Spotlight on Education Featuring Karen Cator

Location

Mother Rosalie Hill Hall, 116

$65

Karen Cator is President and CEO of Digital Promise. From 2009-2013, Karen was Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, where she led the development of the 2010 National Education Technology Plan and focused the Office’s efforts on teacher and leader support. She also was a leading voice for transforming American education through technology innovation and research. Prior to joining the department, Cator directed Apple’s leadership and advocacy efforts in education. In this role, she focused on the intersection of education policy and research, emerging technologies, and the reality faced by teachers students and administrators. She is a past chair for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and has served on boards including the Software & Information Industry Association-Education.  As a social learner Karen prefers to learn with and from people. She believes many minds create better ideas and that social interactions incent action. Karen is increasingly interested in how online interactions can be designed to improve learning opportunity, regardless of location and will provide a perspective on the integration of technology into learning, and the challenges that brings including addressing the digital learning gap.

Please register.

For eight years, SOLES has sponsored the annual Spotlight on Education: A Speaker Series. The series provides a forum to hear and discuss world-class, cutting-edge, visionary thinking. It is a venue for site administrators, teacher leaders, central office administrators, university students, professors of educational administration, and business leaders to hear insights and perspectives from respected researchers and educators. The Spotlight Speaker Series provides an excellent opportunity for district- and site-level leadership teams to attend sessions, and return to their respective workplaces to engage in professional dialogue around the topics and themes presented.

This year’s theme will parallel and support SOLES' newest center—The Mobile Technology Learning Center. Our speakers will provide participants with broad perspectives on the future of schooling, given the increasing use of mobile technology by students at all age levels. To ensure success, new pedagogies will be necessary to meet the demands of personalized and digitalized learning. Given the transition to 21st century learning standards, our speakers will also discuss communication, critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration and creativity.