Management

Ms. Wilson is a co-author of Project RED. One-to-One Institute is the oversight enterprise for Project RED, a groundbreaking research project aimed at demonstrating the effectiveness and revenue positive results of well implemented school technology. 

Current clients include Time To Know, PBS Education, Carnegie Learning, the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, the Jackson Laboratory, the Software and Information Industry Association, Pearson Education and Canter Learning; He is currently Adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education teaching Entrepreneurship in Educational Publishing.

John was President of the JASON Foundation where they brought scientific expeditions to life by integrating live broadcasts, online activities, and print materials into modular curricula for use in middle schools. Before this, he was GM of Turner Learning, the educational arm of Turner Broadcasting. At Turner Richards oversaw the transformation of CNN Newsroom, a 30-minute daily news program for students into CNN Student News (CNN/SN). CNN/SN integrated broadcast news, a full interactive web site, and CNN Student Bureau, where students around the world produced news segments for the CNN networks. The program was nominated for multiple EMMY’s and won a Golden Lamp Award.

John was Manager of the Educational Technology division of Bolt Beranek and Newman; and has been on the faculty of M.I.T and the University of Georgia. He has a history of designing and publishing award-winning multi-disciplinary educational materials in mathematics, language arts, science, and social studies. He is the author/editor of 3 books and over 60 articles, has been responsible for the development of over 1,000 educational products, and has won over $75M in grants and awards through his career.

She has been involved in diverse staff development programs throughout the nation and in Great Britain involving restructuring schools through the infusion of technology and curriculum enhancements. As a member of the ISTE NETS Writing Team and the Technology for School Administrators Writing Team she is deeply involved in infusing technology into standards based instruction. Additionally, she is a member of the ISTE Standards and Accreditation Committee working on the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) Refresh Project.

Dr. Abshire is the past co-chair of the NEA Membership Advisory Committee, currently serving on the NEA Legislative Committee and is the past chair of the Louisiana Association of Educators Instruction and Professional Development Committee. She is the Chairman of the Louisiana Department of Education Committee to Advance Technology Standards and since 1997 has served as Chairman of the Louisiana Technology Advisory Commission with the responsibility to oversee and approve proposals for the expenditure of over $200 million in technological advancements in the Louisiana schools.

In May of 2009, ISTE awarded Dr. Abshire the first Public Policy Advocate of the Year Award for her decades of work promoting educational technology. Sheryl is the immediate past Chair of the Teacher’s Retirement System of Louisiana Board of Trustees and oversees the placement of over 15 billion dollars in retirement funds. She is the immediate past Board Chair for the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) in Washington, D.C., is on the Executive Committee and also chairs their Public Policy Committee.
 

In 2008, CoSN (Consortium for School Networking) presented Bryan ISD with their TEAM award which is presented annually to a district that has significantly employed technology to transform learning. Bryan ISD recognized Jennifer’s efforts by naming her the district’s Administrator of the Year in 2002, and ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) awarded her the Advocacy Trend Setter in 2009.
Jennifer is currently the Advocacy Chair for the Texas Computer Education Association which has been very active in the support of HB 4294, a new Texas law that includes technology as part of the state textbook adoption process and purchasing.
 

Among the many awards Dr. Causby has received include being named three times as “North Carolina Superintendent of the Year”. He has received professional and academic achievement awards from three universities and has been honored with every major education leadership award in North Carolina.

Dr. Causby is a noted speaker and consultant in the national public education arena. He has delivered keynote addresses in 47 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, England and Israel. His presentation on School Reform was aired three times on CSPAN.

Jim and his wife June have been married for 41 years. They have three sons, two daughters-in-law, and four grandchildren. They reside in Asheville, North Carolina.
 

He has been a classroom remedial reading and English teacher at the junior high level, has served on the reading education faculties of the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Rhode Island, and has worked as a reading specialist, consultant, and project administrator. He served with the U.S. Peace Corps in Afghanistan, where he worked in rural development and village education programs.

Farstrup supervised and directed the Association’s research activities from 1985 to 1991, served as acting executive director during 1991 and 1992, and has served as the executive director since 1992. His responsibilities include representing the Association in many settings, serving as co-chair of the International Book Committee, providing leadership in the development of educational standards, and acting as IRA liaison to UNESCO and many other groups and organizations around the world. He is the coeditor with S. Jay Samuels of What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction (third edition) published by the Association in 2002.

Under his leadership the Association has moved aggressively to implement its five key goals: professional development, advocacy, partnerships, research, and engagement with emerging global issues. He and the staff of the Association have an enviable record of introducing new and innovative professional development materials and other services with the strong and effective support and advice of its volunteer members and elected leaders.

Mr. Greaves has 40 years experience in the computer industry, including 26 years at IBM. During the last several years at IBM, he was a member of the IBM EduQuest senior management team, responsible for educational hardware product marketing and development. His group developed many educational products including the IBM Personal Science Lab, and Mammals, a Multimedia Encyclopedia, the first commercial software product using software video playback.

