Attendees

Biographies

Lisa Breit is an advanced doctoral student in Learning and Teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Her research interests center on teacher learning, particularly how teachers make meaning of professional development in relation to practice knowledge, and how teachers as curriculum designers can use new technologies to promote deep understanding.  She is the former director of technology integration for the Watertown, Massachusetts Public Schools, where she headed up an U.S. DoE Technology Innovation Challenge Grant professional development and research initiative. Lisa is a consultant for LIFT2, a professional development initiative to help math and science teachers incorporate technology and 21st century skills in instruction.  She has been a member of the adjunct faculty for the Lesley University's Technology in Education master's program, and has taught  online courses in curriculum design and implementation with WIDE World, Harvard's online professional learning program.  She is an author of Teaching for Understanding with Technology (Wiley, 2004, with Stone Wiske and Kristi Rennebohm-Franz).  

Glen Bull is a professor of instructional technology in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, serving as co-director of the Center for Technology and Teacher Education. He developed one of the nation’s first statewide K-12 Internet systems, Virginia’s Public Education Network (PEN). He is a founding member and past president of the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE), and a recipient of the Willis Award for “Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Technology and Teacher Education.” He currently provides leadership for the National Technology Leadership Coalition, a consortium of national teacher educator associations and national educational technology associations. He serves as editor of Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, a peer-reviewed journal jointly sponsored by five professional associations representing science education (ASTE), mathematics education (AMTE), English education (CEE), social studies (CUFA), and educational technology (SITE).

George Collison is a Senior Curriculum Designer at the Concord Consortium. His most recent work is lead author of the Seeing Math Elementary and Seeing Math Secondary online video-based professional development courses.  Seeing Math is funded by the Department of Education. Sample video and java-based interactives can be seen at http://www.seeingmath.concord.org

Seeing Math offers a radical new design for online professional development.  A Seeing Math experience is based on a metaphor of the course as a media-rich series of rooms like an Exploratorium exhibit.   First participants work on an illustrative problem either with conventional technology or a Seeing Math interactive.  Second they view and comment on video of students working on the same problem, Third they view and comment on an expert commenting specifically on the students’ thinking and teacher’s questioning techniques and knowledge of mathematics.  Finally, they build on the rich base of student and expert media and their own experience with the java interactives to deepen their own knowledge of mathematics and methods of questioning and formative assessment.  In pilot studies the Seeing Math media-rich environment, including personal experience with interactives, offers a glimpse of courses with participant to moderator response ratios of forty to one or greater.

George is the lead author of Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators (Atwood: 2000) a practical guide for online moderators giving a systematic framework of voices and critical thinking strategies that support pragmatic dialogue. His first work at the Consortium was as the lead designer for the INTEC project, a multi-national professional development offering funded by the NSF.

Before joining Concord, he was associate professor of Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth working with Jim Kaput.  George has experience as a classroom teacher and district wide administrator in an urban system in Massachusetts.

