For 27 years, Gary Stager, an internationally recognized educator, speaker and consultant, has helped learners of all ages on six continents embrace the power of computers as intellectual laboratories and vehicles for self-expression. He led professional development in the world’s first laptop schools (1990), has designed online graduate school programs since the mid-90s and is a member of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s Learning Team. Mr. Stager’s doctoral research involved the creation a high-tech alternative learning environment for incarcerated at-risk teens. Recent work includes teaching and mentoring some of Australia’s “most troubled” public schools. Gary was Senior Editor of District Administration Magazine, Editor of The Pulse: Education’s Place for Debate and Editor-in-Chief of ISTE’s Logo Exchange Journal.

He is currently Visiting Professor at Pepperdine University and an Associate of the Thornburg Center for Professional Development. Dr. Stager is also the Executive Director of The Constructivist Consortium. In 1999, Converge Magazine named Gary a “shaper of our future and inventor of our destiny.” The National School Boards Association recognized Dr. Stager with the distinction of “20 Leaders to Watch” in 2007.

Most recently, Gary was the new media producer for The Brian Lynch/Eddie Palmieri Project - Simpatíco, 2007 Grammy Award Winner for Best Latin Jazz Album of the Year. Read more about Dr. Stager here.

Deborah Meier is currently on the faculty of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, as senior scholar and adjunct professor as well as Board member and director of New Ventures at Mission Hill, director and advisor to Forum for Democracy and Education, and on the Board of The Coalition of Essential Schools.

Meier has spent more than four decades working in public education as a teacher, writer and public advocate. She began her teaching career as a kindergarten and headstart teacher in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City schools. She was the founder and teacher-director of a network of highly successful public elementary schools in East Harlem. In 1985 she founded Central Park East Secondary School, a New York City public high school in which more than 90% of the entering students went on to college, mostly to 4-year schools. During this period she founded a local Coalition center, which networked approximately fifty small Coalition-style K-12 schools in the city.

Between 1992-96 she also served as co-director of a project (Coalition Campus Project) that successfully redesigned the reform of two large failing city high schools, and created a dozen new small Coalition schools. She was an advisor to New York City’s Annenberg Challenge and Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University from 1995-1997.

From 1997 to 2005 she was the founder and principal of the Mission Hill School a K-8 Boston Public Pilot school serving 180 children in the Roxbury community.

The schools she has helped create serve predominantly low-income African-American and Latino students, and include a typical range of students in terms of academic skills, special needs, etc. There are no entrance requirements. These schools are considered exemplars of reform nationally and affiliates of the national Coalition of Essential Schools founded by Dr. Ted Sizer and currently led by Lewis Cohen.

A learning theorist, she encourages new approaches that enhance democracy and equity in public education. Meier is on the editorial board of Dissent magazine, The Nation and the Harvard Education Letter. She is a Board member of the Educational Alliance, the Association of Union Democracy, Educators for Social Responsibility, the Panasonic Foundation, and a founding member of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, the North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation and the Forum for Democracy and Education, among others.

Meier was born April 6, 1931 in New York City; she attended Antioch College (1949-51) and received an MA in History from the University of Chicago (1955). She has received honorary degrees from Bank Street College of Education, Brown, Bard, Clark, Teachers College of Columbia University, Dartmouth, Harvard, Hebrew Union College, Hofstra, The New School, Lesley College, SUNY Albany, UMASS Lowell, and Yale. She was a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur (Genius) Fellowship in 1987.

Her ground-breaking books, The Power of Their Ideas, Lessons to America from a Small School in Harlem (1995), Will Standards Save Public Education (2000), In Schools We Trust (2002), Keeping School, with Ted and Nancy Sizer (2004) and Many Children Left Behind (2004) are all published by Beacon Press.

Ms. Meier is the co-author, with Diane Ravitch, of the exceptional blog Bridging Differences.

Although rooted in the municipal preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, the powerful ideas are applicable to learners of all ages and offer 45+ years worth of lessons for creative educators concerned with authentic sustainable school reform.

Lella Gandini was instrumental in bringing the groundbreaking museum exhibit, The Hundred Languages of Children, to the United States and in introducing Howard Gardner to Loris Malaguzzi, the guiding inspiration behind the Reggio Emilia approach.

Lella serves as Associate Editor of Innovations in Early Education: the International Reggio Exchange and helps translate the powerful ideas of “Reggio” via lectures, books and articles.

