Session Presenters
Please Note: Click on the title of a session to access shared resources. (These are currently being added)
Daniel Ballantyne
Daniel has been teaching History, Civics, and Social Science at Bluevale Collegiate since 2004. He completed his Masters in Education through The University of Western Ontario in 2013, writing his thesis on the leadership interactions within the WRDSB’s Futures Forum Project. Daniel has occupied a variety of formal and informal leadership roles within school, Board, and Provincial contexts. His passion is to see student learning transformed by critical inquiry, differentiation, gradual release, and targeted technology integration.
Session Title and Resource Link > Digital Natives? Digital Savages! Digital Citizens
Session Description: Today’s adolescents are often lauded for being “digital natives”, adept at navigating the latest smartphone technology or app, but research suggests this assertion is far from indisputable. This session will explore selected classroom strategies that help students develop their understanding of how to behave as responsible citizens in various contexts. A panel of Bluevale students will discuss their own work developing a digital footprint through these activities.
Becka Borody
Becka is a local digital marketing strategist who is passionate about helping small businesses and startups succeed. Having worked in the technology, academic and fashion industries, she has in-depth knowledge of what universities and employers look for when hiring.
Session Title: Being Googled is the New Interview
Session Overview: Do you have a child applying for jobs or university? Find out how and why employers and schools aren't just looking at applications, grades and resumes. Your child's online activities say a lot more than you think. Find strategies for making sure your child's online presence isn't holding them back from getting where they want to be.
Elke Baumgartner
Elke is a Digital Literacy Support Teacher for the WRDSB, supporting 25 elementary schools. Elke has taught primary, junior and intermediate French Immersion as well as university courses for teachers through ETFO and Drake University.
Session Title: iPads: Not Just for Watching YouTube!
Session Overview: We all know how much kids love to use their mobile devices for watching YouTube and other videos. This session will show examples of how students are using the iPads in our classes to collaborate, communicate and be more innovative as they become creators instead of just consumers of information. Come prepared to try out a few of the WRDSB selected apps as well!
Andrew Bieronski
Andrew is a high school teacher at Huron Heights Secondary School in Kitchener, where he was part of the 1:1 chromebook implementation team. He is passionate about finding ways to leverage technology in the classroom to improve student learning and achievement. Andrew serves as an Educational Technology Mentor to startup companies that are part of the University of Waterloo's Velocity program is the founder and director of TEDxKitchenerED.
Session Title and Resource Link > Going 1:1 - WRDSB's Chromebook Initiative in High School
Session Overview: Last year, the WRDSB experimented with a pilot project that gave a chromebook to every grade 9 student in three high schools, which they brought to each class and took home with them every night. After a great deal of success, the board expanded this project to give every grade 9 student across all high schools their own chromebook this past September, in a sustainable model that should see every secondary student with their own device within just a few years. Learn how this project is working and how it is being leveraged by students and teachers to improve learning.
Alison Bullock
Alison is a Digital Literacy Support Teacher with WRDSB. She taught in Junior French Immersion for 15 years. She implemented technology in innovative ways to engage learners and to join students across schools and grades in collaborative learning projects.
Session Title and Resource Link > Staying Connected, the 21st Century Way
Session Overview: Take advantage of today's technologies to feel actively connected to your child's class. Learn how to view digital portfolios, and to follow along with tools like Twitter, where classes share learning moments each day. Do you struggle to find time to meet with teachers personally? Ask them about Google Hangout as a way to connect virtually! By connecting virtually, you are not committing to anything; learn about Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) as it affects how schools use social media.
Andrew Bieronski and Alison Bullock
Session Title: Cross Division Digital Collaboration
Session Overview: What happens when an elementary class and a high school class combine forces on one task, without ever being in the same room? Discover how students across divisions connect and collaborate using tech tools! Alison and Andrew respectively taught grades 4 and 10, and merged their students’ talents on two different collaboration projects. Students created both an interactive Ancient Times Museum, as well as an exhibition of passion projects, that culminated in a significant fundraising day for a national charity.
