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Keynote Speaker

Keynote: Emerging Technologies that Enable Distributed-Learning Communities

Chris Dede, Professor of Learning Technologies, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Research documents the power of face-to-face learning communities based on a culture in which everyone collaboratively works towards collective understanding. Distributed learning interweaves face-to-face interactions with communication and shared experiences across distance and time. Examples of distributed-learning communities include an international mix of kids using mediated interactions to create an online encyclopedia about Harry Potter’s fictional world, and teams of mentor and novice teachers using the Milwaukee Public Schools Professional Development Portal to share teaching models and student artifacts online. This talk describes my work on how emerging interactive media such as multi-user virtual environments and wireless handhelds create new types of distributed-learning communities that enable powerful strategies for teaching and learning.

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 is completing a co-edited volume on Scaling Up Success: Lessons Learned from Technology-based Educational Innovation, to be published by Jossey-Bass in January, 2005.