HELIX 2008: Keynote Speakers

Dr. Mark Milliron
President and CEO
Catalyze Learning International

"A New Generation of Learning"

Thursday, April 3
8-9:15 a.m.
Crystal Ballroom

The mix of millennials, gen-x'ers, and baby boomers teaching and learning together make the provision of modern education a complex process. In addition, blended learning, mobile devices, gaming, social networking, high-impact presentation technologies, and analytics are bringing new twists to our learning environments. What else is ahead? What's in store? How much more can we take? How do we retain the human touch? Come join the conversation about how a new generation of learning is taking shape.

Dr. Mark David Milliron is an award-winning leader, author, speaker, and consultant best known for exploring leadership development, future trends, learning strategies, and the human side of technology change. Mark works with universities, community colleges, K-12 schools, corporations, associations, and government agencies across the country and around the world. He serves as Board Chair for the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education and as a Trustee for Western Governors University. He is also the founder and CEO of the private consulting and service group, Catalyze Learning International (CLI). In addition, he serves on numerous corporate, nonprofit, and education boards and advisory groups; guest lectures for educational institutions nationally and internationally; and authors and moderates the Catalytic Conversations Blog. Mark brings to this work broad experience, having previously served as an Endowed Fellow, Senior Lecturer, and Director of the National Institute of Staff and Organizational Development in the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin; Vice President for Education and Medical Practice with SAS, the world's largest private software company; President and CEO of the international education association the League for Innovation; and as Vice President for Academic and Student Services at Mayland Community College (NC).

Dwight W. Allen
Eminent Scholar of Educational Reform
Old Dominion University

"WikiBooks: Texbooks of the Future?"

Friday, April 4
8-9 a.m.
Salon A

What are WikiBooks? How are they used and who creates them? Web 2.0 tools have opened up a whole world of opportunities for compiling and dispensing information. In this keynote presentation, Dr. Allen will discuss how WikiBooks can be used in all levels of education as primary or supplementary materials.

Dwight W. Allen is Eminent Scholar of Educational Reform at Old Dominion University and has developed educational reform initiatives for more than forty years. As Stanford University’s director of teacher education he helped develop an award winning internship program. As Dean of Education at the University of Massachusetts, he implemented a teacher training program that was named the outstanding program of the year by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. He served as education advisor to President Nixon for the White House Conference on Education.

In the sixties, he developed the Stanford School Scheduling System, employing an unprecedented computer-generated schedule which promoted innovative instructional patterns in high school education. He has worked with the United Nations in UNESCO, where he was founding Chief Technical Advisor for the first National Teacher Training College in Lesotho, and technical advisor for inservice teacher training programs in Malawi and Namibia.  In Namibia he developed a teacher evaluation protocol based on frequent feedback in the form of two compliments and two suggestions. For the past 14 years he has been working with the World Bank and The United Nations Development Program as chief technical advisor and international advisor for the largest UNDP education programs in China. He has been helping to modernize teacher and administrator training, and incorporate sustainable teacher improvement through distance education techniques. He serves as Guest Professor at three Chinese Universities. For the past year he has consulted with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help devise strategies to bring better information to Smallhold farmers in South Asia and Africa.
 
At Old Dominion University (ODU)  he co-founded the PRIME program in Norfolk Public Schools with thirteen systemic change initiatives focused on teacher empowerment. He was the principal investigator for a $1.3 million grant to improve the technology training of teachers.  For the past two years he has been researching strategies for student-written textbooks and other Web 2.0 initiatives. He is the author of nine books on educational reform and teacher education (one co-authored with former student, Bill Cosby), has served as consultant to more than 100 national, state and local school authorities, and has served as principal investigator on numerous grants and contracts. He was the founding coordinator of NewPAGE, ODU’s environmental education class required for more than 2000 freshmen for the past four years.