Bryan Alexander is an internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of how technology transforms education.

He completed his English language and literature PhD at the University of Michigan in 1997, with a dissertation on doppelgangers in Romantic-era fiction and poetry.

Then Bryan taught literature, writing, multimedia, and information technology studies at Centenary College of Louisiana.  There he also pioneered multi-campus interdisciplinary classes, while organizing an information literacy initiative.

From 2002 to 2014 Bryan worked with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), a non-profit working to help small colleges and universities best integrate digital technologies.  With NITLE he held several roles, including co-director of a regional education and technology center, director of emerging technologies, and senior fellow.  Over those years Bryan helped develop and support the nonprofit, grew peer networks, consulted, and conducted a sustained research agenda.

In 2013 Bryan launched a business, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC.  Through BAC he consults throughout higher education in the United States and abroad.  Bryan also speaks widely and publishes frequently, with articles appearing in venues including The Atlantic Monthly, Inside Higher Ed.  He has been interviewed by and featured in the Washington Post, MSNBC,  US News and World Report, National Public Radio, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, Pew Research, Campus Technology, and the Connected Learning Alliance.

He recently finished Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education for Johns Hopkins University Press (forthcoming fall 2019).  His two most recent books are Gearing Up For Learning Beyond K-12 and The New Digital Storytelling (second edition) .

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Session PLE202

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Session PLE202

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Transform strategy into high performing teams

Highly-engaged professional with a talent for taking innovative projects and teams from concept development on a global and regional level to sustainable business in local markets.

Equipped to support the mission of Commercial Excellence programs and who seamlessly works across all levels of an organisation to uncover cost-efficient and new solutions, meeting customers' needs.

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Session PLE201

With a scientific background, Olivier Crouzet got a Master degree as an IT engineer. During scholarship, he acted both as a technical assistant and a teaching assistant. After 2 years as system administrator in the 3rd French Internet service provider, he developed during thirteen years a well-known IT school which became a French major institution.

He designed the pedagogical model, and made it evolve. Based on this educational success, a new IT school '42' is created in 2013, along with Nicolas Sadirac, Kwame Yamgnane and Florian Bucher, promoting an even more advanced training methodology, called Peer-Learning. Olivier Crouzet designed this model: 100%-project-based, without any teacher, lecture, nor knowledge transfer. Students debate, exchange ideas, try, fail, try again, to reach the goal, and finally evaluate their peers.

Founded and funded by Xavier Niel, owner of one of the four French telecom company, '42' is totally free for the students. In this spirit of social opening, Olivier Crouzet, while still evolving the pedagogical model of the school, is also promoting evolution in the French education system through various conferences

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Session PLE172

Professor Laura Czerniewicz is the Director of the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT), at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. 

She has worked in education in numerous roles including strategist, researcher, educator and publisher. Her research interests include the changing nature of higher education in a digitally-mediated society, changing technological practices and digital inequality. She has also played a key strategic and scholarly role in the areas of blended and online education as well as open education. 

An NRF-rated researcher, Laura has published widely, both formally and informally. Her research output can be found at  http://uct.academia.edu/LauraCzerniewicz and many of her presentations at https://www.slideshare.net/laura_Cz.

She can be followed on Twitter at @czernie. For a recent interview with Laura Czerniewicz listen to her podcast at http://onlinelearninglegends.com/podcast/007-professor-laura-czerniewicz/. 

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Session PLE202

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Edith Hooge serves as the Chair of the Education Council of the Netherlands, the governmental advisory body which provides advice, both solicited and unsolicited, to the Ministers of Education, Culture and Science, to Parliament and to local authorities.

Since hundred years, the Dutch Education Council operates as an independent think tank, providing analyses of current topics and formulating recommendations and solutions on the application of (new) laws and policies.

Prof. dr. Hooge is full Professor on Boards and Governance in Education at TIAS, Tilburg University. Her research and teaching revolve around policy, network governance and management in complex education systems, educational quality and accountability.

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Session PLE172

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Paul A. Kirschner is university distinguished professor at the Open University of the Netherlands as well as visiting professor of education with a special emphasis on learning and interaction in teacher education at the University of Oulu, Finland.

