Listing of all speakers

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PDF Listing of all speakers

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Louise Bay Waters
Superintendent and CEO
Leadership Public Schools
Dr. Waters comes to Leadership Public Schools from the Stupski Foundation where she headed pioneering Gates funded research on districts that have accelerated the performance of students of color and poverty. Her work at Stupski built off of her experience in the Oakland Unified School District. As Associate Superintendent of Student Achievement in Oakland, Dr. Waters led the instructional reforms from 2001 – 2004 that resulted in district achievement gains that out-paced the State. She was also responsible for Oakland’s exit from two long-standing Office of Civil Rights oversight decrees related to bilingual education and disparate academic opportunities for African American students. As a principal in the New Haven district (Union City), she designed award-winning assessment and extended day programs. Prior to her career in district administration, Dr. Waters led the state’s first new teacher program, a partnership between Oakland and the California State University, East Bay. As a professor of Teacher Education at the university, she was head of a number of urban teacher preparation programs. Dr. Waters holds a B.A. and Masters from Stanford University and a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University.

Rapid Fire Speakers

Karien Bezuidenhout
Chief Operating Officer
Shuttleworth Foundation
Karien Bezuidenhout is the Chief Operating Officer at the Shuttleworth Foundation. Since she joined the Foundation in 2004 she has been actively involved in the evolution of the organisation, growing from project manager in free and open source software through to education, technology and innovation, shifting from a local to an international perspective. She now focuses on the Foundation's social investment in thought leaders and social change agents through their fellowship programme.

Karien holds a masters degree in Futures Studies from the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Her academic career started with a degree in accounting, but she knew from the start that she wanted to engage more broadly with the world around her. She has also studied at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and has experience in driving social change at both policy and practice level.

Chris Blow
User Experience Director
Meedan
Chris Blow is User Experience Director at Meedan, an international nonprofit design firm building tools for teams of translators. He is working with international partners such as Qatar Foundation International and Cambridge University to improve digital scholarship in cross-language collaborative research, build civic capacity, and improve the availability of Open Educational Resources. As designer and web developer, Chris has advised numerous projects addressing contemporary social issues including linguistic diversity, interfaith dialogue, education and disaster planning.

Dale Dougherty
Founder/General Manager
Maker Media/O'Reilly Media
Dale Dougherty is the editor and publisher of MAKE, a general manager of the Maker Media division of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Dougherty has been instrumental in many of O’Reilly’s most important efforts, including founding O’Reilly Media, Inc. with Tim O’Reilly. He was the developer and publisher of Global Network Navigator (GNN), the first commercial Web site which launched in 1993 and was sold to AOL in 1995. Dale was developer and publisher of Web Review, the online magazine for Web designers, and he was O’Reilly’s first editor.

Heather Joseph
Executive Director
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Heather Joseph serves as the Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), an international coalition of libraries working to enable a more open system of scholarly communication. As SPARC’s Director, she has focused on supporting the development of new publishing strategies and business models, and advocating for national and international policies that encourage the adoption of Open Access as central principle of research and scholarship. Afirm believer in the power of partnerships, Ms. Joseph is also the convener oftwo related coalitions working to promote Open Access. The Alliance forTaxpayer Access – a collection of universities, patients advocacy groups,consumer groups, and other organizations - works to ensure that results of publicly funded research are openlyaccessible to the public; while the Right to Research Coalition- comprised ofgroups representing more than 7 million undergraduate, graduate andprofessional students – helps to give an organized voice to the studentcommunity committed to open sharing of scholarship.

Prior to joining SPARC, she spent 15 years as a publishing executive in both commercial and not-for-profit publishing organizations. She is an active participant on the Board of Directors of numerous not-for-profit organizations, and is a frequent speaker and writer on scholarly communications in general, and on Open Access in particular.

