I can now reveal one of our two keynote speakers - a person that I am sure many of you have met, read about (or from), and heard of: Mark Guzdial from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Many of you probably have read about Mark's efforts on media computation, as well as on contextualized support for learning and (of course) his very interesting Computing Education Blog. Of course, active SIGCSE members are likely to know, and appreciate, his efforts on behalf of SIGCSE.
For those who do not know Mark, here is a brief biography:
Mark Guzdial is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on learning sciences and technology, specifically, computing education research. He has published several books on the use of media as a context for learning computing. He was the original developer of the "Swiki" which was the first wiki designed for educational use. He received the Ph.D. degree in Education and Computer Science from the University of Michigan in 1993. He serves on the both ACM's Education Board and the Special Interest Group in CS Education (SIGCSE) Board, and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Learning Sciences, ACM Transactions on Computing Education, and Communications of the ACM.
Mark will give us a keynote on Wednesday titled Technology for Teaching the Rest of Us. Here's what you can expect to hear, to whet your appetite:
The motivated student is easy to teach. You facilitate learning and get out of the way. It's much more challenging to teach the student who is less motivated, or who needs knowledge to support their main interest. Think of the graphics designer who chooses to learn scripting to make their job easier, but doesn't want to learn to "program" and whose many (simple) mistakes cost valuable time. Think of the secondary-school business teacher who wants to teach computer science, but who doesn't want to learn to be a professional programmer. The number of people who need some knowledge of a domain may be much greater than those who need expertise in that domain. Providing learning opportunities tailored to the needs and interests of the learner, potentially motivating that interest where necessary, is a great and important challenge in an increasingly technological society. My talk will describe characteristics of these challenges and suggest where computing technologies and computing education research insights may provide solutions.
I am sure that his keynote will be one of the highlights in the conference!
Dr. Guido Rößling, March 3, 2011