Sharon Derry is Professor of Educational Psychology and Learning Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Illinois with specialties in both cognition and instruction and quantitative/evaluative methods. As a Principal Investigator within the Wisconsin Center for Education Research she designs and studies innovative socio-technical learning environments that represent visions for the future of education. Her numerous funded projects and publications represent a career interest in promoting innovation and theory at the intersection of cognitive science and technology. Currently she manages several federally-funded research projects that investigate methods for enhancing teacher learning through innovative uses of new media and the Internet. Derry’s publications appear in the American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Educational Psychology, Review of Educational Research, Educational Psychologist, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Journal of AI in Education, and in numerous other journals, edited books, and conference proceedings. She has edited books on topics related to technology and new media in education and interdisciplinary collaboration in research. For distinction in research she has received several awards, including an early-career award from the American Psychological Association and a Vilas award at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Kathleen Fulton is Director for Reinventing Schools for the 21st Century at the National Commission for Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) (www.nctaf.org). She was the lead author for NCTAF’s Jan. 2003 report No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America’s Children as well as Induction into Learning Communities (August, 2005) and Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education: A Two-Tiered Education System. (May, 2004) Fulton is also NCTAF’s Project Director for the Microsoft MidTier Partners in Learning Grant Teachers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC). She has extensive experience as an educational technology consultant, and has specialized in issues related to online learning. She served, for example, as editor of the NEA Guide to Online High School Courses and the author of the Center for Education Policy’s report Preserving Principles of Public Education in an Online World.. Before joining NCTAF, Ms. Fulton was project director for the Congressional Web-based Education Commission, where she was primary author of their December 2000 report The Power of the Internet for Learning: Moving from Promise to Practice. Prior to that, Ms. Fulton was Associate Director of the Center for Learning and Educational Technology at the University of Maryland. From 1986 until its closure in 1995, Ms. Fulton was a policy analyst for the U.S. Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). She was the project director of OTA’s last two education reports: Education and Technology: Future Visions (1995), Teachers and Technology: Making the Connection (1995) and was a key contributor to OTA’s earlier reports including Power On! New Tools for Teaching and Learning (1988), Linking for Learning (1989), Testing in America’s Schools (1991), and Technologies for Adult Literacy (1993). Ms. Fulton is a member of a number of national and international advisory panels and was recognized by E-School News as one of the 30 most influential people in educational technology for 2000. She received her Bachelors degree in English at Smith College, and her Masters in Human Development at the University of Maryland.

Dr. Paul Giguere is currently a Senior Associate and Project Director for Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC). He is responsible for investigating and implementing distance learning systems, theories, and practices with regard to its appropriateness for the delivery of training and professional development through projects primarily based in the Center for Health and Human Development Programs (HHD) at EDC. Dr. Giguere also serves as project director for two web-based learning projects dealing with health promotion and HIV prevention.

Dr. Giguere also provides conceptual guidance and assistance to a National Science Foundation-funded project entitled “A Distributed Hybrid Approach for Creating a Community of Practice Using NSF Funded Manufacturing Engineering Technology Curriculum Modules”.Dr. Giguere teaches and lectures at area universities on such topics as computer science theories and the ethical issues involving technology in society.

Sarah Haavind is an instructional designer and online course instructor at the Concord Consortium. She currently offers two graduate-level netcourses: Facilitating Online Learning by Moving Out of the Middle, (12 weeks) and Discussion Topics for Online Leaders and Instructors,  (6-weeks) (http://www.concord.org/courses/). Curriculum includes basic principles of online instruction along with a systematic methodology for building an environment for active inquiry and knowledge co-construction. The courses are based on a book Haavind co-authored, Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators (Atwood: 2000). She also provides consulting services and custom training to clients seeking to improve online educational practice.  She joined the organization in 1996 to train the first cadre of Virtual High School teachers in online pedagogy and develop curriculum for the NSF-funded INTEC project aimed at building inquiry pedagogy into secondary science teaching practice.

Before joining Concord, she was with the Educational Technologies group at BBN serving as Director of the Educational Software group.  There she designed and produced two award-winning educational CD ROMS: Orcas In Our Midst and The Mystery of the Pipe Wreck. Both are interdisciplinary, project-based curricula in multimedia learning environments published by Sunburst Communications, Inc. Haavind recently returned to Harvard Graduate School of Education to complete her doctoral work (expected June, 2006). Her dissertation, Tapping Online Dialogue for Learning: A Study of Factors Enhancing Content-based Collaborative Dialogue among Learners, is a comparative study of online teacher practice and instructional design in Virtual High School (www.govhs.org) classrooms where asynchronous, collaborative dialogue is a core learning activity.