Mark Carbone
After a 35 year career with the Waterloo Region District School Board, Mark is now working as an independent consultant in the education and technology sectors. His experience includes serving in a variety of roles: Chief Information Officer, IT Manager, ICT consultant, secondary classroom teacher and department head for the Waterloo Region District School Board, Ontario, Canada. He currently chairs the OSAPAC advisory committee to the Ministry of Education, is president of the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario (ECOO) and is a speaker at www.TEDxKitchenerED.com. Mark is a frequent presenter at Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching conferences in Ontario and throughout Canada. Personal interests include arranging and composing music. Mark is an active performer as a member of the Venturi Winds Quintet and the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra.
Session Title and Resource Link > Connect, Learn, Reflect and Share: Make a Difference Today
Session Overview: This session will take a look at the rapid changes in society, the challenge of educating students in an ever changing world and developing skills that will enable students to thrive in the future.
Cat Coode
Cat is a mother of two and the founder of Binary Tattoo, a Waterloo-based Internet Safety company. She spent over a decade working at Blackberry in roles from software developer to senior management. In 2013, Cat recognized the need for people to better understand what their online identities looked like, and how to manage them. Combining her love for teaching and her background in tech, Cat launched Binary Tattoo to help empower people with this knowledge so they can have a safe and positive online experience.
Resource Documents can be found here > Cat Coode Resources
Session (A) Title: The Top Sites and Apps our Kids Use
Session Overview: Which sites are most popular with our kids? What are they doing on there anyway? Take a tour through the popular social media sites and apps, find out their appeal, uncover their risks, and get the information parents need to know to help guide their kids in using them
Session (B) Title: Monitoring and Guiding Your Kids Online
Session Overview: How closely should a parent monitor their kids online behaviour? Discuss what monitoring and blocking tools are available and if they are right for your family. Review strategies to help guide kids online in a safe and productive way. For a home, school, and beyond.
Carlo Fusco
Carlo Fusco was a former Head of Science that became the Teacher-Librarian at Waterloo Collegiate Institute in Ontario. He has always had a love of technology from the first time he used a Commodore PET to program Pong in BASIC, to more recently, teaching students to create YouTube videos. His current focus has been on Google Applications for Education and helping his colleagues become better acquainted with the platform, as well as helping them discover the potential for GAFE in the the classroom as a powerful pedagogical tool.
Session Title and Resource Link > Getting Googlie with Your Persona
Session Overview: As many students embrace the use of Google Accounts for home and school, it is important to keep your accounts separated. In this session we will look at how to separate your Google accounts, how to take advantage of the incognito tab, how to secure your account, and how to back everything up and take everything with you when you graduate.
Session Title and Resource Link > Media Made for Sharing
Session Overview: In the information age it is very easy to copy and paste anything from a digital source. During this session we will look at how we can leverage search terms to find unencumbered media. We will also look at how Creative Commons is changing copyright in the era of mashups and remixing. In addition, we will learn how we can find Creative Commons media for personal and educational use.
Scott Kemp and Dave Lambert
Scott and Dave are teachers at Cameron Heights and Jacob Hespeler, respectively. Each brings a keen critical eye to the classroom and looks to implicitly connect an ethic of critical thinking and community building to every school interaction. As founding members of the Futures Forum project, they have helped shepherd the move towards the integration of technology, civic action and critical thinking.
Session Title and Resource Link > School, It's not About You
Session Overview: The current narrative of school is to build the skills for individual success. With “student-centred” learning becoming the new norm, we continue to mythologize the self as the purpose of school. Education currently moves students to think about what will serve themselves best in the future. We believe this narrative is flawed. School is not for the learner, but rather it is for the community. We believe it is time to help students build the skills they need to better serve the community. By focusing on authenticity and expanding service as a purpose of learning, we help fulfill the principal mission of school as building an informed and purposeful, active citizenry. Our talk will focus on ways we’ve implemented these ideas, how technology empowers student service and why the payoff for authentic, service oriented learning serves all stakeholders.
