General Session Speakers
Ian Jukes
Tuesday Keynote
Ian has been a teacher, administrator, writer, consultant, and university instructor, and is currently the Director of the InfoSavvy Group, an international educational consulting group. He is an educator first and foremost, and his focus has been on the compelling need to restructure our educational institutions so that they become relevant to the current and future needs of children. Today's world is not the world we grew up in, and today's world is certainly not the world our children will live in. Because of the dramatic changes our world has undergone, today's kids are not the students our schools were designed for; and our students are not the students today's teachers were trained to teach. Ian will challenge our assumptions about children and how they learn.
Gregory Thomas
Tuesday General Session
Gregory is the Deputy Director of Planning and Response at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. Prior to Columbia, Gregory was Executive Director of the Office of School Safety and Planning with the New York City Department of Education, and as a result of his work during and after September 11, he served on a select panel of international school safety officials who discussed and implemented strategies to prepare schools for the possibility of terrorist attacks. Gregory has co-authored three books on school safety, and is the author of a recently released book titled "Freedom from Fear: A Guide to Safety, Preparedness and the Threat of Terrorism," which offers advice to readers on how to prepare themselves and their families for a worst-case scenario like a natural disaster or an act of terrorism. Gregory will discuss the balance between protecting our students and staff, and turning our schools into fortresses. (www.ncdp.mailman.columbia.edu/program_school.htm)
Dan Heath
Wednesday Keynote
As a consultant for Duke Corporate Education, Dan is responsible for developing and designing curriculum, teaching, and working closely with clients to ensure their business outcomes are met. He is also the co-author of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die." This book is a tour of idea success stories (and failures), such as the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher's simulation that actually prevented prejudice. Dan will show us the principles of successful ideas at work, and how we can apply these rules to making our own messages "stick." (www.madetostick.com)
John Palfrey
Wednesday General Session
As Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, John's work focuses on Internet law, intellectual property, and the potential of new technologies to strengthen democracies locally and around the world. John is also working on the Digital Natives project, a collaboration between the Berkman Center and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Digital natives are young people whose use of technology is completely ingrained in their lives. They are unaware that their always-on, networked lives are remarkable because it is simply a way of life they have always known. John will discuss the implications for schools and society, and how by learning as much as we can about digital natives, we can address the issues their digital practices raise, and shape our legal, educational, and social institutions in ways that support natives, while harnessing the exciting possibilities of their digital fluency. (blogs.law.harvard.edu/palfrey and www.digitalnative.org)
