educational researcher studying massively multiplayer online games (MMOs or virtual worlds) from a learning sciences; new literacy studies perspective. She is especially interested in what young adults learn from online play. Steinkuehler is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and teaches courses on virtual worlds, research methods, and the “smart” side of pop culture.

Heather Joseph
Executive Director
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition


Setting the Default to Open: Using Research to Advance the Public Good
Joseph serves as the Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), a coalition of over 800 academic research libraries in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan. The organization’s mission is to expand cost-effective, digital dissemination of scholarly and scientific research results.  As SPARC’s Director since 2005, she has focused on enabling new publishing models, digital archives and open access policies on both the national and international level.

Maya Enista
Chief Executive Officer
Mobilize.org

Democracy 2.0: Mobilizing Opportunity and Responsibility
At 26 years old, Enista is a veteran in the public service sector, beginning her non-profit career 8 years ago. She began her career as the East Coast Coordinator for Rock The Vote at age 17, a position in which she registered over 30,000 young people. Through her work with Rock The Vote, Enista was awarded the first ever Rock The Vote “Rockin’ The Street’s” award. In addition to her work with Mobilize.org, Maya serves on the Advisory Board for CIRCLE, the Working Group for the Civic Health Index of the National Conference on Citizenship, and the Board of Directors for Youth Service California and the Young Non-Profit Professionals Network.

Mark Horner
Fellow
Shuttleworth Foundation

Open Everything: Improving the Education Experience for All
Horner works in the area of Open and Collaborative Resources. His Fellowship enables him to work on a number of projects in this area. Horner manages the Siyavula project, where he co-ordinates the development of a comprehensive set of Open Educational Resources (OER) supporting the South African National Curriculum. This relies on the development of communities to create and support the OERs as well as the provision of platforms for development. Horner believes in the liberation of information and supporting education in South Africa. He is one of the co-founders of the Free High School Science Texts
project, launched in 2002, and founder of FullMarks, launched in 2010.

Erin McKean
CEO, Co-founder
Wordnik

If the Word is the Answer Then What is the Question
Before starting Wordnik, McKean was editor in chief for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press. She is the editor of the irregularly-published recreational-linguistics journal VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly, and the author of Weird and Wonderful Words, More Weird and Wonderful Words, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, and That's Amore (also about words). She has served on the editorial board of Dictionaries, the journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, as well as on the editorial board for the journal of the American Dialect Society, American Speech. She also serves on the advisory boards of the Credo Reference and the Dictionary of American Regional English.

Diego Navarro
Founder, Director, Instructor
Academy for College Excellence



A Transformative College Experience for Disconnected Young Adults
Diego's commitment to social change grew, in part, from his work as a community organizer for the American Friends Service Committee- a Quaker humanitarian aid organization- while still in college. He then went on to accrue over twenty years of experience in research and management positions in the computer industry with Hewlett Packard Labs, Apple Computer, and NCR Corporation. He has also been the CEO of two successful high-tech start-up companies. Navarro began teaching at Cabrillo College when he founded ACE in 2002.

Curtis Wong
Principal Researcher
Microsoft Research

Building the Universe: One Story at a Time
Wong started the Next Media Research group at Microsoft focusing on interaction, media, and visualization technologies. Wong is the co-creator of WorldWideTelescope.org, a free rich interactive exploration, simulation and learning environment with the highest resolution astronomical imagery available, inspiring millions of kids around the world to explore and understand the Universe. His most recent work: Project Tuva, features the lectures of Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman within a unique interactive rich media player.

Salman Khan
Founder, Faculty
Khan Academy

When Scaling Back Means Scaling Up
Khan is the founder and faculty of the Khan Academy -- a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere. It now consists of self-paced software and the most-used educational video repository on the Internet. All 2000+ video tutorials covering everything from basic addition to advanced calculus, physics, chemistry and biology have been made by Salman. He was recently profiled in Fortune Magazine as "Bill Gates' favorite teacher" and his videos have now had over 26 million views (being watched by over half a million unique students per month).

Ariel Sacks
Teacher, Leader, Writer
On the Shoulders Of Giants


Teacherpreneurs: Innovating From Classrooms to Communities
Sacks is a middle school teacher, leader, and a writer in NYC. Trained in constructivist pedagogy at Bank Street College, she’s committed to implementing innovative, developmentally appropriate teaching methods in urban public schools. Sacks is a member of the virtual Teacher Leaders Network, where accomplished teachers work to influence education policy. She writes about teaching and education politics on her blog, On the Shoulders Of Giants. Most recently she co-authored the book, Teaching 2030: What We Must Do For Our Students and Our Public Schools—Now and In the Future, with a group of educators from across the country.

Paul Freedman
Founder and CEO
Altius Education