He is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of educational psychology and instructional design. He is research fellow of the American Educational Research Association (the first European to receive this honour), the International Society of the Learning Sciences, and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Science. He was president of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) in 2010-2011 and a member of both the ISLS CSCL Board and the Executive Committee of the Society. He is currently a member of the Scientific Technical Council of the Foundation for University Computing Facilities (SURF WTR) in the Netherlands and was a member of the Dutch Educational Council and, as such, was advisor to the Minister of Education (2000-2004).

He is chief editor of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, associate editor of Computers in Human Behavior, and has published a number of very successful books including Ten Steps to Complex Learning (now in its third revised edition and translated/published in Korea and China) and Urban Legends about Learning and Education. He also co-edited two other books (Visualizing Argumentation and What We Know about CSCL).

His areas of expertise include interaction in learning, collaboration for learning (computer supported collaborative learning), and regulation of learning.

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Session PLE172

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Joleen Liang is a Partner at Squirrel AI Learning, the leading AI+ education innovator at the forefront of K12 AI revolution. Within 4 years, Squirrel AI Learning has established more than 1,800 learning centers in China and hosted the first series of certified human-vs-AI competitions in the Asia-Pacific region and proved the AI’s success. Squirrel AI Learning is included in the TOP 20 Chinese artificial intelligence Unicorn companies in 2018.

After joining Squirrel AI Learning, Joleen created the “Squirrel AI" brand and successfully put the brand under the spotlight globally. Joleen is also a founding member of Artificial Intelligence + Adaptive Education (AIAED) Conference, an international conference focusing on important trends emerging from AI technology that applied to next-generation education and how these advances can impact adaptive human learning at scale and in various contexts.

Joleen is also a successful serial entrepreneur who built a number of brands and raised over 100 million RMB. She was a main guest for the famous TV programe “Only you” and “Virtual Business School" of CCTV2. She was invited to speak at World Summit AI Montreal together with Yoshua Bengio. She is a speaker at many EdTech and AI conferences talks, such as ACM UMAP, IJCAI, KDD, Tsinghua University, Tech Crunch, UBS, BETT, Oreilly, and a number of other conferences. Joleen is an Oxford graduate in Business Management.

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Session PLE101

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Joe Pokropski is a global learning & development executive who is passionate about helping organizations improve performance through innovative training practices.

He has led training organizations at four global firms helping them connect learning with frontline business strategy. He advocates for “learning at the speed of need” by championing performance support solutions that bring education closer to the business workflow.

Joe challenges organizations to embrace new possibilities and technologies noting that, “We consume news, entertainment and education in ways vastly different than we did just five years ago. Today’s customers demand the same immediacy and choice from their learning.” 

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Session PLE201

Richard Straub is Founder and President of the Peter Drucker Society Europe and of the Global Peter Drucker Forum, that celebrated its 10^th anniversary in 2018.

He is also Associate Director of the EFMD, a leading network of Business Schools and Corporations with the mission to improve the quality and effectiveness of management education and development. In his 32 years with IBM Dr. Richard Straub has held key international executive positions such as Deputy General Manager for PC Europe and Global Chief Learning Officer. After having retired from IBM end of 2005 he stayed connected to the company as Senior Advisor to it's global Education Industry.  

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David is currently responsible for growing the METRONOM Hub in Berlin and has previously worked for numerous companies in Product Management related roles and he additionally actively participates in the area of entrepreneurship.

Being exposed to the various educational systems throughout his life, Germany for his secondary school, Poland for his High-School and Bachelors and Scotland for his Masters, he got first-hand experience on how they differ.

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Audrey Watters is a writer and independent scholar who focuses on education technology – its politics and its pedagogical implications. Although she was two chapters into her Comparative Literature dissertation, she decided to abandon academia, and she now happily fulfills the one job recommended to her by a junior high aptitude test: freelance writer.

She has written for The Baffler, The Atlantic, Vice, Edutopia, Hybrid Pedagogy, Inside Higher Ed, The School Library Journal, and elsewhere across the Web, but she is best known for her work on her own website Hack Education.

Audrey has given keynotes and presentations on education technology around the world and is the author of several books, including The Monsters of Education Technology, The Revenge of the Monsters of Education Technology, The Curse of the Monsters of Education Technology, The Monsters of Education Technology 4, and Claim Your Domain.

She is currently at work on her next book, Teaching Machines, which will be published by MIT Press. Audrey was a recipient of the Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship at Columbia University for the 2017–2018 academic year.

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Session PLE101

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