Dr. Gandini is co-editor and co-author of The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education; Beautiful Stuff: Learning with Found Materials; Bambini: The Italian Approach to Infant/toddler Care; In the Spirit of the Studio: Learning from the Atelier of Reggio Emilia; and the recently published, Insights and Inspirations from Reggio Emilia: Stories of Teachers and Children from North America.

Lella has also carried out research on parenting, children’s fears, the use and text of traditional nursery rhymes in Italy, and comparing rituals at bedtime in Tuscany and New England. She has published several books for children, as well as books about parenting and early education in Italy. Lella is a correspondent for the Italian magazine for teachers, Bambini. For the City of Pistoia, she served as a consultant and was the curator for two exhibits: Bedtime and 100 years of Children: An Open Family Album.
Read Gary Stager’s article about the Reggio Emila approach, The Best Idea this Side of Italy.

Dr. Solomon directs the creation of educational materials for the One Laptop Per Child Foundation. Before that she was the Technology Integration Coordinator at Monsignor Haddad Middle School in Needham, MA and before that taught at Milton Academy for seven years. She is a pioneer in the fields of artificial intelligence, computer science and educational computing. 40 years ago while at Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Cynthia, along with Seymour Papert and Wally Feurzig created the first programming language for children, Logo,. She was Vice President of R&D for Logo Computer Systems, Inc. when Apple Logo was developed and was the Director of the prestigious Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory. Dr. Solomon has maintained a long relationship with the MIT Media Lab and the One Laptop Per Child Foundation in addition to her teaching, consulting and scholarship. Her doctoral research at Harvard led to the publication of the critical book, Computer Environments for Children: A Reflection on Theories of Learning and Education. Cynthia Solomon is also the co-author of Designing Multimedia Environments for Children, with Allison Drum.

Cynthia Solomon’s archive of classic videos about learning and computers, Logothings, may be found here.

Since the late 1970s, Brian Silverman has been involved in the invention of software learning environments for children. His work includes dozens of Logo versions (including LogoWriter & MicroWorlds), Scratch, LEGO robotics and the PicoCricket. An incomparable presenter, Brian is a Consulting Scientist to the MIT Media Lab, a brilliant mathematician, computer scientist and master tinkerer. He once even built a tic-tac-toe playing computer out of TinkerToys.

Sylvia Martinez is a veteran of interactive entertainment and educational software industries, with over a decade of design and publishing experience. She is currently President of Generation YES. Prior to joining Generation YES, Sylvia oversaw product development, design and programming as Vice President of Development for Encore Software, a publisher of game and educational software on PC, Internet and console platforms. Sylvia was also involved in the company’s Internet initiatives, including Math.com, the award-winning web site that provides math help to students worldwide.

For seven previous years, Sylvia was an executive producer at Davidson & Associates/Knowledge Adventure, a leading educational software developer. She designed, developed and launched dozens of software titles including Math Blaster: Algebra, Math Blaster: Geometry and Maurice Ashley Teaches Chess. In addition, she was responsible for Educast - the first Internet service for teachers that provided teachers with free news, information and classroom resources.

Before Davidson & Associates, Martinez spent six years at Magnavox Research Labs, where she developed high-frequency receiver systems and navigation software for GPS satellites.

Sylvia has been a featured speaker at national education technology conferences in areas ranging from the use of the Internet in schools, Web 2.0 technologies, student leadership, project-based and inquiry-based learning with technology and gender issues in science, math, engineering and technology (STEM) education. She holds a Master’s in Educational Technology from Pepperdine University , and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Read Sylvia’s blog here.

According to Gary Stager, “John Stetson is the finest educator I’ve ever met and a tireless champion for powerless children.” For more than a decade, John Stetson has worked as a daily volunteer teacher, collaborator and advocate for incarcerated teenagers within Southern Maine’s juvenile prison. He worked side-by-side with Seymour Papert, Gary Stager and MIT’s David Cavallo during the creation and three year life of The Constructionist Learning Laboratory at the Maine Youth Center and continues working in the renamed facility nearly every day. In addition to teaching kids to build guitars, robots, telescopes and to fall in love with astronomy, Stetson has arranged for college courses to be offered to at-risk high school students and has spearheaded the creation of an instrumental music program in a facility where one would not have otherwise existed. John Stetson is a father of three and holds a Masters degree in educational technology from Pepperdine University.