Karyn Kibsey
Karyn is a Project Manager for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. The Canadian Centre’s goal is to reduce the incidence of missing and sexually exploited children by providing programs and services to Canadians. It operates Cybertip.ca – Canada’s tipline to report the online sexual exploitation of children. Working with information gleaned from Cybertip.ca and our many touch points with stakeholders in Canada, Karyn has been involved in the development of tools and resources for youth as well as professionals in education, law enforcement and child protection. These resources cover issues such child sexual abuse and exploitation, emerging issues and trends impacting youth, and the online safety of children. Karyn’s work with youth, formerly in international education, has taken her across the globe – with assignments in China, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and Brazil.
Session Title: Parenting Youth in the Digital World (Resource Documents can be found here > CCCP Resources)
Session Overview: Addressing personal safety is an ongoing process. As children get older, their behaviour and interests change. As a result, the type of and level of supervision of children’s online activities also changes. Setting expectations and providing supervision around technology use in the form of Conduct (what your child does on the Internet), Content (the information that your child comes across on the Internet), and Contact (the communication that your child has with other individuals via the Internet) is key. This session will provide parents with information and tips to help keep their children safe online.
Elaine Mackenzie
Elaine is a Digital Literacy Support Teacher for the WRDSB, supporting 25 elementary schools. Her previous incarnations have included Teacher Librarian, Special Education resource teacher and grade 8 teacher of English, History and Geography.
Session Title: Not Your Same Old Library! (Elaine's Resource can be accessed here > Library Online)
Session Overview: Join this session to learn about the many library services that are available to WRDSB students both at school and at home… from streaming videos to information databases to digital audio and ebooks! Everything from accessing copyright friendly information to homework research will be demonstrated.
Scott McKenzie
Scott is an elementary teacher with WRDSB. He currently teaches Grade 3 at New Dundee Public School. Scott has shared his learning on technology at Bring IT Together conferences in 2014, 2015 and 2016. He was honoured to speak at TedxKitchenerED in 2014. Scott is a strong believer that all children should feel successful at school, and he utilizes technology to meet the needs of all learners in his classroom. This year, he is working on a project integrating coding and robotics as tools to deepen student comprehension in Mathematics and Language, from Grade 1-6.
Session Title and Resource Link > Digital Citizens Coding a Positive Digital World!
Session Overview: Find out how students can deepen their understanding of Digital Citizenship, and share their knowledge with others through online coding. This workshop will show examples of how students create games and animations that promote good digital citizenship. Coding is an activity that encourages collaboration, critical, and creative thinking skills. As it is shared online, it is always an example of digital citizenship as well. Build your own positive message in this hands-on session!
Jamie Reaburn Weir
Jamie is a passionate educator in the WRDSB who focuses on the ideas of personalization of learning and descriptive feedback in her classroom practice. As an active collaborator, she has co-facilitated engaging and meaningful student-led projects that provide her students with opportunities to have a voice on a global level. Jamie also presents at various conferences across Ontario including BIT, Google Summits, and Connect. Her greatest accomplishment, however, is being a mommy to two beautiful, funny, and creative little girls.
Session Title and Resource Link > Digital Tools for Learning
Session Overview: We live in a society where people are using media to share their thinking on a daily basis. Funny videos, vines, memes, Snapchat stories, screencasts, texts, tweets, and good old blogs provide the opportunity for people to have their voices heard in a more creative fashion. In this session, we will explore some of the tools our students are using on a daily basis and consider how we can leverage them to demonstrate their learning of the overall curriculum expectations.
