Steve Hargadon
Steve Hargadon is the director of the K12 Open Technologies Initiative at the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and is the founder of the Classroom 2.0 social network (www.classroom20.com). He blogs, speaks, and consults on educational technology, and is particularly passionate about Free and Open Source Software, Web 2.0, computer reuse, and computing for low-income populations.
Steve runs the Open Source Pavilion and speaker series for the NECC and CUE shows, is the organizer of EduBloggerCon, and he holds a series of free workshops around the country (Classroom 2.0 LIVE) to help educators learn about the educational uses of the participative aspect of the Web. He is the Emerging Technologies Chair for NECC, and a regular columnist at School Library Journal, and a blogger at www.SteveHargadon.com, the Infinite Thinking Machine and TechLearning. His podcast series on educational technologies can be found at www.EdTechLive.com and at Classroom 2.0. Steve and his wife have four children.
steve@hargadon.com
www.stevehargadon.com
916-899-1400
Solveig Haugland
Solveig Haugland is the author of the OpenOffice.org 2 Guidebook and three other books on OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. She has been involved with the office suites since 1999 and has been training since 2002. She lives in Boulder, Colorado and blogs at http://openoffice.blogs.com/.
Contact: info@getopenoffice.org
Main site: http://www.getopenoffice.org/
Blog: http://openoffice.blogs.com/
Jim Lacey
Jim is the President and CEO of the Linux Professional Institute with affiliate organizations in more than 20 countries. Jim's experience is in managing and building international organizations with specific focus on channel development within the IT training and certification industry. His past roles include: General Manager of Linuxcare University (Linuxcare Corporation), Director of Operations and Regional Training Director for the Technology Training Division of CompUSA, and Territory Sales Manager with Serono Diagnostics (Ares-Serono Group, Switzerland) and Polaroid-Behring Diagnostics. Jim served as a Captain in the U.S. Army and graduated with a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.
Benoit des Ligneris
Dr. des Ligneris has obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Sherbrooke University. He was very active in the scientific computing and was architect of several large scale clusters. He joined OSCAR (Open Source Cluster Application Ressources) and was chair of the project from 2003 to 2004. Dr des Ligneris did a postdoc in distributed computing at the Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal.
Before founding Revolution Linux, Dr des Ligneris was involved with the Linux User Group of Sherbrooke University (the GULUS) as president and member.
In 2003, he co-created EduLinux a distribution dedicated to schools with specific applications and a default selection of application that just works for the regular user. EduLinux was installed in different schools and school districts using regular desktops and thin-clients.
Following the EduLinux success, Revolution Linux was founded in 2004.
Dr. des Ligneris is CEO of Revolution Linux since then. He led multiple high-level consulting mandate involving large scale deployment, open source software and education. He gave numerous talks at international conferences with subjects such as large scale Open Source deployment, Open Source in education, thin-clients, high performance computing, virtualization, Open Source in general, IT management...
Randy Orwin
Randy Orwin is currently the Director of Technology with Bainbridge Island School District and runs his own educational technology consulting company . He has a broad background in the K12 educational arena having been a tech director for nine years and a classroom teacher for fourteen years. During his time in the classroom he taught high school band, choir, general music, AP music, biology, advanced ecology, remedial math, computer networking (Novell CNA Program) and was also a library media specialist. Additionally, he taught fly fishing and fly tying at the college level.
Randy is very passionate about teaching and learning, especially when it comes to the use of technology. He has over 20 years of experience working with teachers on technology integration and a Masters degree in Instructional Technology from Utah State University. On a technical level he is a Certified Novell Engineer and holds the CompTIA A+ and Network + certifications. He is a regular presenter at the Northwest Council for Computer Education conference, has presented at the National Educational Computing Conference, the International K12 Open Minds conference, Tech Learning's Tech Forum conference and the National School Boards Association T+L conference.
He is a strong advocate for Open Source software in the K12 environment and has taught numerous Open Source workshops throughout the country both to teachers and technicians alike. He is considered by many to be a "Moodle Master" and is one of the founders of the Moodle Users Group Northwest site. He is a member of the CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) Open Technologies Advisory Board, is on the Board of Advisors for the National Center for Open Source and Education and was recently nominated by the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and received a "T.H.E. Journal" technology innovator award because of his creative use of Open Source software in his school district. One of his favorite quotes is: "It's not about the technology, it is all about powerful teaching and learning!"
orwinr@gmail.com
www.k12opensourcehelp.com
Benoit St-André
Benoit started his career as an high school science teacher and did planning for technology in those schools. Afterwards, he was appointed educational consultant on technology for the school district and was responsible for technology integration through the district. He then became curriculum specialist for science and technology, and was in charge of professional development for curriculum reform at that time.
He then was one of the authors of a science and technology textbook series for secondary curriculum. During that time, just before working at Revolution Linux, he also did some consulting, professional development and conferences about Free and Open Source software and Open Content.
Benoit has been around Open Source in Education for about ten years now, and believes Open Source is a key instrument on getting students and teaches to learn more efficiently with technology.
At Revolution Linux, he is Educational Resources Director, bridging the gap between IT and educational needs.
David Thornburg
David is an award-winning futurist, author and consultant whose clients range across the public and private sector, both in the United States and in Brazil. His razor-sharp focus on the fast-paced world of modern computing and communication media, project-based learning, 21st century skills, and open source software has placed him in constant demand as a keynote speaker and workshop leader for schools, foundations, and governments.
As the founder and Director of Global Operations for the Thornburg Center he conducts research and provides staff development in the several area. He helps clients to think intelligently about the future and is active in exploring ways that telecommunications and multimedia will change the face of learning, both at home and in the classroom.
His educational philosophy is based on the idea that students learn best when they are constructors of their own knowledge. He also believes that students who are taught in ways that honor their learning styles and dominant intelligences retain the native engagement with learning with which they entered school. A central theme of his work is that we must prepare students for their future, not for our past.
In addition to his work at the state and local level, he is also involved at the Federal level in helping to shape telecommunications and education policy for the benefit of all learners. David has shared his perspectives with policy makers in several countries.
He has written numerous books. His latest book, “When the Best is Free,” explores the world of free open source software in education, with special emphasis on tools for use by students. Reviewers have declared this to be the definitive book on the topic.
In addition to his consulting, speaking, and writing, David also has served on several non-profit boards. Dr. Thornburg is the recipient of several awards for product design and is the recipient of both the Golden and Platinum Disk awards from CUE (Computer Using Educators, Inc.) for his contributions to the advancement of learning and learning technologies. In 1999 he was selected as one of twenty "pioneers" in the field of educational technology by ISTE, the premiere organization devoted to the advancement of technology in learning, and was named by Technology and Learning magazine as one of the top ten most influential people in the field of educational technology in the past twenty years.
He has been the subject of numerous magazine articles and has appeared on radio and television throughout North America. According to the magazine, Electronic Learning, he is one of the six most popular speakers in the area of educational technology.
David splits his time between the United States and Brazil. His work in Brazil also is focused on education, and he has consulted for the Federal Secretary of Education as well as for firms and educational institutions throughout that country.