Conference Committee
Tracy Fullerton
Re-imagining Media for Learning Chair
Tracy Fullerton is an experimental game designer and associate professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts where she directs the Game Innovation Lab. This design research center has produced several influential independent games, including Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, and The Night Journey, a collaboration with artist Bill Viola. Tracy is also the author of “Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games,” a design textbook in use at game programs worldwide, and holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment. Recent projects include Participation Nation, a history and civics game funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and developed in collaboration with Activision-Blizzard and KCET; Collegeology, a suite of college preparation games funded by the Department of Education, the Gilbert Foundation and the Gates Foundation; and Walden, a simulation of Henry David Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond. Prior to joining USC, she was president and founder of the interactive television game developer, Spiderdance, Inc. Spiderdance’s games included NBC’s Weakest Link, MTV’s webRIOT, The WB’s No Boundaries, History Channel’s History IQ, Sony Game Show Network’s Inquizition and TBS’s Cyber Bond. Before starting Spiderdance, Tracy was a founding member of the New York design firm R/GA Interactive, Creative Director at the interactive film studio Interfilm and a designer at Robert Abel’s early interactive company Synapse. Tracy’s work has received numerous industry honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television and Time Magazine’s Best of the Web.
Antero Garcia
Innovations for Public Education Chair
Antero teaches English at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles. Utilizing his classroom as a hub of youth participatory action research, Antero and his students jointly create and assess the needs of their South Central community. As a doctoral candidate in the Urban Schooling division of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Antero’s research focuses on developing critical literacies and civic identity through the use of mobile media and game play in formal learning environments. In 2008 Antero co-developed the Black Cloud Game, a Digital Media and Learning Competition award recipient, the Black Cloud provoked students to take real time assessment of air quality in their community. Antero is co-editing an upcoming special issue of Learning, Media and Technology and a member of the NBPTS committee that is revising ELA standards. Antero contributes to DMLcentral and the National Writing Project’s Digital Is. Updates and further musings can be found on his blog, The American Crawl.
Jess Klein
Democratizing Learning Innovation Co-Chair
Jess Klein is dedicated to connecting people and ideas through new technologies and interactive experiences. A community-based designer, Jess is the Design and Learning Lead for the Mozilla Hackasaurus project, working to embed hacker habits into webmaking educational resources. Prior to Mozilla, Jess was the Creative Director of the Hive NYC Learning Network, which focuses on promoting openness and creativitiy in formal and informal learning environments. Jess began her career in the curatorial department of Prints, Drawings and Photos at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Over the last decade, she has worked at a variety of institutions dedicated to learning including the Museum of Arts and Design, the Rubin Museum of Art, the Institute of Play, Startl, and Sesame Workshop. She founded OceanLab NYC, a project which asked parents, teachers and kids in the NYC community to investigate their urban coastal environment through casual interaction and play. Avid tweeter, Jess can be found @iamjessklein.
Mitch Resnick
Making, Tinkering and Remixing Chair
Mitchel Resnick, Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, develops new technologies and activities to engage people (especially children) in creative learning experiences. His Lifelong Kindergarten research group developed ideas and technologies underlying the LEGO Mindstorms and WeDo robotics kits, used by millions of young people around the world. His group also developed the Scratch programming language and online community, enabling young people to create and share interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations – and, in the process, learn to think creatively, learn systematically, and work collaboratively. Resnick co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, an international network of 100 after-school learning centers in 20 countries, where young people from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Resnick earned a BS in physics from Princeton, and an MS and PhD in computer science from MIT. He worked for five years as a science-technology journalist, and he has lectured and consulted around the world on innovative uses of new technologies in education. Resnick was awarded the Eliot Pearson Award for Excellence in Children's Media and the Kids@Play prize as the top "Digital Pioneer for Kids.”
Mark Surman
Democratizing Learning Innovation Chair
Mark Surman is in the business of connecting things: people, ideas, everything. A community technology activist for almost 20 years, Mark is currently the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, with a focus on inventing new ways to promote openness and opportunity on the Internet. On the side, Mark convenes conversations about ‘open everything‘ in his home town of Toronto and around the world. Before joining Mozilla, Mark was an open philanthropy fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation in South Africa, he invented new ways to apply open source thinking to social innovation. Earlier, he was the founding director of telecentre.org, a $26 million effort to network community technology activists in countries around the world. Mark has also served as president of the Commons Group, Director of Content and Community at Web Networks and senior advisor to the Volunteer @ction Online grants program team. Mark’s first real job was training social activists to make their own documentaries in the early 1990s. Website: http://commonspace.wordpress.com/about/.