In 1996 Mr. Greaves co-founded NetSchools, along with his mentor, Jim Dezell. NetSchools was the first company to focus on comprehensive curriculum integrated, Internet connected 1:1 laptop solutions. Working with Federal and state legislators, he implemented technology-transformed schools in several National 1:1 Educational Technology Demonstration programs, bringing substantial achievement gains to the poorest and most remote of America’s schools.

Following the sale of NetSchools to PLATO Learning in 2002, he founded The Greaves Group, a strategic education consulting organization. Along with his partners, The Greaves Group focuses on assisting clients develop their own vision of the future in educational technology and then implementing programs that help realize that vision. Mr. Greaves believes the work has only just begun which will lead to dramatic improvements in student achievement. He has joined the Project Red initiative.
 

She managed K-3 early literacy assessments and created the Intel Teach to the Future Technology Literacy Curriculum Activities for students and teachers world-wide in over one-hundred countries in multiple languages. She implemented a district-wide digital media distribution system solution, digitized digital content from major publishers, and developed data-driven decision-making professional development for an instructional management system implementation. She managed Virtual High School online supplemental courses in over sixty high schools with an 83% average past rate and her team provided support for more than 600 schools, 27,000 teachers and 439,000 students.

In her current work as a consultant, she helps the U.S. Department of Education, State departments, school districts, non-profits, foundations, and companies with curriculum instruction solutions and data-driven inquiry-based professional development for continuous school improvement. Her aim is to enable 21st century teaching and learning, improve teacher quality and strengthen administrative leadership to ensure college and career readiness skills for students.

Ms. Jackson is widely regarded as a visionary educator and serves on a wide variety of boards, advisory councils, and task forces for the most prominent educational institutions, nonprofits, and businesses.
 

Carol has more than eighteen years experience in education as both a classroom math teacher and in an administrative role as an Instructional Technology Trainer. In these positions, she wrote and received numerous educational grants and created and managed an international online problem-solving project, MathWorld Interactive, which allowed students in all grades to problem-solve with students around the globe.

 
While teaching mathematics with Ysleta ISD in El Paso, TX, her campus, Hillcrest Middle School, became a TIP grant recipient and 1:1 campus. During this time, she developed expertise in the use of websites as an instructional tool in mathematics and presented at numerous conferences and school districts on the subject. She later developed presentations in this topic for all content areas as well as for technology integration in a math classroom and continues to present throughout the State. In April of 2009, her article, A Website Is A Terrible Thing To Waste, was published in the TechEdge magazine.

Carol Mortensen holds two Master’s degrees in Education with a specialty in Distance Learning and in Education Administration. She will begin her doctorate studies in Distance Learning in January, 2010.
 

She is the former Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. As Director, she published the U.S. National Education Technology Plan for Congress and managed policy, planning, programs, and the research agenda on educational technology. In addition, she served as co-chair of the federal government’s Advanced Technologies Working Group for Education and Training. She served as a member of the Secretary’s Rural Education Task Force.
In 2009, Susan Patrick was named as one of the top national education leaders under 40 in the United States for her work in educational technology. In 2008, Susan Patrick was named by eSchool News, a leading national education technology journal, as one of the top 10 national education leaders who “have had a profound impact on educational technology” in the past decade for her work at iNACOL and at the U.S. Department of Education.

Prior, Patrick worked in Arizona on statewide e-government and e-learning initiatives and served as the legislative liaison for technology issues for Governor Jane Dee Hull. She received the 2001 Governor’s Spirit of Excellence Award for her work on the Telecommunications Open Partnership for Arizona (TOPAZ) program to provide affordable broadband access to rural communities through public-private partnerships.

She is a former Site Director for Old Dominion University’s TELETECHNET distance learning program. She worked as a Communications Manager for the University of Southern California in strategic planning for restructuring the governance and operations of the USC Health Sciences Campus, three hospitals and the 16 departments of the Medical School.

Susan Patrick has published articles and appeared in a variety of national news media such as CNN, Newsweek, USA Today, ABC News, NBC, CBS, US News and World Report, and numerous other publications.
 

Prior to her assignment at Region One ESC, she served as a public school educator for 22 years as a teacher, assistant principal, instructional facilitator and principal. She is also an Adjunct Professor at Capella University where she teaches a Master’s level internship course in Educational Leadership and mentors doctoral students.

In addition, Alma is on the Board of Directors for Texas Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development where she serves as the secretary for the Executive Board.

Alma has been married for 33 years to Hector Rodriguez who is a church pastor. They have two sons, Eric and Stephen who assist in the church ministry. Eric is married to Maribel and has a daughter named Emilia Renea. Stephen and Jennifer also have a daughter, Ariel Natalie. Alma loves spending time with her granddaughters.
 