Steve Midgley
Deputy Director of Education Technology
U.S. Dept. of Education
Steve Midgley is the Deputy Director of Education Technology at the US Department of Education. His principal areas of focus are data transparency, digital interoperability and online learning. Prior to arriving at Education, he was the Director of Education at the FCC, where he headed the team which developed the Education chapter of the National Broadband Plan. Prior to government service he was the principal of Mixrun, a CTO consultancy for a number of for-profit and education sector organizations. Mixrun’s clients included California Department of Education’s project called Brokers of Expertise, which uses on-line and real world systems to share and build the expertise of educators. Steve also served as a Program Manager for the Stupski Foundation for six years, designing and implementing grants for technology in K-12 education. This work involved intensive on-the-ground implementation work with District and State agencies around country. Steve was also the founding Vice President of Engineering for LoopNet Inc., a commercial real estate listing firm. He designed and built LoopNet's technology and web systems from its inception. LoopNet remains a successful business and is currently listed on NASDAQ.

James H. Shelton III
Assistant Deputy Secretary, Innovation and Improvement
U.S. Dept. of Education
Jim Shelton was appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary to run the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the US Department of Education in April of 2009. Immediately prior to joining ED, Jim was a Program Director for Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where, over 5.5 years, he oversaw education programs including Next Generation Models, School Replication, College Access and Scholarships, and numerous State and District partnerships. Jim began his career developing computer systems; and later became a senior consultant to CEOs and other for-profit and non-profit leaders while working for McKinsey & Company. He transitioned into education full-time as a private equity investor, which led him to co-found and lead a company with the mission of opening and running high quality schools in high need communities. After selling the company, Jim worked with Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City Schools, leading the planning for his reform strategy - Children First – followed by launching the east coast office of NewSchools Venture Fund, a non-profit venture fund focused on education. Throughout his life and career, Jim has been an active volunteer as a tutor, counselor, service center manager, and board member. He has a B.A. in Computer Science from Morehouse College and a Masters in Education and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Jutta Treviranus
Director and Professor
Inclusive Design Institute, OCAD University
Jutta Treviranus is the Director of the Inclusive Design Research Centre (IDRC) and professor in the faculty of Design at OCAD University in Toronto http://idrc.ocad.ca. IDRC is an internationally recognized center of expertise in the inclusive design of emerging information and communication technology and practices. Jutta has led many international multi-partner research networks that have created broadly implemented technical innovations that support inclusion (e.g., http://fluidproject.org). Jutta and her team have pioneered personalization as an approach to accessibility in the digital domain. Her team also leads many international open source projects that attempt to infuse inclusive user experience design sensibilities into open source networks. She has played a leading role in developing accessibility legislation, standards and specifications internationally (including WAI ATAG, IMS AccessForAll, ISO 24751, and AODA Information and Communication). Currently, Jutta heads the FLOE project which is creating supports for a more inclusive OER community - http://floeproject.org.

Ralph Wolff
President
Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC)
Ralph A. Wolff has been at the Senior College Commission of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) for 30 years, and was appointed President in 1996. In that capacity, he has led WASC to the forefront of accreditation as an agent of public accountability and innovation. He received over $2 million in grants to transform the accreditation process to an outcomes- and learning-based model, which has been in place since 2001. For this work, he received the Virginia B. Smith Award for Innovative Leadership. He has written and spoken internationally on the redefinition of quality in higher education and the role of accreditation as an agent of change and institutional transformation. He is currently leading another round of accreditation redesign at WASC that will focus on retention and graduation, defining degree outcomes more clearly, and opening the accrediting process to far greater transparency. At the same time, he is creating an internal structure to explore new educational models, the Do It Yourself Learner, and other emerging practices that are likely to change both higher education and accreditation.

Prior to joining WASC, Ralph was the founder and Director of Planning at the Antioch School of Law in Washington DC; Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Antioch, in Yellow Springs, Ohio; and law professor at the University of Dayton. A graduate of Tufts University, Ralph received his JD with honors from the National Law Center at George Washington University. Prior to becoming President of WASC, he also founded and directed for nearly ten years the Institute for Creative Thinking, which focused on leadership and change. He is currently a Fellow of Meridian International, a global think tank, and a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Science.