Dr. Darcy W. Hardy is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Director of the UT TeleCampus, the virtual university of The University of Texas System that supports online delivery of System-wide collaborative academic programs from UT institutions. The UT TeleCampus (www.telecampus.utsystem.edu) serves as a portal for students and faculty to access courses, programs and virtually all services necessary for success when teaching and learning online. The TeleCampus offers over 15 fully online programs and sees approximately 10,000 enrollments annually. In addition to her position with the University of Texas System, she is a principal with Abrazo Partners, a virtual education consulting firm. Recent Abrazo clients include Troy State University and the Southern Association for Colleges and Schools (SACS).

Darcy received her PhD in Instructional Technology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1992. She was a founding member and is a past president of the Texas Distance Learning Association (TxDLA) and has served two separate terms on the TxDLA Board of Directors. Currently, she serves as Chair of the Board of the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA), where she has been a member of the Board of Directors since 1999 and is the immediate past president of that organization. She is a member of the newly formed Macromedia Education Digital Innovators Advisory Board, and she is also the immediate past-chair of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Distance Education Advisory Council. She is a past chair of the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA) Division of Educational Telecommunications. From 2001-2003, Dr. Hardy served as the onsite host for the Institute for Managing and Developing e-Learning (MDE), presented annually by the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET). She is also a member of the WCET Steering Committee, representing the Southern Caucus.

Recently, Darcy received the 2003 Gayle B. Childs Award from UCEA for exemplary long-term leadership, scholarship, and applied contributions to the field of continuing and distance learning. In 1998, she received the UCEA Nofflet Williams Up-and-Coming Leadership Award and the TxDLA Don Foshee Leadership Award. Other honors include the 2000 UCEA Charles Wedemeyer Publication Award as a co-author of Teaching at a Distance: A Handbook for Instructors. Under her direction, the UT TeleCampus has been honored with over a dozen regional and national awards from such organizations as USDLA, UCEA, and the International Association of Business Communicators for courses, programming, communications, and faculty excellence. The UT TeleCampus has been recognized nationally as a model for multi-campus, collaborative online programming.

Dr. Hardy serves on several editorial and advisory boards and has delivered hundreds of presentations, keynotes and workshops on distance education. As a result, she is nationally recognized as a leader in distance education management, virtual university issues and collaborative program development, and is a sought-after speaker and consultant on these issues. She resides in the Texas Hill Country city of San Marcos with her husband, two teenage daughters, and a host of pets.

Margaret Honey, Vice President of the Education Development Center and Director of EDC's Center for Children and Technology, has worked in the field of educational technology since 1981. Her primary research interests include the role of technology in school reform and student achievement, the use of telecommunications technology to support online learning communities, and issues of equity associated with the development and use of technology. She conducted the first national survey to look at K-12 educators' use of telecommunications (1992), and in collaboration with Bank Street College, she developed one of the first projects to cultivate the Internet as an environment in which to advance teacher professional development (1993). For more than a decade she has been associated with district-wide school reform efforts in Union City, New Jersey, nationally recognized for its success in incorporating technology throughout its programs (www.union-city.k12.nj.us). Beyond overseeing CCT's extensive involvement with educational technology research and development nationwide, she is personally involved in several projects aimed at helping educators make effective use of data, including efforts to use technology tools to support data-driven decision making. In 1999 she was appointed to the Department of Education's Expert Panel on Educational Technology, charged with the responsibility for creating a framework to be used in assessing the effectiveness of all educational technology programs. Dr. Honey regularly contributes to educational publications, and presents at major technology and education conferences. She has served on the board of the Consortium for School Networking, and currently serves on advisory boards of math, science and technology projects nationwide. She holds a doctorate in developmental psychology from Columbia University.

Mary Kadera is the director of digital education at PBS, where she's worked for seven years. Mary's responsibilities at PBS include oversight of PBS's national Web site for K-12 educators. Mary also works with national PBS program producers to adapt their content for use in the classroom, and is responsible for the development of new digital services that will support teaching and learning for K-12 educators and students. Prior to her time at PBS, Mary was a high school English and Biology teacher in the Virginia public schools. She holds B.A. degrees in English and Biology from the College of William and Mary and an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Virginia.

