Keystone Conference 2005
Keynote & Spotlight Speakers

Dr. SUELLEN K. REED - As Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Suellen Reed is Indiana's Chief State School Officer, serving as the Chairperson of the State Board of Education and CEO of the Indiana Department of Education. She was first elected in November, 1992 and was reelected to a fourth four-year term in November, 2004.

Dr. Reed has served in virtually every position in which one can serve in the education field, having been a teacher at elementary, middle and high school levels, assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent and local superintendent. Her areas of expertise include international education, gifted and talented education, elementary education, history, political science and curriculum.

She has a B.A. from Hanover College and Masters and Doctorate degrees from Ball State University. In addition, she has done graduate work at Indiana University; Purdue University; Indiana State University; Earlham College; University of Southern Indiana; the University of Scranton; Butler University; Florida Atlantic University; the University of Alaska; the University of Virginia at Edinburgh University, Scotland; and the Oxford Roundtable at Oxford University, England.

Dr. Suellen Reed has served as co-chair of Indiana’s Education Roundtable, since 1998, and has served as co-chair of the Indiana Commission for Early Learning and School Readiness, beginning in 2004. Currently, she serves on the International Education Committee. Dr. Reed is a commissioner for the Education Commission of the States (ECS). She is a member of the Executive Committee. She was a member of the Steering Committee 1994-1998, and is again beginning in 2002. She was the first national chairman of the K-12 Compact for Learning and Citizenship, a national organization dedicated to the advancement of school-based service and service learning as integral components of K-12 education.

October 4, 2005, 1:00pm Central Time (via IVC)

Chris Dede is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. His funded research includes a grant from the National Science Foundation to aid middle school students learning science via shared virtual environments with digitized museum artifacts, a grant from the Joyce Foundation to aid the Milwaukee Public Schools in implementing a knowledge portal for teacher professional development, and a grant from Harvard to explore applications of wireless handheld devices in higher education.

Chris recently served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Foundations of Educational and Psychological Assessment, a member of the U.S. Department of Education?s Expert Panel on Technology, and a member of the International Steering Committee for the Second International Technology in Education Study. In 1996-97, he served as a Senior Program Director at the National Science Foundation. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Boston Tech Academy, an experimental small high school in the Boston Public School system, funded by the Gates Foundation. Chris recently completed a co-edited volume on Scaling Up Success: Lessons Learned from Technology-based Educational Innovation, published by Jossey-Bass in January, 2005.

Successful Meetings magazine lists Dr. David Thornburg as one of the top 21 speakers in the United States. His dynamic, thought-provoking presentations provide transformative experiences to well over 100,000 people per year. His monthly commentaries for PBS on the impact of emerging technologies on learning expand his reach far beyond the podium.

But David is more than a public speaker. He is an award-winning futurist, author and consultant whose clients range across the public and private sector, both in the United States and in Brazil. His corporate clients range from small startup ventures to some of the most dynamic large corporations in the world. His razor-sharp focus on the fast-paced world of modern communication media and its impact on learning has placed him in constant demand as a keynote speaker and workshop leader.

As the founder and Director of Global Operations for the Thornburg Center, and as Senior Fellow of the Congressional Institute for the Future, he conducts research and provides staff development in the areas of educational futures, multimedia, communications and whole mind education throughout the Americas. He helps clients to think intelligently about the future and is active in exploring ways that telecommunications and multimedia will change the face of learning, both at home and in the classroom.

His educational philosophy is based on the idea that students learn best when they are constructors of their own knowledge. He also believes that students who are taught in ways that honor their learning styles and dominant intelligences retain the native engagement with learning with which they entered school. A central theme of his work is that we must prepare students for their future, not for our past.

Mike Griffith has over thirty years experience teaching in schools. During that time he has been proactive in developing the use of Information technology, and particularly over recent years, focusing on Interactive Videoconferencing to promote the International Dimension in the Classroom. During the last ten years he has worked directly with colleagues in classrooms around the world. This has included videoconference links, teaching activities, partnership development and personal visits to what has been referred to as a "Giant Staffroom".

On 29th February 2000, "Leap-Year Day", the original Global-Leap project linked 10,000 pupils together across five continents in a 16-hour videoconference marathon, launched by the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Videoconferencing in the Classroom www.global-leap.com is a resource managed by teachers for teachers, here in the UK and around the world, enabling teachers to get help, advice and support to develop videoconferencing in the curriculum, and to find videoconferencing partners and to book interactive videoconference lessons. Programmes are linked to the curriculum standards here in the UK, working with an International Network of teachers and museum colleagues, to develop regular IVC activities and partnerships, across the curriculum, and to provide practical help and advice directly to teachers in their classrooms to ensure that an initial "successful" videoconferencing experience very quickly becomes "effective", adding real value to teaching and learning.

Schools around the world get practical support directly from Global-Leap to help them develop a variety of projects and enabling pupils to improve their language skills and cultural understanding.

Global-Leap/Videoconferencing in the Classroom has led the way in developing content provision in the UK, by lending videoconferencing equipment to museums and galleries, and working with education staff to develop and present live interactive videoconference lessons to schools. Last year Global-Leap offered over 1000 lessons directly to classrooms from UK Museums and Galleries and other locations.

CPD via VC sessions are available directly to schools, and "My First VC" sessions can be arranged for teachers and students new to using this communication resource, to enable them to develop confidence, and to consider and explore various classroom management and pedagogical issues.

Copies of the book "Videoconferencing in the Classroom"-Tim Arnold, Steve Cayley, and Mike Griffith, and other written advice/information, are available to teachers, on request.