OER in Action for K-12 Learners Panel Speakers

Carrie Bisgard
Coordinator of Online Learning (Teacher on Special Assignment)
Whittier Union High School District
As an educator Carrie Bisgard has held positions in Theater, Music, English, Science and Mathematics. This diverse background gives her a unique perspective on education. She is currently the Coordinator of Online Learning (Teacher on Special Assignment) and Mathematics Chair at Sierra Vista High School, an alternative education school in the Whittier Union High School District. As such, her main focus is working with teachers to develop more rigorous and interactive courses for students of all abilities by using high quality open source digital resources. Born and raised in Missouri, Carrie has lived in the Caribbean, Hawaii, New York and New Mexico. She now lives in sunny Southern California with her wonderful husband and two ridiculously cute children where they brew beer, read voraciously and go to the beach as often as possible.
B.A. Speech Communications/Theater, Truman University, Kirksville, MO
Post Baccalaureate Certificate Pre-Medical Studies, Scripps College, Claremont, CA
M. Ed. Educational Leadership, California State University Northridge

Deborah Cowden
Teacher
Cunha Intermediate School
Deborah (Debbie) Cowden currently teaches Earth Science, English Language Development, and Technology classes at Cunha Intermediate School in Half Moon Bay, California. She graduated with a B. S. degree in Earth Science/Geology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (1983), and a California Teaching Credential from the University of Notre Dame de Namur, Belmont, California (2000) and a M. S. degree in Education Media Design Technology from Full Sail University Online, Winter Park, Florida (2010). Ms. Cowden started collaborating with ISKME in 2008. In 2009, she attended Big Ideas Fest in Half Moon Bay and received a donation of 24 classroom laptops from a main presenter from Internet Archive, San Francisco. Her English Language Development students are currently using these laptops 24/7 in order to better engage in student directed, collaborative, and teacher facilitated learning projects.

Emily Morrison
Programs Manager
California Shakespeare Theater
Emily Morrison is entering her fifth year in the Artistic Learning Department of California Shakespeare Theater, currently serving as Programs Manager. She has over ten years experience teaching theater classes ranging from elementary to high school levels, specializing in acting and improvisation. She also leads professional development workshops, training Bay Area educators to incorporate theater arts methods into their curriculum, and has been a fellow with ISKME since 2009. From 2006-2010, Emily has run both 2- and 5-week Summer Shakespeare Conservatories at Cal Shakes; prior to that, she spent four summers directing the Drama department at Camp Fernwood in Maine. Since settling in the Bay Area in the fall of 2005, she has performed with a number of theater companies including Marin Theater Company, Theatre First, Killing My Lobster, Town Hall Theatre, Ragged Wing Ensemble, and Mugwumpin. She currently serves as co-chair of the Berkeley Arts Education Steering Committee. Emily graduated from University of South Florida in Tampa with a BA in Theatre Performance.

DeLaina Tonks
Director
Open High School of Utah
DeLaina Tonks is the Director of the Open High School of Utah, where she previously served as the Board Chair prior to the school opening in 2009. She is dedicated to promoting options in education and using technology to engage students.

DeLaina holds a BA in French/Spanish Teaching from Brigham Young University and an MA in Second Language Acquisition from The Ohio State University and spent thirteen years teaching at Upper Arlington High School and the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow in Ohio.

She currently sits on the board of the Utah Association of Public Charter Schools and enjoys being involved in her community in a variety of ways. DeLaina is a 2009 and 2010 recipient of the President’s Gold-Level Volunteer Service Award and was recently nominated as one of Utah Valley's 50 Most Fabulous People. DeLaina, her husband Paul, an Assistant Attorney General, and her four sweet children live on top of a mountain in Draper, Utah.