SPEAKERS
Dust or Magic speakers bring in-depth knowledge on the latest products.
We welcome your ideas for speakers for next year
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Facilitators: Warren Buckleitner of Children's Technology Review and Daren Carstens of Carstens Studios will be coordinating the agenda, demos, brainstorms and speakers. Warren is Editor of Children's Technology Review and has taught at NYU's ITP, Rutgers and Michigan State University. He writes for KidScreen, Scholastic Parent & Child, Parents and the New York Times Gadgetwise blog.
Daren Carstens is an award-winning graphic artist and software designer, with expertise in puzzles and math pedagogy. He (as well as Keli Winters of Evan Moor) have attended every Dust or Magic event to date. The Dust or Magic agenda has been influenced by many people, based on evaluation comments and product trends.
"I've been corresponding with several participants already and all have had nothing but positive feedback about their own experience...the location, the participants, the curriculum, the staff." Scott Mowry, Design Director, Highlights for Children. |
DUST OR MAGIC SPEAKER BIOS & LINKS — 2010 (under construction, more coming)
Who? 2010 speakers include Kathleen Alfano, Director of Child Research, Fisher-Price; Daren Carstens, President, Carstens' Studios; Barbara Chamberlin, Director, Learning Games Lab, New Mexico State University; Mandeep Singh Dhillon, Co-Founder and CEO, Togetherville; Caroline Hu Flexer, Co-Founder, Duck Duck Moose Design; Claire Green, President, Parents' Choice Foundation; David Kleeman, President, American Center for Children and Media; Jim Marggraff, President and CEO, Livescribe; Ann McCormick, Founder, The Learning Company; Lane Merrifield, Executive VP, Disney Interactive Media Group and Co-Founder and GM, Club Penguin; Krista Marks, General Manager, Disney Online Kerpoof Studios; Robin Raskin, Founder, Living in Digital Times; Jesse Schell, Professor, Carnegie Mellon University and CEO, Schell Games; Bill Shribman, Executive Producer, WGBH; Mark Schlichting, Creator, The Living Books, Author & Designer, Noodleworks; Scott Traylor, President and Founder, 360KID. Dust or Magic is part of Children's Technology Review's mission to empower children with technology. The tag-team of Michael Colombo (NYU's ITP) and Traci Lawson (Colombia Teachers College and Ten Toed) will be managing logistics this year.
Barbara Chamberlin. As part of Dr. Chamberlin's work at the NMSU Learning Games Lab, she researches games preferences and use, and serves as the instructional designer on projects developed in the department. The user testing conducted in the Learning Games Lab supports the development of educational tools, games, software and videos for a variety of audiences, from young children through adult. The studio is usually engaged in 12-20 design projects a year, for diverse content, from health and K-12 content areas to workplace training. She is directing a national project on using computer and video games to help people become more physically active, and works with an innovative group of educators and designers to create games on a wide variety of topics, from math and science to health and safety. Recently completed projects for kids include "Math Snacks" (mathsnacks.org) and "Science Pirates: The Curse of Brownbeard" (sciencepirates.com). The team is currently working on a Ninja Kitchen cooking game, math games to help science majors in college, a social networking campaign for health awareness among mid-schoolers, and a collection of food safety tools. She received her PhD in Instructional Design from University of Virginia, and has worked in game development for almost 20 years, or as she tells her kids "Before there even WAS an Internet!". |
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Caroline Hu Flexer is a Co-Founder of Duck Duck Moose (http://duckduckmoosedesign.com), creator of educational children’s applications for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It was founded in 2008 by three friends who are parents themselves, and share a passion for children, music, education, design, and play. Duck Duck Moose has created five top-selling apps: Wheels on the Bus, Old MacDonald, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Fish School, and Baa Baa Black Sheep. Wheels on the Bus won the KAPi Award for "Best Children's App” at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). All five of the company’s products have won the Children’s Technology Review Editor’s Choice Award for Excellence in Design, and three were recipients of the Parents’ Choice Gold Award.