Michael Redfearn
(Michael's Website)
A father of 5 children, high school teacher for 21 years and former K-12 school district technology consultant for the Waterloo Catholic District school board - Michael is currently the coordinator of the Ontario Catholic eLearning Consortium and the author of over 60 published articles on education, technology, media literacy, popular culture and youth. He is passionate about helping students use social media and digital technology to create an authentic, positive digital legacy.
Session Title and Resource Link > The Art of Parenting in A Digital World (Sessions A and C)
Session Overview: The Art of Parenting in A Digital World will provide parents with an overview of the dizzying digital world many of today’s children are immersed in and strategies on how to safely guide their children in harnessing social media tools to create a positive digital footprint.
Stephanie Rozek
A strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, Stephanie is the award-winning Executive Director of Hive Waterloo Region, a not-for-profit promoting digital literacy and open access to the web as part of the Mozilla Foundation global Hive Learning Network. In 2015 she founded and directed the Year of Code Waterloo Region campaign and its popular HackerGrrlz program. A serial entrepreneur by nature, her work has a history of focus on social innovation in the technology sector through community engagement.
At present Stephanie is the KW Ambassador for TechGirls Canada, sits on the Women in Engineering committee at the University of Waterloo, and is a board member with the inter-arts collective Pins and Needles Fabric Company. She has worked at a leadership level with National Engineering Month Ontario, the Waterloo Region chapter of Canadian Women in Technology, TEDxWaterloo, and Engineers Without Borders Canada. She has received both the KW Oktoberfest Women of the Year Entrepreneur award (2014), and a Waterloo Region 40 under 40 award (2013).
Session Title and Resource Link > Demystify the Web: Engaging Youth to Become Tomorrow’s Digital Creators
Session Overview: Our world is increasingly becoming defined by the new technologies that surround us: the Web, smart phones, connected devices, and so much more. The online space can be intimidating but with a little bit of guidance, it’s a lot of fun! This session will provide an overview of on- and offline tools, games, and the “maker” movement, all which enable kids from 5-105 to be more than elegant consumers of technology. Through understanding how technology is made, they can themselves become digital creators who influence and change their own world.
Daniel Ballantyne
Daniel has been teaching History, Civics, and Social Science at Bluevale Collegiate since 2004. He completed his Masters in Education through The University of Western Ontario in 2013, writing his thesis on the leadership interactions within the WRDSB’s Futures Forum Project. Daniel has occupied a variety of formal and informal leadership roles within school, Board, and Provincial contexts. His passion is to see student learning transformed by critical inquiry, differentiation, gradual release, and targeted technology integration.
Session Title and Resource Link > Digital Natives? Digital Savages! Digital Citizens
Session Description: Today’s adolescents are often lauded for being “digital natives”, adept at navigating the latest smartphone technology or app, but research suggests this assertion is far from indisputable. This session will explore selected classroom strategies that help students develop their understanding of how to behave as responsible citizens in various contexts. A panel of Bluevale students will discuss their own work developing a digital footprint through these activities.
Becka Borody
Becka is a local digital marketing strategist who is passionate about helping small businesses and startups succeed. Having worked in the technology, academic and fashion industries, she has in-depth knowledge of what universities and employers look for when hiring.
Session Title: Being Googled is the New Interview
Session Overview: Do you have a child applying for jobs or university? Find out how and why employers and schools aren't just looking at applications, grades and resumes. Your child's online activities say a lot more than you think. Find strategies for making sure your child's online presence isn't holding them back from getting where they want to be.
Elke Baumgartner
Elke is a Digital Literacy Support Teacher for the WRDSB, supporting 25 elementary schools. Elke has taught primary, junior and intermediate French Immersion as well as university courses for teachers through ETFO and Drake University.
Session Title: iPads: Not Just for Watching YouTube!
Session Overview: We all know how much kids love to use their mobile devices for watching YouTube and other videos. This session will show examples of how students are using the iPads in our classes to collaborate, communicate and be more innovative as they become creators instead of just consumers of information. Come prepared to try out a few of the WRDSB selected apps as well!
