Westley Field - SIG Chair

Skoolaborate currently has 50 schools from around the world collaborating of how virtual environments can produce engaging student learning experiences. MLC school has a tremendous vision for transforming learning. Currently it is recognised as a world leader in blended learning.

Westley presents around the world on topics such as Making 1 to 1 work, Heuristics of implementing elearning, Second Life in Education, Educational Technology, Connecting Students in a Web 2.0 world and Leading in a Flat World.

Westley has been awarded a Churchill Fellowship, Computerworld Honours (Smithsonian), Apple Distinguished Educator, Macromedia Ed Leader and Adobe Ed Leader for his work with schools and communities. Recently he was made a fellow by the Australian Council of Educational Leaders and received the John Lee Memorial Award for outstanding educational leadership from ASLA NSW.

Dr Lisa Dawley - SIG co Chair

Dr Sean Lancaster SIG co Chair

Sean Lancaster is a professor of educational technology integration at Grand Valley State University, which is a public school in Michigan (USA). He is a previous recipient of the Pew Teaching with Technology Award. He has taught in a middle and high school setting and has been in education for 18 years. He currently has a research project studying multiple 1-to-1 laptop initiatives in Michigan and is also working closely with 1 particular 1-to-1 school to assess the changes in teaching and learning that occur because of their laptop initiative. 

Sean is also interested in the pedagogy of online instruction, particularly at the K-12 level. Additionally, Sean and his wife, Paula, have secured millions of dollars in funding from the National Institutes of Health to develop instructionally validated software for students with mild disabilities to realize more success in school and in life. 

         John Larkin

John conducts professional development workshops for academics and teachers in the areas of information technology, eLearning course design and curriculum integration. In recent months John has collaborated with educators and trainers with organisations such as the NSW DET Country Area Programme, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Ministry of Higher Education in Malaysia, Singapore Airlines and the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre in Sydney. John has been providing professional development workshops to educators for 16 years.

Presently teaching at St Joseph’s Catholic High School,  on the south coast of New South Wales,  John is acutely aware of the demands and pressures placed upon educators at the coalface of teaching and learning.

He has also taught at the National Institute of Education in Singapore and with the Faculty of Education at the University of Wollongong. John was also the Senior Assistant Director at the Centre for Educational Development at Nanyang Technological University prior to his return to Australia
 

             Dr David Gibson

               Lucy Gray

Lucy is now an independent education consultant, working with a variety of institutions and businesses on 21st century learning initiatives. Lucy is a seasoned conference and workshop presenter, and has developed curriculum materials as an independent contractor for both Apple Inc. and Google Inc. Her varied professional interests include digital equity issues, information literacy, global education, multimedia development, and the incorporation of social media technologies into educational settings. She often covers these topics in her posts to the Infinite Thinking Machine, a group weblog sponsored by WestEd and Google, and to the Edu 2.0 section of the O'Reilly Radar blog. She is also a Google Certified Teacher.

For more information, please visit her blog at http://lucygray.org.

       Claudia L'Amoreau

Claudia L’Amoreaux focuses her work at the intersection of learning and new technologies. She’s currently leading a teacher professional development project using new media tools and social games at Natoma Group, a learning, technology and development consultancy. Previously, Claudia directed Education Programs at Linden Lab where she advised universities, school systems, museums, foundations and education technology companies on how to deploy the 3D immersive world, Second Life, for international collaboration, teaching and learning innovation, and improved student engagement. She identified and developed emerging communities, facilitated public and private partnerships, and advocated successfully for more open social networking policy. Before joining Linden Lab, Claudia ran her own eLearning consulting company, providing leadership on internet projects in the U.S., Brazil, Fiji, Europe, and the Middle East since 1985 in the areas of Education, Culture, and Sustainability. In addition, she co-founded two experimental media labs with partner Dan Mapes, and designed and directed an alternative high school/early college program for teens with a focus on apprenticeship in new media. She co-authored the book Creating Learning Communities (Solomon Press, 2000). She has recently launched a new blog, SightingsByClaudia: Where the Future of Learning is NOW.

Dr. Chareen Snelson

Chareen Snelson is a faculty member with the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, USA. She has designed and taught numerous online courses including web design, multimedia, and a course called "YouTube for Educators." Her research interests center on open-source online video, video-sharing, and machinima video using virtual movie sets created in Second Life.

Chareen serves as a co-investigator on an NSF funded project to design a virtual science lab about geochronology for high school students in online Earth science courses. The labs will be designed with video and Flash elements that interact with the course management system to capture student interactions.

Prior to working in higher education, Chareen taught science at a rural middle school serving students in 6th through 8th grade.