Prior to Duck Duck Moose, Caroline worked as a design consultant at IDEO, and as a software product manager at Intuit. She holds an AB in Architecture from Princeton University, attended the Master in Architecture program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She lives in Palo Alto, CA with her husband Michael and two daughters (5 years old and 2-1/2 years old, who are the real Duck Duck Moose product managers. |
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Krista Marks is the General Manager of Disney Online Kerpoof Studios. Prior to the acquisition by the Disney Interactive Media Group in July 2008, Krista was the CEO and Co-Founder of Kerpoof. With Kerpoof.com, and now Disney.com/Create, Kerpoof Studios has delivered the Internet’s premier creativity platforms for children of all ages, platforms praised by press, educators, parents, and kids worldwide. Krista is also passionate about engineering and has long been active in efforts to broaden kids’ awareness of engineering. She helped to establish in Denver a regional F.I.R.S.T. Robotics competition, and she serves on the University of South Carolina Industrial Advisory board. Krista’s achievements include a Research & Development Magazine award for her work on three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory award for outstanding achievement in engineering for High Energy Physics, one of the five nominees for the 2010 Pioneer of the Year award at Kids@Play/CES, and six patents pending. She holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of South Carolina, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. |
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Lane Merrifield is one of three co-founders of Club Penguin, one of the largest and fastest-growing virtual worlds for children. Since Club Penguin’s inception, Lane has led the management, operations and business strategy for Club Penguin out of the company’s headquarters in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Lane also oversees development for all the Walt Disney Company’s virtual worlds. Lane helped develop and launch Club Penguin in 2005 and played an integral role in its phenomenal growth and success. The company’s commitment to creating a safe and ad-free online playground helped propel Club Penguin to international acclaim and a partnership with the Walt Disney Company, which acquired Club Penguin in August 2007. Prior to his work with Club Penguin and the Walt Disney Company, Lane held various technical and marketing roles with a range of companies in Canada and the United States, but his most memorable employment experience will always be his first job at Disneyland. Lane has always nurtured a passion for using technology to connect people in new ways. He loves the fact that Club Penguin has the potential to bring kids from around the world together in a fun, creative and safety-focused environment. |
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| Ann McCormick founded the Learning Company, a children's educational software company. She served as Chairman of the Board and Lead Designer, shaping the design of the company's first 16 products, including Reader Rabbit and Rocky’s Boots. Under her leadership, TLC launched a new category of software and a leading national brand. Ann has served as an advisor to education and technology leaders in 15 nations and consulted with Apple Computer, IBM, Northern Telecom, and many other technology, publishing, research and telecommunications companies. She served as Vice President of VPL, a virtual reality company and gave invited lectures at Stanford, Harvard and the University of California. Ann wrote textbook chapters and articles on childhood and computing, and appeared on television shows such as the Donahue Show. She has won many awards, including the Parent's Choice Award, Best Software of the Year from Learning Magazine and Entrepreneur of the Decade from Junior Achievement. Ann earned a doctorate in Education at the University of California at Berkeley, where she was invited to deliver the 100th Anniversary Commencement Address. |
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| Bill Shribman is responsible for all interactive media for kids within WGBH Educational Foundation including national PBS sites for Arthur, Between the Lions, Zoom, Postcards from Buster, Curious George, Design Squad, Martha Speaks and Fetch. These web sites bring in 15 million visits each month and have won awards including the first Prix Jeunesse given to a web site. He is the creator of several original broadband projects including the Fin, Fur and Feather Bureau of Investigation, The Greens, and a photographic news service for PBS KIDS called Beeswax. He has written and produced original for web, audio podcast, CDROM, interactive television, kiosk, radio and television, and he is currently working on interactive content for emerging platforms including PSP, iPhone, interactive whiteboard, Wii, and surface tables. He has been nominated separately for an EMMY for his TV and online work. |
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| Jesse Schell started Schell Games in 2002; and it has since grown into the largest and most successful game development company in Pittsburgh, developing the Disney Fairies MMO, Pixie Hollow and two of the most popular interactive theme park attractions in the world: Disney’s Toy Story Midway Mania and Epcot’s Sum of All Thrills. Jesse holds a faculty position as Professor at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University where he teaches classes in Game Design and serves as advisor on a multitude of innovative projects. Since 2006, Professor Schell has taught the Building Virtual Worlds class, created by ETC Co-Founder and The Last Lecture author, Randy Pausch. Jesse recently authored the critically acclaimed book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. The book captured Game Developer magazine’s coveted “Front Line Award” for 2008. Prior to starting Schell Games, Jesse was the Creative Director of the Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, where he worked and played for seven years as designer, programmer, and manager on numerous projects for Disney theme parks and DisneyQuest. He is perhaps most celebrated for his design of Disney’s Toontown Online, the first massively multiplayer game for kids. |
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See prior presentations from Dust or Magic at http://dustormagic.wikispaces.com |
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