Keynote Speakers

Michael Wesch, PhD
Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology
Kansas State University

Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on society and culture.

After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Ian Jukes
Executive Director
The infoSavvy Group

Ian Jukes has been a teacher, an administrator, writer, consultant, university instructor and keynote speaker. As the Director of the InfoSavvy Group, he works extensively with school districts, businesses, community organizations and other institutions to help shape preferred futures. He is the creator and co-developer of TechWorks, the internationally acclaimed K-8 technology framework; together with Anita Dosaj was the catalyst behind the NetSavvy and InfoSavvy information literacy series; and is a Contributing Editor for both the Audio Education Journal and Technology and Learning Magazine. His two most recently published books are Net.Savvy: Building Information Literacy for the Classroom, co-authored with Anita Dosaj and Bruce MacDonald, and Windows on the Future, co-authored with Ted McCain. Both are published by Corwin Press.