Keynote: Michael Wesch

Michael Wesch

University Distinguished Teaching Scholar
Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology
2008 U.S. Professor of the Year
Kansas State University
mike.wesch@gmail.com
http://www.michaelwesch.com/

Dubbed “the prophet of an education revolution” by the Kansas City Star and “the explainer” by Wired Magazine, Wesch is a recipient of the highly coveted “US Professor of the Year” Award from the Carnegie Foundation. After two years studying the implications of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society and education. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed over 20 million times, translated in over 20 languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic.

Keynote: Erin Klein

Erin Klein

She has her Masters of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, currently teaches at the elementary level, and lives in Michigan with her family.

She is certified in Brain Gym, Educational Kinesiology, and has studied under consultants from The Center for Effective Learning to understand how design affects cognition and learning. Klein serves as a classroom design consultant and creative partner for the publishing company, Carson-Dellosa. Some of her articles and interviews on design for education and technology tools for the classroom can be found on Smartblogs for Education, MindShift, Scholastic, Edudemic, Edutopia, EdSurge, and EdReach.

Klein served for the past three years as the state’s technology chairperson for the Michigan Reading Association and is the 2014 recipient of the MACUL Pre-K – 12 Teacher of the Year for Michigan. In 2013, Klein was also awarded her district’s Teacher of the Year award. She currently serves on the advisory board for Remind101 in San Francisco and is an organizer for the EdCamp Detroit Annual Educational unConference. Among Klein’s accomplishments, she was also recognized as a SMART Technologies Exemplary Educator, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) 2012 Social Media Influencer, a National Association of Independent Schools Teacher of the Future, ASCD Emerging Leader, and a member of The National Writing Project. This past summer, Klein was accepted into The Teacher’s College at Columbia University to advance her studies in reading and writing workshop.

Her work can be found on her award-winning educational blog, Kleinspiration.com, and you can follow her on Twitter @KleinErin.

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