Conference Speakers

Warren Buckleitner


Warren Buckleitner has been reviewing children's technology products since the 1980s. He is the editor of Children's Technology Review (childrenstech.com) and creator of the Dust or Magic Institute (www.dustormagic.com) and the Mediatech Foundation (www.mediatech.org). He is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Scholastic Parent & Child Magazine. He is a former preschool and elementary school classroom teacher who holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology.

"It's time to think outside the page…" 


Adriana Bus


Adriana G. Bus is a Professor of Education and Child Studies at Leiden University. Her research focuses on early literacy experiences, on and off the computer. She has published many articles in leading journals in the field of education, psychology and educational psychology. She is currently working with computer experts, instructional designers, and content specialists on building an Internet environment to promote rich literacy experiences for young children.

"It is firmly established that simply adding animations and video to e-books does not guarantee an improvement in learning – on the contrary, multimedia presentations of stories may have negative effects as is outlined in some doom scenarios. We need a theory aimed at understanding how to use multimedia adaptations to improve young children’s language and literacy experiences through e-books."


Cen Campbell


Cen is the head librarian at Bookboard.com, and a children’s digital services consultant at LittleeLit.com. She has driven a bookmobile, managed branch libraries, developed innovative programs for babies, young children and teens, and now helps other libraries incorporate digital media into their early literacy programming. She serves on the American Library Association’s ALSC Children & Technology committee.


Elizabeth Dobler



Elizabeth Dobler is a Professor of Reading and Language Arts at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate children's literature, reading, and language arts courses. She is the coauthor of Teaching the Language Arts: Forward Thinking in Today's Classrooms, a digital multimedia textbook.

Lisa Guernsey


Lisa Guernsey is Director of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative. Ms. Guernsey focuses on elevating dialogue about early childhood education, in part by editing the Early Ed Watch blog, and spotlighting new approaches for helping disadvantaged children succeed. A journalist by training, Ms. Guernsey has been a technology and education writer at The New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education and has contributed to several national publications, including Newsweek, Time, The Washington Post, and USA TODAY. She also blogs occasionally at The Huffington Post and is on Twitter @LisaGuernsey.

Ofra Korat


Dr. Ofra Korat is a senior lecturer and the head of Early Childhood Program in the education school at Bar-Ilan University. She received her Ph.D. degree from Tel-Aviv University and completed post-doctoral studies in the School of Education at New York University. Her research focuses on early literacy experience in school and family, with special attention to the role of social interaction with parents in facilitating literacy development. In the last recent years her studies focuses on technology as a support for literacy development of young children especially those from low income families.

“How well e-books can support child language and literacy depends on how well they have been designed to specifically meet the children’s needs.”


Linda D. Labbo


Linda D. Labbo, Professor Emeritus from the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, conducts research and has taught graduate courses on digital media in literacy education, New Literacies, theoretical models of the reading process, and emergent and early literacy education. Her current consulting work focuses on developing children’s e-books, online video games, apps, e-assessment, and the transmedia literacies involved in televised children’s animated series that spans various media including animated episodes, web games, print resources, and social networking game sites. She is the recipient of several awards including an American Library Association Award for an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year, the Edward Fry Book Award from the National Reading Conference, the Phi Delta Kappa Faculty Research Award, and the Computers in Reading Research Award from the Technology in Literacy Education SIG of the International Reading Association.

"Young children tend to think in categorial ways about how different media present or do not present the literary work we refer to as a story. As they play, they are acquiring formative mindsets and mental attitudes that will determine how they interpret, learn from and respond to media experiences both inside and outside of the classroom. As educators we need to better understand how the underlying design of children’s e-books blurs the line between “playing a story” and “reading a video game”, and what difference those distinctions make."


Jackie Marsh


Jackie Marsh is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research is focused on the relationship between digital cultures, play and literacy and challenges conventional notions of childhood, reading and schooling in the new media age.


Azin Mehrnoosh


Azin is Founder & Chairman of HiDef. Heading up HiDef's Vision team, his focus is on providing sustainable concepts and practices, preferring to forecast technology and communication needs 5 years ahead, instead of 2 quarters. As founder of HiDef, Azin brings a passion to everything he does.

"We believe that children learn best when they can interact with content. We're working on tools and technologies that maximize interactivity in the classroom, while providing educators with great insights and data on the learning process."


Michael Robb


Michael Robb is Director of Education and Research at the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College.  He leads the development, content, and partnerships for the Fred Rogers Center Early Learning Environment™, a website that curates high-quality digital resources in early literacy and digital media literacy for families and educators of children birth to age 5. He has published research and analysis on the impact of digital media on young children’s language development, early literacy outcomes, and problem solving in Child Development, Infant and Child Development, and the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Dr. Robb holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Riverside

"Please think of the children first. If you ever have anything to do with their entertainment, their food, their toys, their custody, their day or night care, their education—listen to the children, learn about them, learn from them. Think of the children first." - Fred Rogers


Jessica Wollman


After receiving my Master’s in Early Childhood Education I taught for several years, then accepted a job at Scholastic Inc.  In my current position as Vice President, Editorial Products & Digital Programming for Scholastic Media, I manage cross-platform content development for my division’s core brands and digital initiatives.  Among my responsibilities is the editorial management of enriched eBooks for Storia, Scholastic's new eReading application.  Through my involvement with Storia, I’ve developed a strong interest in children’s use of eBooks and enriched eBooks in both formal and informal learning environments.  And while I left the classroom some time ago, the years I spent as a teacher still resonate today; they had a profound impact on me both personally and professionally.

1 comment:

  1. Great post! Promoting reading for pleasure is one of the hardest things when it comes to children. My child was an early reader though. He was reading without anyone else when he completed prekindergarten.

    He went through about fourteen days in kindergarten before the school educated us that since he was reading so easily, they needed to propel him to initially grade.

    How could we do this? As others have stated, I read to my kid as often as possible. Books are constantly present in our home.

    My significant other and I both love reading and composing, so we read to him continually, including books that outlined the letters of the letter set, so he took in his letters and how they functioned.

    But most importantly I definitely think that every parent needs to check out "TeachYourChild2ReadQuickly.com" if you're serious about giving your children a head start in life.

    Good luck!

    Jay
    Father of 2

    ReplyDelete