The IEA leadership
is made up of diverse individuals that represent primary components of
the IEA. It includes leaders from higher education institutions,
educational support organizations, educational technology
specialists, and virtual design team leaders.
The primary function of the IEA leadership team is to serve as an
organizational support and development tenant for all IEA members.
If you would like to serve as an IEA leader please contact us at
iea@aweduserve.org
. As the IEA moves forward we will develop an election process for
IEA leaders.
Current Leadership:
Mark
Arnold,
IEA Coordinating Director - Webmaster. Mark
has served as an education technology specialist and instructional
design consultant for the past 4 years. He has been a high school
teacher for the past eight years and in that period has developed
instructional programs that have shaped front line uses of
technology. Many of his classroom practices have served as
models for technology integration practices in K-12 schools.
Mark is an accomplished instructional website designer and has
been recognized for his innovative instructional technology
efforts. He has most recently been a consultant on the Joyce
Research Project for Harvard University; an initiative to utilize
innovative technologies to address the issues of teacher retention
and distance mentoring. Mark is the founder of VTango, an
educational technologies consulting firm and instructional design
center focusing on helping educators integrate innovative
technologies into their instructional environments.Mark has led several
educational initiatives in the Active Worlds environment including
several unique intercultural collaborations and professional
development collaborations.
Richard
Giles,
IEA Technical Director.
Richard is the CEO of Virtually Learning (www.virtuallylearning.com).
He has been involved with the
Active Worlds platform since 2000, as an independent distributor
and member of its beta team. He has an intimate knowledge of its
technology and application. Richard has also designed and
consulted on a number of projects in the Active Worlds platform
with regards to its educational application.
Richard’s technical support skills were honed during his tenure as
a Technical Support agent for one of the UK’s largest Internet
service providers. He previously built computer system and had
early, extensive experience with computers and the Internet.
Richard also has a number of years experience in business
management including recruitment, payroll supervision, staff
assessment and management of retail outlets. Work in various
sectors of the service industry solidified Richard’s customer
service skills.
Richard has also taught English language since his emigration to
Finland from the UK in 2001.
Rafael
Cecconello, Latin American Coordinator.
Rafael
is Technology Secretary at Universidad Blas Pascal in Argentina, a
member of the Technology Institute in Cordoba Argentina and
www.universia.net , he is now
finishing his master thesis in Computer Technology in Education at
Universidad Nacional de la Plata (Argentina).
Rafael will coordinate IEA efforts in the Latin American sector.
He has served on the Active Worlds Educators Panel and actively
participated in efforts to utilize technology as a means of
fostering intercultural projects between instructors and learners.
Bonnie DeVarco,
IEA Events Director.
Bonnie has
been an education technology consultant to non-profit, corporate
and educational organizations for the past 15 years. She has
helped to develop multi-institutional programs for distance and
media enhanced learning for the University of California Office of
the President and the K-12 and has been a research and development
consultant for the UC College Prep Initiative, one of the first
statewide virtual high school programs since 1998. Four years ago
Bonnie founded the VLearn3D initiative, an international
networking hub for educators using multi-user environments to
enhance the learning process. Other clients include UC Santa Cruz,
Stanford University, UCLA, Cornell University, San Diego and
Imperial County Boards of Education, RedAppleOnline, and
DigitalSpace.♦
In addition to producing a broad range of educational media,
Bonnie has regularly produced conferences and events in cyberspace
and in distributed physical locations around the world through
Telascience.org, VLearn3D.org, UC Santa Cruz's "Tech Innovation"
program, UCLA, the Los Angeles Festival, the Buckminster
Fuller Institute, and now with the IEA. She also lectures
worldwide on the culture of cyberspace and innovative learning
technologies.
Patrick McKertcher,
IEA Funding Director.
Patrick
McKercher teaches courses in writing, technology, and the
environment at the University of California Santa Cruz. Long
involved in using technology in outreach to the public schools, in
particular the investigation of virtual reality educational spaces
for exploration, collaboration and mentoring, he also serves on
several edtech advisory boards. He is Project Manager for
James Burke's Knowledge Web project
(www.k-web.org).
Margaret Corbit, IEA
Research Director.
Margaret
Corbit directs SciCentr.org (www.scicentr.org),
the K-20 outreach program of the Cornell Theory Center (CTC) in
Ithaca, NY. SciCentr programs include professional development
workshops ranging from bioinformatics to development of virtual
worlds for STEM education, online exhibits (Web and virtual worlds
in AWEDU and CTCUni) featuring Cornell computational science, and
SciFair programs including workshops and ongoing programs in 6
middle and high schools across the country. Corbit has an
undergraduate degree in Theater Arts (Cornell '71) and an MS in
Plant Ecology (Cornell '95).
www.uh.edu/writecen),
where she has served as instructional designer for the UH College
of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences, and teaches and assesses
technology-enhanced humanities courses. Dr. Chisholm is the
author of Wired for College: A Student Guide to Computer-Assisted
Learning & WebCT, and Wired for College: A Student Guide to the
Computer Classroom (Prentice Hall). She has pioneered the use of
MUVE technology at the University of Houston: most recently in
Computers and Communication in Human Resource Management: An
Integrated Approach, where honors students at the Conrad N.
Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management studied
leadership principles and business writing through simulation
exercises in an online, 3-D Virtual Hilton Hotel.
Alan Lai Chi Kong, Hong Kong
Coordinator.
Alan has worked as an Art teacher in secondary school in Hong
Kong, China for nearly 25 years. He specializes in printmaking and
pottery. Alan is also a adjunct lecturer in art education at
a local university. Alan is an experience MUVE curriculum designer
and owns and maintains ARTshow world in AWEDU, facilitating
various innovative educational technology initiatives that revolve
around his duties as an Art instructor. He is also an
accomplished web designer, maintaining web resources for his
school system. Alan is a pioneer in ITC integration in the school
setting.
Dan Irmalm, Sweden Coordinator.
Dan is a primary school teacher in
Sweden. He is the developer of Klara world in the Active
Worlds Educational Universe. Klara