Andrew Bieronski
Andrew is a high school teacher at Huron Heights Secondary School in Kitchener, where he was part of the 1:1 chromebook implementation team. He is passionate about finding ways to leverage technology in the classroom to improve student learning and achievement. Andrew serves as an Educational Technology Mentor to startup companies that are part of the University of Waterloo's Velocity program is the founder and director of TEDxKitchenerED.
Session Title and Resource Link > Going 1:1 - WRDSB's Chromebook Initiative in High School
Session Overview: Last year, the WRDSB experimented with a pilot project that gave a chromebook to every grade 9 student in three high schools, which they brought to each class and took home with them every night. After a great deal of success, the board expanded this project to give every grade 9 student across all high schools their own chromebook this past September, in a sustainable model that should see every secondary student with their own device within just a few years. Learn how this project is working and how it is being leveraged by students and teachers to improve learning.
Alison Bullock
Alison is a Digital Literacy Support Teacher with WRDSB. She taught in Junior French Immersion for 15 years. She implemented technology in innovative ways to engage learners and to join students across schools and grades in collaborative learning projects.
Session Title and Resource Link > Staying Connected, the 21st Century Way
Session Overview: Take advantage of today's technologies to feel actively connected to your child's class. Learn how to view digital portfolios, and to follow along with tools like Twitter, where classes share learning moments each day. Do you struggle to find time to meet with teachers personally? Ask them about Google Hangout as a way to connect virtually! By connecting virtually, you are not committing to anything; learn about Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) as it affects how schools use social media.
Andrew Bieronski and Alison Bullock
Session Title: Cross Division Digital Collaboration
Session Overview: What happens when an elementary class and a high school class combine forces on one task, without ever being in the same room? Discover how students across divisions connect and collaborate using tech tools! Alison and Andrew respectively taught grades 4 and 10, and merged their students’ talents on two different collaboration projects. Students created both an interactive Ancient Times Museum, as well as an exhibition of passion projects, that culminated in a significant fundraising day for a national charity.
Mark Carbone
After a 35 year career with the Waterloo Region District School Board, Mark is now working as an independent consultant in the education and technology sectors. His experience includes serving in a variety of roles: Chief Information Officer, IT Manager, ICT consultant, secondary classroom teacher and department head for the Waterloo Region District School Board, Ontario, Canada. He currently chairs the OSAPAC advisory committee to the Ministry of Education, is president of the Educational Computing Organization of Ontario (ECOO) and is a speaker at www.TEDxKitchenerED.com. Mark is a frequent presenter at Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching conferences in Ontario and throughout Canada. Personal interests include arranging and composing music. Mark is an active performer as a member of the Venturi Winds Quintet and the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra.
Session Title and Resource Link > Connect, Learn, Reflect and Share: Make a Difference Today
Session Overview: This session will take a look at the rapid changes in society, the challenge of educating students in an ever changing world and developing skills that will enable students to thrive in the future.
Cat Coode
Cat is a mother of two and the founder of Binary Tattoo, a Waterloo-based Internet Safety company. She spent over a decade working at Blackberry in roles from software developer to senior management. In 2013, Cat recognized the need for people to better understand what their online identities looked like, and how to manage them. Combining her love for teaching and her background in tech, Cat launched Binary Tattoo to help empower people with this knowledge so they can have a safe and positive online experience.
Resource Documents can be found here > Cat Coode Resources
Session (A) Title: The Top Sites and Apps our Kids Use
Session Overview: Which sites are most popular with our kids? What are they doing on there anyway? Take a tour through the popular social media sites and apps, find out their appeal, uncover their risks, and get the information parents need to know to help guide their kids in using them
Session (B) Title: Monitoring and Guiding Your Kids Online
Session Overview: How closely should a parent monitor their kids online behaviour? Discuss what monitoring and blocking tools are available and if they are right for your family. Review strategies to help guide kids online in a safe and productive way. For a home, school, and beyond.