Don Knezek is recognized internationally for his leadership in collaboration, planning, and standards development related to technology in schools. In his twenty-eight years as a professional educator and with degrees from Dartmouth College, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Knezek's experience includes K-12 classroom, district office, university, regional service center, state department, and national and international organization leadership for technology. Don has directed large, multi-state projects in the Star Schools and Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology programs of the U.S. Department of Education.

Don is CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and Director of The National Center for Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology (NCPT3). He is a Co-Director for the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) Project – an important ISTE initiative. He is also Project Director of the Technology Standards for School Administrators (TSSA) Project, and serves as Co-Chair of the Educational Technology Advisory Committee to the Texas State Board of Education. Through the last decade, Dr. Knezek lead the innovative Educational Technology Division at Education Service Center, Region 20, in San Antonio, Texas.

Dr. Knezek is an advocate for educator staff development in context, and he is a tireless champion for equitable access to teaching and learning opportunities through technology.

Allyson Knox has held a variety of positions in the school-to-work and workforce development field. She coordinated Michigan State University's Young Spartan Program -- the university outreach to urban elementary schools. At the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce -- she managed the workforce development department and region's technology association. In this role she secured local, state, and national grants to strengthen workforce, technology, and school-to-work programs. As a senior program officer at the US Chamber of Commerce -- Center for Workforce Preparation, she oversaw the Workforce Innovation Networks (WINS) designed to strengthen public / private partnerships on behalf of business owners and workers. Currently she serves Microsoft Corporation Partners in Learning (PiL) Academic Program Manager. PiL is the company's global initiative focused on digital inclusion. In the United States, Allyson manages the Mid Tier grants area which involves twelve local education programs focused on scaling-up. She received her BA in English from the University of Michigan, MA in Adult Learning from Michigan State University, and Ed M in Technology in Education from Harvard University.

Ann Koufman-Frederick is currently the Curriculum. Assessment, and Technology Director for the Marblehead Public Schools in Marblehead, Massachusetts. She is also a Lecturer for the Harvard Extension School Masters in Technologies of Education program, where she teaches the Instructional Technology Licensure Practicum seminar and the Emerging Models of Professional Development course.

Her professional interests focus on working with aspiring, new, and experienced teachers and administrators to improve teaching and learning with new technologies. For the past 20 years Ann has worked on various state technology initiatives for k-12 public education. She began her career as a school psychologist, and was a middle school teacher and instructional technology specialist in the Brookline Public Schools in Brookline, MA, an Education Curriculum Specialist at BBN Learning Systems & Technologies in Cambridge, the Director of Technology Initiatives at the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, and Director of Curriculum and Instruction at the Carroll School a special education school in Lincoln, MA. She recently joined the Teachers21/MASCD/MSSAA Leadership Licensure Program as an instructor of the technology leadership strand. In 2000, Ann received her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Boston College. Her dissertation was entitled Electronic Collaboration: A Form of Teacher Professional Development. She's co-editor of a book called "Mission Possible: Reaching All Learners With Technology" (August 2004). Ann continues to design, implement and research the effectiveness of new technologies and online learning environments for educators and students.

Dr. Joanne Krepelka is currently the Coordinator of Educational Technology for the Cambridge Public School Department, Cambridge, Massachusetts. During her thirty years as an educator, Dr. Krepelka worked as a special needs and classroom teacher, program leader of an alternative technology school and educational technology coordinator K-12.  Her particular expertise and interests are: professional and curriculum development, the integration of technology into the curriculum and collaborative design teamwork. Her dissertation entitled, Effectiveness of a professional development model designed to utilize technology to promote teaching for understanding provides research findings related to this model.  Over the years Dr. Krepelka cultivated the use of online professional development that is connected to collaborative design teamwork within urban educational settings.

