TOP RESEARCHERS TO EXPLORE WAYS TO CREATE ENGAGING SCHOOLS OF...

Neuroscience and technology are merging to transform schools, eliminating rows of desks, teacher-centered instruction, and bored students. The learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, are merging with teaching and technology for evidence-based curriculum and assessments; with virtual reality games to improve student engagement and learning experiences; with robotics to teach coding and create future ready students; and with gaming, makerspaces, and classroom redesign to transform classrooms into engaging, collaborative, learning spaces.

Next month, a distinguished group of cognitive scientists, psychologists and innovative educators will gather before 1,000 educators at the Learning & the Brain^® Conference in Boston, MA, to examine how to transform schools, classrooms, and curricula for the future, and increase student engagement by merging neuroscience, augmented and virtual realities, robotics, makerspaces and classroom redesign.

Pioneer of social robotics and human-robot interaction Cynthia L. Breazeal, ScD, will present “The Rise of Personal Robots in Classrooms: Implications for Education” during a keynote on Friday, November 10. Dr. Breazeal, author of Designing Sociable Robots (2002), will present research that develops and examines the use and impact of social robots in Pre-K and kindergarten classrooms to foster early literacy skills. Dr. Breazeal is an Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Founder and Director of the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab.

In addition to Dr. Breazeal, the program features some other leading experts on technology and the learning sciences including:

Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, Director, Neuroscape; Professor of Neurology, Physiology, and Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco; Co-Founder and Chief Science Advisor, Akili Interactive Labs; Creator of VR games, such as Engage, NeuroRacer, and the Glass Brain, a 3D brain visualization that combines neuroimaging technologies of MRI and EEG to display personalized, real-time brain activity while learning; Host, PBS special “The Distracted Mind with Dr. Adam Gazzaley”; Co-Author, The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World (2016)

Daniel T. Willingham, PhD, Cognitive Scientist; Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia; Blogger, Science and Education Blog; Writer, “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator; Associate Editor, Mind, Brain, and Education Journal; Author, The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads (2017), Raising Kids Who Read: What Parents and Teachers Can Do (2015), When Can You Trust the Experts? (2012), Why Don’t Students Like School? (2010), and “Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn?” (2010, American Educator)

Eric D. Klopfer, PhD, Professor; Director, Scheller Teacher Education Program and The Education Arcade, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Co-Faculty Director, J-WEL World Education Lab; Co-Founder and Past President, Learning Games Network; Author, Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games (2008); Co-Author, Resonant Games (Forthcoming), The More We Know (2012), and Adventures in Modeling: Exploring Complex, Dynamic Systems with StarLogo (2001)

Heidi Hayes Jacobs, EdD, Creator, Curriculum21; Founder and President, Curriculum Designers, Inc.; Co-Author, Bold Moves for Schools: How We Create Remarkable Learning Environments (2017); Author, Active Literacy Across the Curriculum: Connecting Print Literacy with Digital, Media, and Global Competence, K-12 (2017), and Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World (updated 2014); Author/Editor, Mastering Digital Literacy (2014), Mastering Global Literacy (2013), and Leading the New Literacies (2013)

Jonathan Bergmann, MAEd, Co-Founder, Flipped Learning Network; Flipped Learning Pioneer; Former Lead Technology Facilitator, Joseph Sears School, Chicago, IL; Author, Solving the Homework Problem by Flipping the Learning (2017); Co-Author, Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty (2017), Flipped Learning for Elementary Instruction (2016), and Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day (2012)