Copenhaver Institute

MSCI 2013

Engaging the net Generation as Learners
June 17-19, 2013

 

Keynote Speakers:

Ronald A. Berk, Ph.D.

Ronald A. Berk is Professor Emeritus, Biostatistics and Measurement, and former Assistant Dean for Teaching at The Johns Hopkins University. He retired 6.958 years ago to pursue speaking and writing full-time. He received the University's Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 1993 and Caroline Pennington Award for Teaching Excellence in 1997 and was inducted as a Fellow in the Oxford Society of Scholars in 1998.

Since that date, he has been in the Federal Witness Protection Program living in Maryland under the name Puffy Snoop M & M. Prior to teaching at Johns Hopkins, he taught elementary and middle school for several years in the Washington, D.C., School System and was an Assessment Specialist in the Montgomery County (Md.) School System. Then he served 30 years of a life term at Johns Hopkins, 11 years in the School of Education and 19 years in the School of Nursing, where he mentored numerous faculty and hundreds of students, all of whom unfortunately are still in prison or on probation.

Dr. Berk has presented more than 400 keynote addresses and research and training sessions on humor and multimedia in teaching, stress management, and evaluation of teaching performance at universities and conferences in 42 states and 14 countries, including Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Kuala Lumpur, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Taiwan, UK (Scotland), and United Arab Emirates.

He has destroyed scores of trees and shrubbery by publishing 13 books: eight "serious" books on measurement and evaluation, one on faculty evaluation-Thirteen Strategies to Measure College Teaching, and three on humor-Professors Are from Mars®, Students Are from Snickers®, Humor as an Instructional Defibrillator, and his most recent Top Secret Tips for Successful Humor in the Workplace. His latest book is The Five-Minute Time Manager for College Students. The quality of all of these books, his more than 170 journal articles/book chapters, 300 blogs, and professional presentations reflect his lifelong commitment to mediocrity and his professional motto: "Go for the Bronze!" (See www.ronberk.com, www.pptdoctor.net, or www.linkedin.com/in/ronberk for further details.)

Greg Sherman, Ph.D.

Greg Sherman, spent the first ten years of his professional education career teaching junior high school science. Using his students as experimental subjects, he spent part of his teaching time investigating different ways in which computer-based technology might help his students better learn the skills needed to think and act like scientists. After earning degrees in educational computing as well as instructional technology from Arizona State University, Dr. Sherman moved from junior high school to higher education, teaching a variety of instructional design, evaluation and media development courses at universities in Arizona, Kansas and Virginia.

In addition to teaching instructional technology courses, Sherman has worked as an instructional design and evaluation consultant for a number of organizations, including Innovative Designs for Education and the National Science Teachers Association. One of his more recent evaluation projects included an examination of the role electronic portfolios play in the professional development experiences of science teachers.

Currently director of Radford University's instructional technology program, Sherman designs and facilitates a variety of web-based courses for the program while conducting research on the instructional design practices of teachers. His most passionate research area of interest involves the investigation of ways in which teachers might improve their practice by designing instruction that uses various computer-based technologies to help define meaningful and purposeful learning contexts.

Dan Brown

Dan Brown is a National Board Certified Teacher and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle, the memoir of his turbulent and illuminating first year of teaching fourth grade in the Bronx. The book was re-released in an expanded edition in 2011 by Skyhorse Publishing containing a foreword by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

Since 2003, Dan has taught in New York City and Washington, D.C. He holds a master's degree in English Education from Columbia University'sTeachers College and a bachelor’s degree in Film & Television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. During the 2012-2013 school year, Dan has served as a full-time Teaching Ambassador Fellow in the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Education.

Dan's writing has appeared in many publications, including the Boston Globe, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, CNN.com, Educational Leadership, and Education Week. He has been a regular blogger for The Huffington Post and the Teacher Leaders Network. His essays have also been included in The American Public School Teacher: Past, Present, and Future (Harvard Education Press, 2011) and Teaching 2030 (Teachers College Press, 2011).

Dan Brown did not write The Da Vinci Code, and he is okay with that. He can be reached at danbrownteacher@gmail.com. Follow him on twitter: @danbrownteacher.