Prior to joining the NEA Member Benefits, Mark was the Executive Director and General Manager at AOL Education. The education group provided online school services and resources for teachers, students and parents through AOL@SCHOOL. In 2004 he added the responsibility to direct the KOL Education group (Kids Online), AOL's online service just for kids. The KOL service offers children a fun integrated online and broadcast experience that airs on CBS Saturday morning (KOL Secret Slumber Party) containing entertaining and educational content.

Mark holds an undergraduate degree in Education from The Evergreen State College and M.Ed. and MBA from Pacific Lutheran University. He has served on the Board of Directors for the Fairfax Education Foundation and the U.S. Department of State, Office of Overseas Schools and Software Industry Information Association (SIIA) and Association of Education Publishers (AEP). He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Florida Education Technology Conference (FETC) and Hiakuls.com.
 

After three years as superintendent for a Central California school district, Dr. Vaille joined Lake Washington as its Chief Technology Officer in 2007. Lake Washington School District (LWSD) is located just east of Seattle and serves 24,000 students for families living in communities of Kirkland, Redmond and Sammamish.

In 2001, Dr. Vaille began service with the Corporation for Educational Networking Initiatives in California as the Director of Educational Applications for the Digital California Project (DCP.) The Digital California Project is a public/private partnership that is creating a statewide high performance network that will connect the more than 11,000 schools, colleges and universities in California. Vaille’s role is to connect the teaching and learning resources of the K-12, University of California, California State University and the California Community College systems and those of the private sector to this advanced services network.

On July 1, 1999, Vaille joined the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) as its first Chief Executive Officer. At NECC 2001, ISTE awarded Vaille its 2001 Learning & Leading with Technology Award in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of technology in schools and colleges.

In June of 1996, Vaille joined the California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse as its Director and as the Stanislaus County Office of Education’s Assistant Superintendent for Technology and Learning Resources. Also in California, Vaille served as the president of Computer-Using Educators, Inc., from 1989 to 1992. In 1993, he joined the CUE staff as its Executive Director, serving in that capacity until 1996. In December 1998, Vaille completed his doctorate in Educational Technology at Pepperdine University.
 

Chris has served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Foundations of Educational and Psychological Assessment and a member of the 2010 National Educational Technology Plan Technical Working Group. He serves on Advisory Boards and Commissions for PBS TeacherLine, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, and several federal research grants.   His co-edited book, Scaling Up Success: Lessons Learned from Technology-based Educational Improvement, was published by Jossey-Bass in 2005.  A second volume he edited, Online Professional Development for Teachers: Emerging Models and Methods, was published by the Harvard Education Press in 2006. 
 

He served as editor of the journal Discourse Processes (1996–2005), is the current editor of Journal of Educational Psychology, and is president of the Society for Text and Discourse and Artificial Intelligence in Education. He has published hundreds of articles and a dozen books (one being the Handbook of Discourse Processes) and has developed intelligent software in learning, language, and discourse technologies, including AutoTutor, Coh-Metrix, Operation ARIES, Question Understanding Aid, QUEST, and Point&Query.

She chaired the NRC Committee which produced On Evaluating Curricular Effectiveness, and was a coauthor on the NRC’s Scientific Research in Education.  She was a co-founder of the UTEACH program for Secondary Math and Science teacher preparation program at the University of Texas in Austin, and was the founder of the SummerMath program for young women at Mount Holyoke College and co-founder of SummerMath for Teachers. She coauthored the software Function Probe, Graph N Glyphs and sets of interactive diagrams.  She has served as vice-president of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, chair of the SIG-Research in Mathematics Education, on the editorial boards of the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, International Journal for Computers in Mathematics Learning, and Cognition and Instruction and is currently on the Research Committee of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  Dr. Confrey has taught school at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels. She received a Ph.D. in mathematics education from Cornell University.

She directs the NSF-funded Technology-enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) center. Board service includes the American Association for the Advancement of Science board, the Graduate Record Examination Board of the Educational Testing Service, the McDonnell Foundation Cognitive Studies in Education Practice board, and the Education and Human Resources Directorate at the National Science Foundation. Linn earned her Ph. D. at Stanford University where she worked with Lee Cronbach. She spent a year in Geneva working with Jean Piaget, a year in Israel as a Fullbright Professor, and a year in London at University College. She has twice been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences. Linn’s books include Computers, Teachers, Peers (2000), Internet Environments for Science Education (2004), Designing Coherent Science Education (2008), and WISE Science (2009). She chairs the Technology, Education—Connections (TEC) series for Teachers College Press. Awards include the National Association for Research in Science Teaching Award for Lifelong Distinguished Contributions to Science Education, the American Educational Research Association: Willystine Goodsell Award, and the Council of Scientific Society Presidents first award for Excellence in Educational Research.