Carlo Fusco
Carlo Fusco was a former Head of Science that became the Teacher-Librarian at Waterloo Collegiate Institute in Ontario. He has always had a love of technology from the first time he used a Commodore PET to program Pong in BASIC, to more recently, teaching students to create YouTube videos. His current focus has been on Google Applications for Education and helping his colleagues become better acquainted with the platform, as well as helping them discover the potential for GAFE in the the classroom as a powerful pedagogical tool.
Session Title and Resource Link > Getting Googlie with Your Persona
Session Overview: As many students embrace the use of Google Accounts for home and school, it is important to keep your accounts separated. In this session we will look at how to separate your Google accounts, how to take advantage of the incognito tab, how to secure your account, and how to back everything up and take everything with you when you graduate.
Session Title and Resource Link > Media Made for Sharing
Session Overview: In the information age it is very easy to copy and paste anything from a digital source. During this session we will look at how we can leverage search terms to find unencumbered media. We will also look at how Creative Commons is changing copyright in the era of mashups and remixing. In addition, we will learn how we can find Creative Commons media for personal and educational use.
Scott Kemp and Dave Lambert
Scott and Dave are teachers at Cameron Heights and Jacob Hespeler, respectively. Each brings a keen critical eye to the classroom and looks to implicitly connect an ethic of critical thinking and community building to every school interaction. As founding members of the Futures Forum project, they have helped shepherd the move towards the integration of technology, civic action and critical thinking.
Session Title and Resource Link > School, It's not About You
Session Overview: The current narrative of school is to build the skills for individual success. With “student-centred” learning becoming the new norm, we continue to mythologize the self as the purpose of school. Education currently moves students to think about what will serve themselves best in the future. We believe this narrative is flawed. School is not for the learner, but rather it is for the community. We believe it is time to help students build the skills they need to better serve the community. By focusing on authenticity and expanding service as a purpose of learning, we help fulfill the principal mission of school as building an informed and purposeful, active citizenry. Our talk will focus on ways we’ve implemented these ideas, how technology empowers student service and why the payoff for authentic, service oriented learning serves all stakeholders.
Karyn Kibsey
Karyn is a Project Manager for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. The Canadian Centre’s goal is to reduce the incidence of missing and sexually exploited children by providing programs and services to Canadians. It operates Cybertip.ca – Canada’s tipline to report the online sexual exploitation of children. Working with information gleaned from Cybertip.ca and our many touch points with stakeholders in Canada, Karyn has been involved in the development of tools and resources for youth as well as professionals in education, law enforcement and child protection. These resources cover issues such child sexual abuse and exploitation, emerging issues and trends impacting youth, and the online safety of children. Karyn’s work with youth, formerly in international education, has taken her across the globe – with assignments in China, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan and Brazil.
Session Title: Parenting Youth in the Digital World (Resource Documents can be found here > CCCP Resources)
Session Overview: Addressing personal safety is an ongoing process. As children get older, their behaviour and interests change. As a result, the type of and level of supervision of children’s online activities also changes. Setting expectations and providing supervision around technology use in the form of Conduct (what your child does on the Internet), Content (the information that your child comes across on the Internet), and Contact (the communication that your child has with other individuals via the Internet) is key. This session will provide parents with information and tips to help keep their children safe online.
Elaine Mackenzie
Elaine is a Digital Literacy Support Teacher for the WRDSB, supporting 25 elementary schools. Her previous incarnations have included Teacher Librarian, Special Education resource teacher and grade 8 teacher of English, History and Geography.
Session Title: Not Your Same Old Library! (Elaine's Resource can be accessed here > Library Online)
Session Overview: Join this session to learn about the many library services that are available to WRDSB students both at school and at home… from streaming videos to information databases to digital audio and ebooks! Everything from accessing copyright friendly information to homework research will be demonstrated.