Barbara B. Levin is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Her research interests include studying the development of teachers’ pedagogical understandings over the career span, integrating technology into the K-16 curriculum, and using case-based pedagogies and problem-based learning in teacher education. Dr. Levin came to UNCG in 1993 after completing a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. While living in Wisconsin she was an elementary classroom teacher for 14 years and a computer teacher for three years. Dr. Levin is currently an Associate Editor of Teacher Education Quarterly and a member of the SIG Executive Committee of AERA. She has authored or co-authored many journal articles and three books: Who learns what from cases and how? The research base on teaching with cases (1999, Erlbaum) with Mary Lundeberg and Helen Harrington, Energizing teacher education and professional development with problem-based learning (ASCD, 2001), and Case studies of teacher development: An in-depth look at how thinking about pedagogy develops over time (2002, Erlbaum).

Dr. Kimberly Lightle is deeply involved the development of education digital libraries that support teachers’ needs through her NSF-funded grants: Connecting K-16 NSTA Science Content to the NSDL Metadata Repository, the Federal Education Digital Resources Library (http://www.encdl.org), and the National Digital Library for Undergraduate Mathematics and Science Teacher Preparation and Professional Development. Dr. Lightle is also involved in the development of the NSDL Middle School Portal at ENC being implemented by ENC and funded through NSDL. Activities with other NSDL projects include metadata creation, machine learning, compatibility and integration using core integration systems by SMETE.org and others, and the efficient integration with other ENC projects. She leads the in-house effort to develop a science metadata vocabulary based on the National Science Education Standards, AAAS Benchmarks, and ENC’s controlled vocabulary subject list. Dr. Lightle is also on the advisory boards of a variety of other NSDL projects and is the chair of the NSF NSDL Content Standing Committee. Dr. Lightle chaired the planning committee for the NSDL Annual Meeting in 2003 and 2004.

In her present position as the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) Associate Director for Instructional Resources, Dr. Lightle directs operations related to acquisitions, selection, abstracting, and processing of K-12 mathematics and science instructional resources. Information about these resources is made available through ENC Online’s Resource Finder. Users across the country and world access this information to find out about mathematics, science, and professional development resources that would be useful to them. She also writes a column entitled “Using the Internet in the Classroom” for the magazine ENC Focus: A Magazine for Classroom Innovators. The column addresses a variety of issues and always includes a list of recommended web resources. Dr. Lightle has a B.S. in Zoology and Chemistry and a M.Ed.and Ph.D. in Science Education.

Dr. John Lindberg began his career as an industrial physicist at Boeing working on optical detection methods for aerospace. When the west won the cold war, Dr. Lindberg switched from Aerospace to Bio-medical research and began working full time at Abbott Laboratories. He has received several patents and has published papers based upon his work in non-invasive measurements of blood chemistry using optics. Dr. Lindberg received a Ph.D. in Physics from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh Scotland. He joined the Physics Department at Seattle Pacific University in 1999 and is now the chair of the department. He is currently researching how students learn physics – and how they might learn it more effectively.

Robert Nelson’s work supports learning in urban communities. Current projects include:

• Affiliation with CoSN, serving on their CTO Council.
• Affiliation with the Council of Great City Schools, providing strategic assistance to member districts.
• Expanding the work of the National Technology Advisory Board to support urban regions.

Nelson was presented the CGCS’s Distinguished Service Award in 2005. He retired from Milwaukee Public Schools in 2003 after 35 years of service. Bob’s latest assignment in MPS was director of technology where he spent 8 years leading capacity building to use technologies to support learning in over 4000 classrooms. This work has been guided by strategic planning involving local, state and national partners, and has been featured in numerous national publications. Previously, Nelson worked in high schools for 27 years as a teacher and principal.

