Plenary Speakers

The Ubiquitous Learning: An International Conference will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations by researchers and practitioners.

Garden Conversations

Plenary Speakers will make formal 30-minute presentations. They will also participate in 60-minute Garden Conversations – unstructured sessions that allow delegates a chance to meet the speakers and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.

Please return to this page for regular updates.

The Speakers

Lindsay Davidson

Dr. Lindsay Davidson currently holds the Chair of Teaching and Learning at Queen’s university. She is a practicing pediatric orthopedic surgeon and Associate Professor at Queen’s School of Medicine where she also completed a Master’s of Education in 2009. She is the Director of the last two years of the undergraduate medical program. Dr. Davidson has been very active in the Queen’s community and has been on the forefront of bringing both technology-rich learning and active learning strategies to Queen’s Faculty and is currently developing a web-based community for like-minded teachers at www.adventuresinteaching.ca Dr. Davidson has received two national teaching awards (Canadian Association for Medical Education Certificate of Merit, 2011; Provan Award for Undergraduate Surgical Education, 2005) for her educational work.

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Kimiko Ryokai

Kimiko Ryokai is an assistant professor at the School of Information and Center for New Media at UC Berkeley. She teaches courses on interface aesthetics and theory and practice of tangible user interfaces at UC Berkeley. Ryokai’s work on tangible user interfaces to support creative learning and storytelling has been presented at CHI, SIGGRAPH, CSCL, IUI (winning 4 best paper awards), as well as exhibited at international venues such as Ars Electronica Linz Austria, Children’s Museum Kyoto, Japan, AIGA, and IDSA (Gold Award). She has also conducted a number of human-centered design research projects at the internationally renowned design firm IDEO as an interaction design and human factors specialist. Ryokai received a B.A. in Linguistics and Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1997), M.S. degree (1999) and Ph.D. (2005) in Media Arts and Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Al Weiss

Al Weiss is the Director of Educational Technology and Curricular Innovation at Pacific University where he is leading and supporting initiatives to integrate digital technology into teaching and learning. Al has been engaged in teaching with technology since 1992 when he used a simple spreadsheet program to help teach math and science skills to seventh and eighth graders. Since then, he has used technology in a number of different classrooms and settings, including an elementary school in Hawaii, a junior high school in Japan, and when teaching a variety of graduate and undergraduate classes. Most recently, he coordinated the instructional development and faculty support programs for campus-wide e-learning platforms at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Al has given numerous workshops and presentations at regional and national conferences on e-learning and has published articles on virtual learning environments and gaming. His current research focuses on the relationship between physical and digital learning spaces.

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