Peter DeWitt (Ed.D) is the founder and CEO of the Instructional Leadership Collective, and approaches everything with a learners mindset. He was a K-5 teacher for 11 years and a principal for 8 years. For over 12 years, he has been facilitating professional learning nationally, and internationally, based on the content of many of his best-selling educational books. DeWitts professional learning relationships are a monthly hybrid approach that includes both coaching and the facilitating workshops on instructional leadership and collective efficacy. His work has been adopted at the state level, university level, and he works with numerous school districts, school boards, regional networks, ministries of education around North America, Australia, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the U.K. Peter writes the Finding Common Ground column for Education Week with Michael Nelson and they host Corwin''s Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast.
In 2020 DeWitt co-created Education Weeks A Seat At the Table where he moderates conversations with experts around the topics of race, gender, research, trauma and many other educational topics. Peter is the author, co-author or contributor of numerous books and his articles have appeared in educational research journals at the state, national and international level. His books have been translated into numerous languages. Brad Curriehas been an educator for 20 years as a coach, teacher, and administrator. He currently serves as a Director of Planning, Research, and Evaluation for the Chester School District in Chester, New Jersey. Brad is the 2017 NASSP National Assistant Principal of the Year and part of the ASCD Emerging Leaders Class of 2014. He is the co-founder and co-moderator of a weekly Twitter discussion for educators called #satchat. Brad has authored five books including the newly released Tech Request: A Guide for Coaching Educators in the Digital World.
He presents nationally on leadership, teaching, and learning in the digital era. Brad has served as an adjunct professor in Drew Universitys Graduate School of Education and is a Google Certified Trainer. Connect with Brad by following him on Twitter @thebradcurrieor visiting his company website at www.evolvingeducators.com. Starr Sackstein currently works at World Journalism Preparatory School in Flushing, NY as a high school English and Journalism teacher and author of Teaching Mythology Exposed: Helping Teachers Create Visionary Classroom Perspective. This year she begins a new blog with Education Week Teacher called "Work in Progress" in addition to her personal blog StarrSackstein.com where she discusses all aspects of being a teacher.
Sackstein co-moderates #jerdchat and #sunchat as well as contributes to #NYedChat. This year she has made the Bammy Awards finals for Secondary High School Educator. In speaking engagements, Sackstein speaks about blogging, journalism education and BYOD, helping people see technology doesn''t have to be feared. Dr. Spike C. Cook is currently serving in a leadership position as the Principal of RM Bacon Elementary for the Millville Public School District located in the City of Millville, New Jersey. He joined RM Bacon staff in April of 2011. Since that time, he has been influential in increasing technology use with students and teachers, reorganized the Basic Skills Program, and worked on improving the climate and culture of the building.
He began his educational career in 1999 and has worked in higher education, middle school and elementary school. Dr. Cook has served as a counselor, teacher, adjunct professor, Executive Director, vice principal, guidance director and principal. His blog "Insights Into Learning" received a nomination for the Best Administrator Blog by Edublogs. Dr. Cook has presented at numerous state and local conferences. In addition, he has presented at the 2012 ASCD Texas in Dallas, 2013 ASCD National Conference in Chicago, and the 2013 National Association for Elementary School Principals in Baltimore. He was the keynote speaker at the Millville Public Schools Opening Day for over 1,200 staff.
Dr. Cook was one of the featured "connected educators" in the 2014 Corwin Press book, "Digital Leadership" by Eric Sheninger. Susan M. Beardenis the Director of Information Technology at Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne, FL. A former teacher, she frequently presents about social media, education technology, and digital citizenship at national and state conferences including ISTE, FETC, CoSN, Miami Device, and the Digital Citizenship Summit. In 2015 she was named to the Center for Digital Educations list of "Top 30 Technologists, Transformers and Trailblazers" and received the "Making IT Happen" Award from the Florida Society for Technology in Education. In 2014, she received the Bammy Award for School Technologist of the Year and was a finalist in the education talk show host category. Bearden co-founded and moderates the #edtechchat and #digcit (Digital Citizenship) Twitter chats, which are weekly online discussions about Education Technology and Digital Citizenship.
She is a regular contributor to the popular EdTechChat Radio broadcast for the BAM Radio Network (www.bamradionetwork.com/edtechchat). A popular guest blogger, she has written for a variety of online publications including the Huffington Post, SmartBrief on Education, and Edsurge, and was named as one of Common Sense Medias Favorite Digital Citizenship Bloggers to follow in 2014. Inspired by her experiences with Twitter, she developed Tweechme, a mobile app specifically designed to teach educators how to build Personal Learning Networks on Twitter. Connect with her on Twitter @s_bearden and @Tweechmeapp or at www.susanmbearden.com.
Thomas C. Murray serves as the state and district digital learning director for the Alliance for Excellent Education located in Washington, DC. He has testified before the United States Congress and works alongside that body, the US Department of Education and state departments of education, corporations, and school districts throughout the country to implement digital learning while leading Future Ready, Project 24, and Digital Learning Day. Murray''s experiences in K-12 digital leadership, which include implementing a 1:1 program, BYOD, blended learning, and a K-12 cyber school where he served as the director of technology and cyber education for the Quakertown Community School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, have been recognized nationally. A former school principal, Murray is passionate about proper digital learning implementation and personalized professional learning. He was the recipient of the Blended Scho.