Scott McKenzie
Scott is an elementary teacher with WRDSB. He currently teaches Grade 3 at New Dundee Public School. Scott has shared his learning on technology at Bring IT Together conferences in 2014, 2015 and 2016. He was honoured to speak at TedxKitchenerED in 2014. Scott is a strong believer that all children should feel successful at school, and he utilizes technology to meet the needs of all learners in his classroom. This year, he is working on a project integrating coding and robotics as tools to deepen student comprehension in Mathematics and Language, from Grade 1-6.
Session Title and Resource Link > Digital Citizens Coding a Positive Digital World!
Session Overview: Find out how students can deepen their understanding of Digital Citizenship, and share their knowledge with others through online coding. This workshop will show examples of how students create games and animations that promote good digital citizenship. Coding is an activity that encourages collaboration, critical, and creative thinking skills. As it is shared online, it is always an example of digital citizenship as well. Build your own positive message in this hands-on session!
Jamie Reaburn Weir
Jamie is a passionate educator in the WRDSB who focuses on the ideas of personalization of learning and descriptive feedback in her classroom practice. As an active collaborator, she has co-facilitated engaging and meaningful student-led projects that provide her students with opportunities to have a voice on a global level. Jamie also presents at various conferences across Ontario including BIT, Google Summits, and Connect. Her greatest accomplishment, however, is being a mommy to two beautiful, funny, and creative little girls.
Session Title and Resource Link > Digital Tools for Learning
Session Overview: We live in a society where people are using media to share their thinking on a daily basis. Funny videos, vines, memes, Snapchat stories, screencasts, texts, tweets, and good old blogs provide the opportunity for people to have their voices heard in a more creative fashion. In this session, we will explore some of the tools our students are using on a daily basis and consider how we can leverage them to demonstrate their learning of the overall curriculum expectations.
Michael Redfearn
(Michael's Website)
A father of 5 children, high school teacher for 21 years and former K-12 school district technology consultant for the Waterloo Catholic District school board - Michael is currently the coordinator of the Ontario Catholic eLearning Consortium and the author of over 60 published articles on education, technology, media literacy, popular culture and youth. He is passionate about helping students use social media and digital technology to create an authentic, positive digital legacy.
Session Title and Resource Link > The Art of Parenting in A Digital World (Sessions A and C)
Session Overview: The Art of Parenting in A Digital World will provide parents with an overview of the dizzying digital world many of today’s children are immersed in and strategies on how to safely guide their children in harnessing social media tools to create a positive digital footprint.
Stephanie Rozek
A strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, Stephanie is the award-winning Executive Director of Hive Waterloo Region, a not-for-profit promoting digital literacy and open access to the web as part of the Mozilla Foundation global Hive Learning Network. In 2015 she founded and directed the Year of Code Waterloo Region campaign and its popular HackerGrrlz program. A serial entrepreneur by nature, her work has a history of focus on social innovation in the technology sector through community engagement.
At present Stephanie is the KW Ambassador for TechGirls Canada, sits on the Women in Engineering committee at the University of Waterloo, and is a board member with the inter-arts collective Pins and Needles Fabric Company. She has worked at a leadership level with National Engineering Month Ontario, the Waterloo Region chapter of Canadian Women in Technology, TEDxWaterloo, and Engineers Without Borders Canada. She has received both the KW Oktoberfest Women of the Year Entrepreneur award (2014), and a Waterloo Region 40 under 40 award (2013).
Session Title and Resource Link > Demystify the Web: Engaging Youth to Become Tomorrow’s Digital Creators
Session Overview: Our world is increasingly becoming defined by the new technologies that surround us: the Web, smart phones, connected devices, and so much more. The online space can be intimidating but with a little bit of guidance, it’s a lot of fun! This session will provide an overview of on- and offline tools, games, and the “maker” movement, all which enable kids from 5-105 to be more than elegant consumers of technology. Through understanding how technology is made, they can themselves become digital creators who influence and change their own world.