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Dr. Yong Zhao is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute, as well as the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. He is a fellow of the International Academy for Education. His research interests include computer gaming and education, diffusion of innovations, teacher adoption of technology, computer-assisted language learning, globalization and education, and international and comparative education.
Zhao has published extensively in these areas. His articles have appeared in American Educational Research Journal, Educational Leadership, Kappan, Education Week and Teachers College Record. He received the 2003 Raymond B. Catell Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association. Zhao has extensive international experiences. He has consulted with government and educational agencies and spoken on educational issues in many countries including Australia, Chile, China, England, Ireland, Singapore, Sweden, The Netherlands, Thailand, and Vietnam. His current work focuses on designing 21st Century Schools in the context of globalization and the digital revolution.
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Jim Fruchterman is the President, CEO, and founder of Benetech. A technology entrepreneur and engineer, Fruchterman has been a rocket scientist, founded two of the foremost optical character recognition companies, and developed a successful line of reading machines for the blind. He is now a leading social entrepreneur through his deliberately nonprofit technology company, Benetech. Benetech concentrates on applying technology to challenging problems facing our society, including literacy for people with disabilities and human rights monitoring and analysis.
Fruchterman has won numerous awards for his work, including the 2006 MacArthur Fellowship and the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2004 and 2006. He was named a Schwab Social Entrepreneur of 2003, which has included attending and speaking five times at the World Economic Forums in Davos, Switzerland. Fruchterman believes that technology is the ultimate leveler, allowing disadvantaged people achieve more equality in society. |
Keynote Address:
Never Send a Man to do a Machine’s Job: Reconstruct the Relationship between Teachers and Technology
From Amazon to eBay, from EverQuest to World of Warcraft, from Yahoo to Google, from mySpace to YouTube, technology has significantly altered how we live, entertain, socialize, and practice civil citizenship. Technology has rendered certain businesses obsolete and given birth to new businesses. It has also transformed how business is conducted in the private and public sectors. But despite the investment in technology in schools and teacher professional development, our educational institutions remain one of the last social organizations that have not experienced similar transformation. A major reason for the lack of change is our unwillingness to accept the educational value of technology and consequently only view it as an assistant to human teachers. As a result, teachers have been asked to do the impossible job of reaping the vast benefits of technology while constrained by the authority they have within their classrooms. In this presentation, Dr. Yong Zhao presents a new framework for thinking about the role of technology from an ecological perspective, which suggests that technology needs to be viewed as an equal partner of teachers in the education ecosystem. |
Keynote Address:
Raising the Floor for People with Disabilities
To paraphrase William Gibson, technology is here, it’s just unevenly distributed. What happens when the market fails to meet the needs of disadvantaged communities and the social sector? Social entrepreneurship can bridge the gap between what’s possible and what’s highly profitable, helping make sure that the benefits of technology are more broadly distributed. Jim Fruchterman will share how his nonprofit tech company, Benetech, manages to lead in providing technology that serves the needs of the disability, human rights and environmental movement. He’ll describe how the tech community can help raise the floor for people around the globe, ensuring that everybody on the planet has access to technology and the information they need for education, employment, health and social inclusion. |