Judy Ribble is Medscape’s director of CME, serving as in-house consult in CME accreditation matters and fostering relationships with other ACCME-accredited CME providers. Medscape is the health professional Internet portal of WebMD Health, a division of the Emdeon Corporation. The Medscape Web site, www.medscape.com, has posted CME activities certified for AMA PRA category 1 credit by over 90 accredited providers, in addition to those developed by Medscape's Professional Editorial Unit. In 2004, over 800,000 CME/CE credits were earned on Medscape.

Dr. Ribble earned her PhD from the Medical College of Pennsylvania [MCP] in the Department of Psychiatry and has directed CME programs at MCP, Jefferson Medical College, the Arthritis Foundation, the American College of Physicians [ACP], Lifetime Medical Television, and Reuters Health. She has been involved in planning or presenting CME programs in Israel, Germany, Bermuda, Canada, and Australia. She was involved in the development and marketing of ACP’s Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program (MKSAP), Lifetime Medical Television’s "Doctors' Sunday" (that aired over the Lifetime cable network for 10 years), and Reuters’ CD-ROM series GeoMedica. These roles prepared her for the challenge of adapting traditional rules and regs for delivery of certified CME activities over the Internet.

Currently Dr. Ribble is a Member and Past Chair of the Committee on Membership of the AMA’s National Task Force on CME Provider/Industry Collaboration. She is a Fellow of the Alliance for CME and serves on the Almanac Editorial Board as Associate Editor, having served four terms on the Alliance’s Board of Directors. Adult learning has long been a research interest and online professional education is a current focus.

John Richards, Ph. D., is President of Consulting Services for Education, LLC (CS4Ed). CS4Ed works with publishers, developers, and educational non-profits, as they negotiate the rapidly changing education marketplace. CS4Ed works closely with publishers, developers, and educational organizations to improve business-planning processes, to find funding to help schools purchase products and services, and to evaluate and refine products and services.

Margaret Riel is a Senior Researcher in the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI, International, and teaches action research in Pepperdine University's online graduate program in Educational Technology. Her current projects include Social Capital for Technology Integration and Measuring Adaptive Expertise in Science Teacher's Reasoning, both funded by NSF. Her research centers on the relationship between teacher learning and instructional practices mediated by technology. Her interest in online teaching and learning arises from decades of research and development in the area of communication technology and education. She has developed and researched models of online learning, particularly cross-classroom collaboration designs. Her Learning Circle model for elementary and secondary classrooms is currently used by organizations in Europe, Mexico, Isreal, and Afrida to facilitate global classroom exchanges. She currently uses learning circles in graduate course on action research methods to support distributed learning. She also serves as a fellow for the George Lucas Education Foundation. For more info see http://gsep.pepperdine.edu/~mriel/office.

Michael Russell is an Associate Professor in the Lynch School of Education and the director of the Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative (inTASC) at Boston College where he directs several projects, including the Developing Diagnostic Algebra Tests project, the Use, Support, and Effect of Instructional Technology (USEIT) Study, several studies examining the instructional and learning impacts in 1:1 technology-rich classrooms, and a series of computer-based testing validity studies.  Michael is the founder and Chief Editor of the Journal of Technology, Learning, and has been a member of the Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy (CSTEEP) since 1994.  His research interests lie at the intersection of technology, learning, and assessment and include applications of technology to testing and impacts of technology on students and their learning.  In addition to his current research, Michael has conducted a series of randomized experiments that examine the impact of paper-based tests on the performance of students accustomed to writing on computers and has conducted several mixed methods studies that examine impacts of technology on teaching and learning.

