Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Host Day Speakers Sasha Barab Sasha Barab is a Professor of the Teachers College at Arizona State University, where he holds the Pinnacle West Presidential Chair of Educational Innovation. He is also the Director of the newly founded Impact Games Center at Arizona State University, and a Senior Scientist of the Learning Sciences Institute. He has been designing videogames to both generate learning theory and to simultaneously impact people in transformative ways. More than sugar-coating content in an engaging context, he uses videogames to establish worlds where players are transformed into empowered scientists, doctors, reporters, and mathematicians who develop increasingly sophisticated understandings to change gamebased storylines. In a videogame, the actions of a ten-year old can have significant impact on the world; providing a place in which what she knows is directly related to what she is able to do and, ultimately, who she becomes. For the last decade Dr. Barab has received substantial support to successfully build videogames in which players become protagonists who use academic knowledge, skills, and concepts to analyze problems and to make choices that actually transform the game worlds and the players themselves--as they reflect on how the space changed because of their choices (See Educational Researcher article or worked example). Central to this work has been the theory of transformational play; a theory highlighting the power of videogames to establish a form of dramatic agency that position person with intentionality, content with legitimacy, and context with consequentiality. His work is supported by funders who share this same vision of education for the future, including grants from NSF, MacArthur, Gates Foundation, Department of Education, and other corporate sponsors, allowing for largescale implementations and research showing the significance of this approach. As one example of his designed games, Quest Atlantis (QA) is an international learning and teaching project that uses a 3D multi-user environment to immerse children, ages 9-16, in educational tasks. QA combines strategies used in the commercial gaming environment with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation (http://questatlantis.org). Participation in this game is designed to enhance the lives of children while helping them grow into knowledgeable, responsible, and empathetic adults. Explore the QA site and learn more about this exciting project. Quest Atlantis provides a powerful new learning environment that combines academic concepts and meaningful play with disciplinary practices with the goal to create socially committed citizens. To date, this work has resulted in dozens of manuscripts, been featured on national television and other popular media outlets, and has impacted over 70,000 students and their teachers on five continents. See a video trailer from his upcoming Atlantis Remixed project.
David Coleman David has a long record of innovation and leadership in the field of education. His most recent initiative, Student Achievement Partners, LLC, assembles leading thinkers and researchers to design actions to substantially improve student achievement. In this group process, rigorous policy analysis, research, and design are integrated to focus on the most significant outcomes for students. David Coleman founded the Grow Network - acquired by McGraw-Hill in 2005 - which has become the nation s leader in assessment reporting and customized instructional materials. David was a lecturer at the University of London before going to work in the pro bono education area of McKinsey & Company. He is a Rhodes Scholar and a graduate of Yale University, Oxford University and Cambridge University. Michael Cohen A nationally-recognized leader in education policy and standards-based reform, Michael Cohen became President of Achieve in 2003. He has held several key roles in education during the past 20+ years, including Director of Education Policy at the National Governors Association (1985-90) and Director of Planning and Policy Development at the National Association of State Boards of Education (1983-1985). During the Clinton Administration he served as Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, Special Assistant to President Clinton for Education Policy, and Senior Advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley. Created in 1996 by the nation s governors and corporate leaders, Achieve is an independent, bipartisan, non-profit education reform organization based in Washington, D.C. that helps states raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments and strengthen accountability so all students graduate ready for college, work and citizenship. Under Mike s leadership, Achieve launched the American Diploma Project Network, formed the Partnership for the Assessment of College and Career Readiness (PARCC) one of two multi-state consortia developing common assessments and helped develop the Common Core State Standards.
