Wednesday, March 21, 2012
12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

The VCCS is proud to welcome Chris Dede as he gives our opening keynote address at VCCS New Horizons Conference on Wednesday, March 21, 2012 at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center.  This is a gentleman whose reputation is renown in the field of teaching, learning, and technology. As we reengineer, gear up, and recommit to student success, we will be informed and inspired to continue our ongoing efforts. It’s going to be great! 

Biography

Chris Dede is the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. His fields of scholarship include emerging technologies, policy, and leadership. His current research includes six grants from NSF, Qualcomm, and the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences to explore immersive simulations and transformed social interactions as means of student engagement, learning, and assessment. In 2007, he was honored by Harvard University as an outstanding teacher, and in 2011 he was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Chris has served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Foundations of Educational and Psychological Assessment and a member of the 2010 National Educational Technology Plan Technical Working Group. His co-edited book, Scaling Up Success: Lessons Learned from Technology-based Educational Improvement, was published by Jossey-Bass in 2005. A second volume he edited, Online Professional Development for Teachers: Emerging Models and Methods, was published by the Harvard Education Press in 2006. His latest book, Digital Teaching Platforms, will be published by Teachers College Press in 2012.

Thursday, March 22, 2012
12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m.

Reflections: The Horizon Project at 10 Years

After a decade of tracking the evolution of emerging technology as part of the New Media Consortium’s globally focused Horizon Project, Larry Johnson, the Horizon Project’s founder and visionary leader, has spent years reflecting on how we think about technology and how that influences our ability to use and deploy it creatively. In this session he will use the lens of family and family ties to show how our perspectives on what technology are formed, what we can use that insight for, Our perspectives on technology and what is possible are largely determined by when we were born, rather than our training and experience with the current tools and options available to us. Indeed, the very notion of what constitutes technology is something that profoundly changes over time. From his research, it is clear that the events of the world around us — things we collectively experience within a generation — are hugely significant influences in the ways we think about learning, about work, and even in the way we play. These forces are at work everywhere in the world and in every sector of education.

Biography

Laurence F. Johnson, Ph.D. is Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium (NMC), an international not-for-profit consortium dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. Its hundreds of member institutions constitute an elite list of the most highly regarded universities, museums, and research centers in the world, as well as some of the world's most forward-thinking companies. Johnson is an acknowledged expert on emerging technology and its impacts on society and education, and the topics of creativity, innovation, and how to think about the future. With more than 25 years of experience in the higher education arena, he served in campus roles that included faculty dean, CIO, provost, and president before joining the NMC in 2001.