Panelists

Tony Wagner recently accepted a position as the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard.  Prior to this, he was the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade. Tony consults widely to schools, districts, and foundations around the country and internationally.  His previous work experience includes twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility.

Tony is also a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and a widely published author.  His work includes numerous articles and five books. Tony's latest, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World, has just been published by Simon & Schuster to rave reviews and will soon be available in Spanish and Chinese translations. His 2008 book, The Global Achievement Gap has been an international best seller and has also been translated into Chinese. Tony has also recently collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create a 60 minute documentary, “The Finland Phenomenon: Inside The World’s Most Surprising School System.”

Tony earned an M.A.T. and an Ed.D. at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Connie Yowell is the Director of Education for U.S. Programs with the MacArthur Foundation. She oversees a $85 million program on Digital Media and Learning, one of the first philanthropic efforts in the country to systematically explore the impact of digital media on young people and implications for the future of learning.Prior to joining the Foundation, Yowell was an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, publishing scholarly work that examined the complex interplay among young people’s emerging identity, their social context and achievement. Her research integrated the fields of adolescent psychological development and organization change to address the problem of high school dropout among immigrant students in the United States. Yowell briefly served as Policy Analyst in the U.S. Department of Education during the Clinton Administration, and has worked closely with teachers and administrators to develop and implement literacy curricula for Latino youth, and as evaluator and program coordinator for youth development programs in New York City. Yowell received the Distinguished Fellows Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, an award to support scholars seeking to bridge research and practice, under which she worked with the National Writing Project to develop approaches that integrate web 2.0 technologies into the social practices of teachers.Yowell earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale, and her PhD from Stanford University.

James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University.  He is a member of the National Academy of Education.  His book Sociolinguistics and Literacies was one of the founding documents in the formation of the “New Literacy Studies”, an interdisciplinary field devoted to studying language, learning, and literacy in an integrated way in the full range of their cognitive, social, and cultural contexts.  His book An Introduction to Discourse Analysis brings together his work on a methodology for studying communication in its cultural settings, an approach that has been widely influential over the last two decades.  His most recent books have dealt with video games, language, and learning.  What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy argues that good video games are designed to enhance learning through effective learning principles supported by research in the Learning Sciences.   His other recent books include: Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays (2007); How to Do Discourse Analysis (2011); Woman as Gamers: The Sims and 21 st Century Learning (2010) and Language and Learning in the Digital World (2011), both written with Elizabeth Hayes.  The Anti-Education ERA: Creating Smarter Students through Digital Media appeared in 2013.

Stephanie Pace Marshall, Ph.D. is the Founding President and President Emerita of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. She was the founding president of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools in Mathematics, Science and Technology, and president of ASCD International. Marshall has published widely on leadership, innovation and the transformation and design of generative learning environments including her groundbreaking book The Power to Transform: Leadership that Brings Learning and Schooling to Life. She is a trustee of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and The Society for Science and the Public, a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce. She was inducted into the Illinois Hall of Fame and designated a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois.

Alison Cuddy (Moderator) is the arts and culture reporter at WBEZ 91.5 FM Chicago Public Radio. Alison’s been with the station since 2001, working as a producer, host and blogger. She was previously host of Eight Forty-Eight and Weekender with Alison Cuddy, a weekly guide to the cultural scene in Chicago and beyond.

Overview

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