Technical Advisory Council of the Burke Institute for Innovation in Education

The Burke Institute’s Technical Advisory Council consists of leaders in various fields: educational technology, the arts, the sciences, politics, and business. The council focuses on defining a long-term vision for the organization.

James Burke
Perhaps best known as the host and producer of many television series, including Connections and The Day the Universe Changed, James Burke has had a career as interdisciplinary as his television shows. An author, journalist, science historian, translator, and frequent keynote speaker, Burke’s experience might best be summed up by the term "educator." Working with various media, from radio to television to print, he has brought the world a unique perspective on how all of history is interrelated and interdependent. Burke was educated at Oxford University and has been awarded honorary doctorates in for his work in communicating science and technology.

John Seely Brown
John Seely Brown has served as the chief scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He has expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, ethnographies of the workplace, complex adaptive systems, and techniques for unfreezing the corporate mind. His personal research interests include digital culture, ubiquitous computing, user-centering design, and organizational and individual learning. A major focus of Brown's research over the years has been in human learning and in the management of radical innovation. He has published nearly a hundred scientific papers and a number of books, most recently co-authoring The Social Life of Information.

Dee Dickenson
Dee Dickenson is chief learning officer and founder of New Horizons for Learning, a nonprofit international education network based in Seattle, Washington. She has been a school administrator and has taught on all levels, has produced educational television and international conferences, as well as consulted for Motorola, IBM, Microsoft, and Disney Interactive. Dickenson is the editor of the book Creating the Future: Perspectives on Educational Change, and she is co-author with Linda Campbell and Bruce Campbell of the educational bestseller, Teaching and Learning Through Multiple Intelligences, the first comprehensive adaptation of the theories outlined in Dr. Howard Gardner's landmark book, Frames of Mind.

Doug Engelbart
Doug Engelbart has a 40-year track record in predicting, designing, and implementing the future of organizational computing. Co-founder of the Bootstrap Institute, Engelbart has authored dozens of publications and generated 20 patents, including the patent for the computer mouse. He is the recipient of many honors, notably the Lemelson-MIT Prize and the National Medal of Technology, the highest award for technological achievement the United States has to offer.

Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist, and author. Best known for his work in virtual reality, he coined the term "virtual reality" and in the early 1980s founded VPL Research, the first company to sell virtual reality products. In the late 1980s, he led the team that developed the first implementations of multiperson virtual worlds using head-mounted displays, as well as the first "avatars," or representations of users, within such systems. More recently, Lanier has been lead scientist of the National Tele-immersion Initiative, and is currently developing virtual reality models of organs for surgical training. His most recent publication is an essay in The New Humanists, edited by John Brockman.

Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold writes, "I fell into the computer realm from the typewriter dimension, then plugged my computer into my telephone and got sucked into the net." In earlier years, his interest in the powers of the human mind led to Higher Creativity and other books. He then started writing about life in the WELL virtual community and ended up with a book about the cultural and political implications of a new communications medium, The Virtual Community. He was also editor of The Whole Earth Review and The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog, as well as the first executive editor of HotWired and founder of Electric Minds. Interest in computers as mind-amplifiers led to Tools for Thought and Virtual Reality. His most recent book is Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution.

Jim Spohrer
Jim Spohrer is chief technology officer of IBM Venture Capital Relations Group, partnering with new ventures in IBM's emerging business areas. Earlier, Spohrer directed the work of the Computer Science Foundations Group at IBM's Almaden Research Center (ARC). Prior to IBM, he was a manager and later a distinguished scientist of learning technology projects at Apple's Advanced Technology Group, focusing on authoring tools, learning platforms, and learning architectures. He has published broadly in the areas of the future of technology, empirical studies of programmers, artificial intelligence, authoring tools, online learning communities, intelligent tutoring systems and student modeling, speech recognition and Markov modeling, and new paradigms in using computers. Spohrer has also helped found two nonprofit web sites: The Educational Object Exchange and WorldBoard: Associating Information with Places.

David Thornburg

Dr. David Thornburg is Director of the Thornburg Center and Senior Fellow of the Congressional Institute for the Future, helping to shape telecommunications and education policy for the benefit of all learners. As one of the first employees of the famed Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1971, David took part in the early stages of the personal computer revolution. He has been interested in the educational applications of technology for many years, with a special focus on the creative use of technology by students. In addition to his lectures, he has appeared on PBS, CBC and numerous radio and television programs throughout the Americas. David has authored numerous books and received several awards for his work in the field of educational technology. His latest book, Campfires in Cyberspace, explores the true nature of the World Wide Web as a tool for learning.

His educational philosophy is based on the idea that students learn best when they are constructors of their own knowledge. He also believes that students who are taught in ways that honor their learning styles and dominant intelligences retain the native engagement with learning with which they entered school. A central theme of his work is that we must prepare students for their future, not for our past.