OEB 2018 Keynote Speakers will include

Ulrich Boser is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the founder of The Learning Agency. He is dedicated to improving the ways that learning is delivered.

Boser is also a bestselling author, and he recently wrote a book on the science of learning titled Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything. Amazon called Learn Better “the best science book of the year.”

Boser’s work has been highly influential. His research has been featured everywhere from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” to the front page of USA Today and has helped inspire policy changes at the district, state, and national level. Boser has also developed legislation, advised political campaigns, and served as managing director of the Center for American Progress’s education team.

Ulrich Boser recently launched the Learning Agency. Part consultancy, part service provider, part communications group, the Learning Agency helps people–and organizations–harness the power of learning.

Boser has also been a contributing editor at US News and World Report and a researcher at the newspaper Education Week. His writings have appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Slate, Smithsonian, Newsweek,  and Wired.

Earlier in his career, Boser wrote the The Leap: The Science of Trust and Why It Matters, which Forbes called “recommended reading” and Talking Points Memo described as “both comprehensive and engaging.” He also wrote The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Art Theft, which became a national best-seller. USA Today called The Gardner Heist “a public service,” while The Wall Street Journal described the book as “captivating.”

Boser has also been an Arthur F. Burns Fellow, an adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and have been featured on CNN, National Public Radio, and NBC’s Nightly News. His career has also included stints as a reporter, editor, and English teacher. He graduated from Dartmouth College with honors.

Geoff Mulgan has been Chief Executive of Nesta since 2011. Nesta is the UK's innovation foundation and runs a wide range of activities in investment, practical innovation and research. Under his leadership it moved out of the public sector to become an independent foundation; greatly expanded its work, partly through creating new units, centres and funds in fields ranging from evidence and impact investment to challenge prizes and skills; and complemented its work in the UK with work in dozens of countries around the world.

Between 1997 and 2004 Geoff had various roles in the UK government including director of the Government's Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office. From 2004 to 2011 Geoff was the first Chief Executive of The Young Foundation. He was the first director of the think-tank Demos; Chief Adviser to Gordon Brown MP and reporter on BBC TV and radio. He has been a visiting professor at LSE, UCL and Melbourne University and is currently a senior visiting scholar at Harvard University. He has helped set up many organisations including Demos and the Young Foundation as well as the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX), Uprising, Studio Schools Trust and Action for Happiness.

Geoff co-chaIrs a World Economic Forum group looking at innovation and entrepreneurship in the fourth industrial revolution. He has advised many governments around the world and is currently chair of an international advisory committee for the Mayor of Seoul and a member of advisory committees for the Prime Minister’s office in the UAE, the Scottish Government and SITRA, the Finnish Innovation agency.

Past books include ‘The Art of Public Strategy’ (Oxford University Press), Good and Bad Power (Penguin) and ‘The Locust and the Bee’ (Princeton University Press). His most recent book is ‘Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world’ published by Princeton University Press. His books have been translated into many languages. Geoff has also given TED talks on topics including the future economy, happiness and education.

Links

http://www.nesta.org.uk

Twitter

Dr Ben Williamson's research traces the connections between educational policy, digital technologies, and practices in schools and universities. 

He is the author of Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice (Sage, 2017) and over 30 research articles and chapters. Recent topics of Ben’s research include data analytics, algorithmic decision-making, coding in schools, behavioural apps, and the development of performance metrics in the schools and HE sectors.

He is especially interested in examining how digital technologies and data are brought into education policy and practice through the involvement of policy networks of government agencies, think tanks, consultancies, policy labs and software companies. His current projects focus on ‘intimate data analytics’ such as wearable technologies,  and on the ‘data infrastructures of higher education’ that are required for performance measurement of universities.

Ben is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Stirling, maintains a public research blog at https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/, and on Twitter he is @BenPatrickWill.

Links

http://www.stir.ac.uk

Twitter

Esther Wojcicki is an internationally known journalism teacher and the founder of the Palo Alto High School Media Arts Program, a program that focuses on empowering students through the use of media (newspaper, magazine, yearbook, websites, video production, photography, radio, & television). The program started in 1984 with an already established (1918) 6 -8 page newspaper and 19 students; it has grown to become one of the most distinguished and the largest scholastic media program in the nation today (2016) with 600+ students, five additional teachers, nine publications, and a new 25,000 sq. ft Media Arts Center (2014).

Esther is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at MediaX at Stanford, a 2009 MacArthur Foundation Research Fellow, ; the 2002 California Teacher of the Year by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing; the 2011 Charles O’Malley Award recipient from Columbia Scholastic Press. In 2013, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Palo Alto University, and in 2016 an honorary doctorate from Rhode Island School of Design. In November, 2016 she was awarded the MyHero Award for her work in global education. She has been a speaker at multiple conferences including TED (2015), G20 Summit, and Singularity University Summit. She co-authored popular education book on blended learning entitled Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom (2015) that explains a way to revolutionize education for the digital age. Her focus is give student agency in the classroom to empower their creativity and innovation skills. She is also the mother of Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, Janet Wojcicki, Professor of Pediatrics at UCSF Medical School and Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe. She is married to Stanford Physics Professor Stanley Wojcicki. She and her husband are proud graduates of UC Berkeley. They have nine grandchildren.