Dr. Mark Schlager is Director of Research on Teacher Learning in SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning. Dr. Schlager specializes in the application of cognitive and social learning theory to the development of educational technology.  As Director of the (NSF-sponsored) Tapped In®  online teacher community program and Centers for Learning and Teaching Network , he has developed effective online strategies, services, and technologies that enable education professionals to engage in a wide range collaboraton and learning activities. His current research focuses on teachers' adaptive expertise, classroom infrastructure for realtime feedback on teaching and learning, and  online strategies for supporting district/university teacher learning partnerships. Dr. Schlager has published several articles on technology support for communities of practice in education. His work has been cited in the National Research Council book, How People Learn (2000), the Web-Based Education Commission (2000) report, The Power of the Internet for Learning: Moving from Promise to Practice, the Open University Press Professional Learning Series book, Teacher Learning for Educational Change (2002), and the ISTE publication, Learning and Leading with Technology (2004). Dr. Schlager earned his  Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Karen Sheingold, Ph.D., independent consultant, has made substantial contributions to research on technology in education for more than two decades. She was the founding director of the Center for Children and Technology at Bank Street College of Education (now at Education Development Center), which she led for more than a decade. Subsequently, she helped to establish the Center for Performance Assessment at Educational Testing Service, which she directed. While at ETS, Dr. Sheingold led a number of research and development efforts aimed at thoughtfully linking assessment, standards and reform. Several studies investigated the value of assessing student work for teachers' professional development. She also served on the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI)'s Educational Technology Expert Panel, and developed a set of evaluation guidelines for the Panel. Most recently, she has completed a set of studies examining online facilitation of science courses for teachers and for undergraduates. Her current research interests include the transformations of teaching and learning in online environments, and how these online experiences contribute to and affect classroom practice.

Dr. Sheingold has published many professional works on teaching, learning, technology and assessment ineducation. She has served as an advisor to many projects and organizations. She holds a B.A. in sociology and anthropology from Antioch College and a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from Harvard University. She has taught at Bank Street College, Cornell University, the State University of New York at Buffalo and Wellesley College.

Robert D. (Bob) Sherwood, Ph.D. is currently a Program Director within the division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education at the National Science Foundation. He works with almost all of the programs within the division and also on cross-directorate activities as they relate to science education and educational technology. He is on “detail” from his regular faculty position in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Peabody College of Vanderbilt University where he is Associate Professor of Education. His academic work has centered on the uses of new technologies to provide contextually rich learning environments for students in middle and secondary science classrooms. At Vanderbilt, he has served as the Associate Director of the Learning Technology Center and Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning. His university website is: http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/tl/sherwood.htm.

G”Tanya Small has just completed her first year as Boston Public Schools, Acting Director of Instructional Technology. Prior to her appointment as Acting Director G’Tanya was a Technology Support Specialist with the Office of Instructional Technology. She has taught Title I Language Arts, Kindergarten and computer instruction to Grade K-5. She enjoys working with teachers helping them to integrate technology in support of teaching and learning.

Bonnie Smith-Skripps is dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Western Illinois University. She received her Ph.D. in educational administration from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and holds rank of professor in the Department of Educational Leadership.

Smith-Skripps’ professional and scholarly activities have been in the areas of early childhood special education, rural education, adult education, and, most recently, teacher education and instructional technologies. She is an advocate for technology integration in teaching and learning across disciplines and is the principal investigator of a five-year, multi-state USDE Star Schools Project, STAR-Online, funded for $9.75 million. In 2002, she received the grand prize of the SBC National Telecommunications Partnership Awards program, sponsored by the SBC Foundation and the National Association of Partnerships in Education. She had a 2-year membership on American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Technology in Teaching Committee, serving as chair the second year. She was also a member of the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory’s Rural Education Advisory Council. Currently she is serving her second term as chair of the United Star Distance Learning Consortium. Smith-Skripps has a cumlative record as principal investigator for over $15 million in grants and contracts, and as co-principal investigator for close to $12 million in grant awards.

