Dr. John Bransford

Opening Keynote Presentation at NCCE 2006:

Thursday, February 9, 2006
9:45 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
Learning Theories and Technology for the Twenty First Century: Issues and Opportunities

Learning for the twenty first century requires new skills and attitudes that allow people to manage and embrace change and diversity. The keynote will focus on new views of competence and expertise--what some call adaptive expertise--and their implications for how we instruct and assess.

Dr. John Bransford

John Bransford is an internationally renowned scholar in cognition and technology. He joined the University of Washington in Seattle in 2003 where he holds the title of the James W. Mifflin University Professorship and Professor of Education. Prior to this time he was Centennial Professor of Psychology and Education and Co-Director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Bransford served as co-chair of several National Academy of Science committees that wrote How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School (1999) and How People Learn, Bridging Research and Practice (1999). He is currently serving as Co-Chair of the National Academy of Science and National Academy of Education Committees and on the International Board of Advisors for Microsoft's Technology and Learning program.

Presentation Sessions at NCCE 2006:

Thursday, February 9, 2006 * 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Technologies that Permit New Kinds of Learning and Assessment

Thursday, February 9, 2006 * 3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE): Issues being explored in the LIFE Center

Closing Keynote Presentation at NCCE 2006:

Friday, February 10, 2006
2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
How to Think Bigger While the World Gets Smaller

When you leave the conference, you return to the world where media surrounds today's students: on their phones, on their websites, in their email and in their pockets. Master media! Learn how global corporations and K-12 schools use the same tools to make connections between the world, the classroom, the home--and the teacher's lounge. Technology has made it more effective, more accessible, and easier to share information. Google, movies, wikis, and blogs become your friends and with a few strategies and tech tools, you can keep ahead of even (yes!) the students. See fun examples of it happening.

Hall Davidson

Hall Davidson has been involved in educational media since 1980. He taught language arts, foreign language and mathematics before leaving his bilingual classroom to teach mathematics on television in Los Angeles on an Emmy-winning afterschool program. He has taught a class for technology proficiency for teacher candidates at a college in southern California. He has published classroom lessons for K-12 integration of video in Techworks, sold internationally. He coordinates and hosts the California Student Media & Multimedia Awards, the oldest continuous media festival for students in the nation with more than 5,000 student participants. As a producer, he has been nominated twice for an Emmy.

The programs he has produced include series on music, the Internet, Information Literacy, copyright, and a health and safety series for kids 0-5. He was a founder of kitzu.org, a scaffolded approach to video creation in the classroom.

While working in the Los Angeles Unified School District, he was a founder of the Video In the Classroom (VIC) awards. He has worked successfully with educators in across the country to start their own media awards programs for students. He served as the first president of Video Using Educators (VUE) and currently oversees the Schoolhouse Video project that has given student and teacher produced media access to broadcast television via PBS. A popular speaker and workshop leader, he has keynoted at many educator conferences, including NECC, and has ongoing collaborations with the California School Library Association, and the California Association for the Gifted. After working at PBS stations for more than 20 years, he left traditional media to become Director of the Discovery Educator Network, part of the Discovery Channel’s new initiative in the non-linear media arena. He also serves on the board of Computer-Using Educators (CUE).

He served for ten years as Director of Education at PBS station KOCE-TV in southern California overseeing a media consortium of 200,000 students and teachers before leaving to become one of the two directors of the Discovery Educator Network, Discovery Communication’s major initiative to serve K-12. The DEN hosts an online community and works with educators in media, including unitedstreaming and the Discovery Health Connection. He is married and the father of two children, both in California public schools.

Presentation Sessions at NCCE 2006:

Thursday, February 9, 2006 * 2:15 p.m. - 3:15 p.m.
The Nuts and Bolts of Digital Video - Now Including Photons!