Bill Shribman (Panel Moderator)
Senior Executive Producer and Director of Digital Partnerships WGBH
WGBH Educational Foundation (GBH) is a 501c3 non-profit and the source of approximately one-third of the PBS primetime line-up, with signature series that include NOVA, Frontline, Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, ARTHUR and Molly of Denali. Bill Shribman has 30 years’ experience making digital media for kids, 25 of those have been at GBH, working to support children’s education through technology. He is a two-time Daytime EMMY winner and has created national media literacy content in the form of video, animations, games, and after-school curriculum for his original series Ruff Ruffman: Humble Media Genius and Search It Up. He is an alum affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. His projects have included producing the Curious George website which has seen 3.5 billion page views, leading the Molly of Denali digital platform, developing an early literacy app with the Harvard Graduate School of Education, innovative VR projects with Microsoft and NASA, and outdoor science apps for Plum Landing. He is PI on an NSF grant developing a game with Alaska Native students to explore the impact of climate change. He also occasionally runs a small detective agency, The Fin Fur and Feather Bureau of Investigation. His TED-X and TED-Ed videos about photography are available online.
Felix Hu
Co-Founder Lando Interactive
Felix Hu is the co-founder of Lando, a seed stage startup that builds gamified in-person classes for elementary school students. Today, Lando’s engineering, financial literacy, art, and coding classes are taught in over 50 schools across the Bay Area. Previously, Felix was the Director of Product at Osmo where he launched dozens of AR learning games. His products from Osmo are used in over 30,000 schools and one million households around the world, and have received dozens of accolades such as the Parent’s Choice Award and the Platinum Oppenheim Toy Award. Prior to Osmo, he worked with Michael Horn and co-created the Strawbies project, a tangible coding game for kids, which was then sold to Osmo. Felix has a BS in Computer Science from Northwestern University.
Jillian Orr, Ed.M
Executive Producer WGBH
Jillian Orr, Ed.M is an Executive Producer at GBH in the Children’s Media group. She focuses on participatory design with learning scientists, parents, teachers, and children to create engaging digital resources that also help build the research base for early learning with technology. Content areas of expertise include preschool mathematics, science, and computational thinking.
Medha Tare, PhD
Senior Director of Research, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
Medha Tare is an experienced researcher in the learning sciences and technology area. Her work centers on addressing the needs of the whole child, including considering individual differences among learners, their environments, and the media through which they learn. Prior to the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, she was the Director of Research for the Learner Variability Project at Digital Promise. She has also served as a Learning Sciences Exchange Fellow through New America, working across sectors to promote early learning and help young children and their families thrive. Medha earned her PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Michigan and her BA in Cognitive Science and English at Rutgers University.
Daniel Busso, Ed.D
Senior Researcher at Meta
Daniel Busso is a senior researcher at Meta where he focuses on topics related to youth privacy (for example, developing parental controls that help parents and teens navigate their time online together; defaulting teens into more private settings; providing age-appropriate experiences so that teens can expect experiences that are tailored to their age and life-stage). Prior to Meta, he was Director of Research at the FrameWorks Institute and began his career as a middle and high school educator. Daniel holds a BSc in Psychology from the University of Bath, an MSc in Cognitive and Decision Sciences from University College London, and master’s and doctoral degrees in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University.
Reed Stevens, PhD
Professor of Learning Science, Northwestern
Founder, FUSE Studio
Reed Stevens is a Professor of Learning Sciences in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Professor Stevens is an ethnographer of everyday experience, with a focus on understanding learning and human experience across a wide variety of contexts. His research settings have been wide ranging, from pre-school aged children at home and school to video game play in family homes to professional engineers designing airplanes. Across this diversity the goal of his studies has been to provide more accurate images of how people learn and what knowledge is actually important in contemporary life. In his research studies, Professor Stevens uses a variety of ethnographic methods, often inventing new ones to capture the details of everyday learning in the wild. Professor Stevens specializes in the use of video interaction analysis methods.
Professor Stevens draws on his ethnographic research to guide the design of new learning environments. One of these design projects is FUSE Studios project (https://www.fusestudio.net/). FUSE Studios represent an alternative way to organize learning and teaching in schools, one that places student interest, choice, and agency at the center of the learning environment. FUSE Studios, now in its 12th year, has grown by word-of-mouth to be implemented in 260 schools in the US and abroad, serving more than 50,000 young people during the 2022-23 school year. Through a unique internal granting program created by Professor Stevens and funded by grants from industry partners, FUSE has been implemented at no cost in 186 low income and minority serving schools in Chicagoland and beyond.