Marji Freeman Marji Freeman, Director of Professional Development, joined Math Solutions in 1984 as a summer consultant. In 1993, she accepted a position as Education Administrator, and she continued to rise through the organization to Director of Professional Development, the position she holds today. In 2005 Marji served on the Math Solutions Professional Development team chosen by the Phil Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy to develop and teach a course in conjunction with the National Science Teachers Association. She is also the author of Creative Graphing (ETA/Cuisenaire, 1986) and coauthor of Number Power: A Cooperative Approach to Mathematics and Social Development (Addison-Wesley, 1992). Prior to joining Math Solutions, Marji worked as a middle school mathematics teacher for North East Independent School District (NEISD) in San Antonio, Texas. She was named both Middle School Teacher of the Year and Teacher of the Year in 1985 at NEISD. Marji has a master of arts degree in guidance and counseling from the University of Texas at San Antonio, a bachelor of arts degree in English, with math as a secondary teaching area, from the University of Texas at Austin, and an associate of arts degree from Laredo Junior College. She lives in Austin, Texas. Amy Hodges Slamp Amy is a Senior Program Officer on the College Ready Work team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where she works on investing in tools and teaching strategies that support teachers, schools, districts and states in implementing the Common Core. Since beginning her career in education as a teacher in the 1980s, Dr. Slamp has amassed considerable experience within public school systems at the state and district-levels. Prior to joining the Foundation, Amy served as the Superintendent of the Elizabethtown Area School District in Elizabethtown, PA, where she worked for 5 years. Before that time Amy served as the Director for the Bureau of Teaching and Learning Supports for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. She has also been a team leader for the regional office of small, secondary schools in New York; principal of JP McCaskey High School in Lancaster, PA; and vice principal of the Rift Valley Academy in Kenya, Africa. Amy began her teaching career in 1982 as a high school mathematics and science teacher. She holds a doctorate degree in school administration from Vanderbilt University - Peabody College; a master s degree in secondary education, mathematics and biology, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham; and a bachelor s degree in secondary education, mathematics and biology, from Auburn University. Amy has district and state level administrative experience in policy creation, program design, and project implementation. She also has administrative expertise in the areas of professional staff development and performance evaluation, curriculum oversight and instructional leadership, community and school relations, organizational planning, program assessment, school construction, and special project management.
Kathy Thiebes Kathy is a social studies teacher at Centennial High School in Gresham, Oregon and a member of the Literacy Design Collaborative design team. In 2009, Kathy began developing and teaching curriculum driven by the Common Core Standards using tools created by the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) initiative. Since that time, Kathy has become part of the LDC design team and shares her experiences implementing Common Core Standards and LDC tools with teachers across the country. Kathy is currently in her seventh year of teaching at Centennial High School and also supports her school and students as a soccer coach and advisor of the National Honor Society. Kathy has a master of arts degree in curriculum and instruction from Portland State University, a bachelor of arts degree in history from the University of San Diego, and teaching endorsements in both social studies and English as second language. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Zoran Popovic Zoran is an Associate Professor in computer science at University of Washington. He received a Sc.B. with Honors from Brown University, and M.S. and Ph.D in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Zoran's research interests lie in computer graphics and interactive games research, focusing on scientific discovery through game play, learning games, high-fidelity human modeling and animation, and control of realistic natural motion. He recently lead the team that produced Foldit, a biochemistry games whose outcomes are now published in Nature. His contributions to the field of computer graphics have been recently recognized by a number of awards including the NSF CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and ACM SIGGRAPH Significant New Researcher Award. Robert Torres Dr. Torres is a Senior Program Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation supporting their digital media and college readiness work. Until recently he served at the Chief Research Officer at Institute of Play where he co-founded Quest to Learn, a games-based school in New York City. His research at Quest to Learn and on Gamestar Mechanic, a video game designed to support kids development of basic game skills, has focused on the potential game design and games-based environments have in supporting cognitive development. Robert has worked as a teacher, school principal and education consultant since 1988, including serving as teacher in Oakland, president of Teach For America's national faculty and a school leader and designer in NYC. Robert has a B.A. from Oberlin College, a Masters in Policy and School Administration from Bank Street College of Education and was a Stanford University Research Fellow. Robert completed a Ph.D. in games and learning at New York University.