About to enter her twenty-sixth year as a public school educator, Joan Soble has taught in four different Massachusetts public school districts. Her longest professional stint has been with the Cambridge Public Schools, her employer for sixteen of the last seventeen years. Currently, Joan oversees the professional development program at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. For the last two years, she was Cambridge's liaison between WIDE World and the Cambridge Public Schools in conjunction with the Project COOL (Collaborative Online Offline Learning) grant, and thus was actively involved in supporting professional development at both the secondary and primary school levels. Joan's professional association with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, in particular with Project Zero, has been a long one. During the 1993-4 school year, she was a research teacher with the Teaching for Understanding research project, and she participated in Phase III of the Making Learning Visible project from 2003 to 2005. For the last eight summers, Joan has been on the faculty of Project Zero's annual summer institute. In addition, she has coached in WIDE online courses and mentored two teacher-leader interns from HGSE's teacher-leader graduate program. Joan attributes much of her professional growth to her association with people and programs at HGSE.

Dr. Hiller Spires is the Director of the William & Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation located on North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus. The Institute is designed to capitalize on the University's long history of committed engagement in university/business partnerships and its leadership role in economic development. The Institute is dedicated to advancing education through innovation in teaching, learning, and leadership. The core programs of the Institute are designed to engage educators and their students to be 21st century learners and leaders, to contribute to our social, cultural, and economic well being, and to meet the challenges of a global knowledge society.

Michele Spitulnik is a professional researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. She directs the newly funded National Science Foundation project, entitled Mentored and Online Development of Educational Leaders in Science (MODELS). Her interests include designing and supporting inquiry-based science learning environments, integrating technology into science curriculum, and working with pre-service and practicing teachers to create technology enhanced environments that support inquiry. Michele is involved with many projects including, studying student and teaching outcomes throughout longitudinal use of technology-based curricular projects, researching professional development approaches that support teachers integration of technology, researching links between professional development and student learning outcomes, and developing online tools to support teacher learning.

Dr. Debra Sprague is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. She teaches courses in the Elementary Education and the Advance Studies in Teaching and Learning (ASTL) Programs. Dr. Sprague's research interests focus on the use of technology to support teaching and learning, especially the exploration of emerging technologies. Dr. Sprague currently serves as the editor for the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education (http://www.aace.org/pubs/jtate/default.htm), an international peer-reviewed journal that serves as a forum for the exchange of knowledge about the use of information technology in teacher education.

Melody M. Thompson, D.Ed., has a dual appointment as Assistant Professor of Education and Director of the American Center for the Study of Distance Education (ACSDE) in the College of Education and as Outreach Director of Planning & Research for Penn State Continuing & Distance Education. Her responsibilities in these roles include teaching, advising graduate students, facilitating the development of collaborative research agendas, and strategic planning. Dr. Thompson's research interests include the evaluation of distance education programming, institutional policy related to distance education, K-12-higher education collaboration, and the faculty experience in the online environment. She is currently the US coordinator for e-learning research collaboration for the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) and editor of the Sloan-C "Faculty Satisfaction" Effective Practices Web site. Dr. Thompson he has written a number of peer-reviewed articles and several book chapters about distance education, and with Alan Chute and Burton Hancock she co-authored the 1997 McGraw-Hill Handbook of Distance Education. She has served as book review editor for The American Journal of Distance Education and currently serves on the editorial board of JALN (Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks.

George Tuthill is Associate Dean of the College of Letters and Science, and Professor of Physics, at Montana State University. He works on a variety of outreach and on-campus projects aimed at improving K-16 science teaching and learning. These especially include the National Teachers Enhancement Network (NTEN), an NSF-funded initiative that has provided online coursework in science and mathematics to nearly ten thousand in-service K-12 teachers since its inception in 1993. George is the PI and Co-Director (with Kim Obbink) of NTEN.
George’s physics research interests are in the statistical mechanics of cooperative phenomena, with emphasis on such materials as ferro- and piezoelectrics, polymers and liquid crystals. He received his A.B. from Williams College, and his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT.

Claudia Urrea is a Ph.D. student in Seymour Papert’s Future of Learning Group at MIT’s Media Laboratory.

She holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science and a Master degree in Educational Media and Technology. Claudia Urrea has worked with children and teachers in projects that promote the use digital technologies to explore powerful ideas in science, math, design and engineering, as well as human and civil values.