James Bower - SITE Keynote Speaker

Keynote Speaker

Primates Play Together, Primates Learn Through Playing Together, Why Haven't Teachers And Their Students Been Playing Together?

James Bower -
University of Texas San Antonio

Abstract:

This far ranging talk will discuss the implications of the Internet, and especially social gaming on the Internet for classrooms, teaching, and teacher professional development in the (Near) future. The talk will consider the influence of old technology (the printing press) and an historical human scaling problem (too many students, not enough teachers) on the current structure of the educational system and then consider how the Internet is fundamentally changing both.

Biographical Information:

Dr. James M. Bower Ph.D. is the founder, Chairman, CEO and Chief Visionary Officer for Numedeon Inc. which in 1999 launched Whyville.net as the first virtual world tween learning environment. Whyville.net currently has more than 7 million registered users who spend on average over 35 minutes on the site per login. Whyville is being used increasingly by teachers and in schools as a web-based supplement for STEM as well as Careers education. Whyville has worked with a wide range of partners to influence and engage tweens including for example: Dell, Scion (Toyota), The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, The Getty Museum, Chicago's Field Museum, The American Association of Laboratory Animal Science, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bank Inter, The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the AMD Foundation. Whyville remains focused on 'blending' virtual and real lives. While a Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology, Dr. Bower also founded and co-directly the Caltech Pre-College Science Initiative (CAPSI), which provided professional training and support in hands-on inquiry based science education to teachers throughout the State of California. Dr. Bower is currently a professor of computational neurobiology at the Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio (bower-lab.org) and has served on education and technology advisory committees for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bower has also been the lead singer with the blues/rock band Ramon and the K-halls for many years.