Renowned Innovator in Education Policy, Philanthropy, and Open Source Education to Join ISKME’s Board
Mike Smith to Join ISKME’s Board
Renowned Innovator in Education Policy, Philanthropy, and Open Source Education to Join ISKME’s Board
Renowned Innovator in Education Policy, Philanthropy, and Open Source Education to Join ISKME’s Board
Mike Smith to Join ISKME’s Board
Renowned Innovator in Education Policy, Philanthropy, and Open Source Education to Join ISKME’s Board
PRLog (Press Release) – Oct 18, 2010 – Half Moon Bay, Calif. – Marshall “Mike” Smith, who has served as advisor or top deputy to several U.S. Secretaries of Education and has been a pioneer in the support and development of Open Education Resources (OER), has joined the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), effective October 1, 2010.
Smith is currently a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He has served as a leading federal education official in the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations, including a stint as acting deputy secretary, which included managing the day-to-day affairs of the 5,000-employee U.S. Department of Education. Smith was recently awarded the first Harvard Graduate School of Education Medal for Education Impact for making a lasting difference in the field of education and on the lives of learners across the nation and beyond.
Smith also has served as the program director for education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where he oversaw the development of OER, supported sweeping reforms in California public schools, and played a significant role in supporting efforts to strengthen the nation’s community colleges. Smith has written extensively about federal education policy and the use of technology in K-12 education and is a former dean of the Stanford University School of Education.
“We are honored to have Mike join our Board of Directors as his experience and knowledge will be a major asset to ISKME’s ongoing work to become an international resource for research, innovation, and practice,” said Lisa Petrides, ISKME’s President and founder. “Mike’s expertise in open education resources and his decades of work as a leading thinker on education change in the United States and abroad will help guide ISKME’s work in new directions.”
“I have supported the mission of ISKME since its first efforts to launch the OER Commons and am pleased to be able to take on a new role in the organization’s development,” said Smith. “Open source and other uses of technology hold great promise in providing access to high quality, low-cost education, but we still have miles to go to ensure that technology’s potential is fully realized. ISKME is known for its education research and innovation, expertise in knowledge management, and leadership in open source education, and it is rapidly becoming a catalyst for big ideas that can transform education.”
Since its founding, ISKME has developed multiple resources for educators in the field of technological innovation, including OER Commons (www.oercommons.org) and the Big Ideas Fest (www.bigideasfest.org). OER Commons is an open source teaching and learning network that supports and facilitates the creation, sharing, and modification of open educational resources. Equally significant, the Big Ideas Fest brings prominent innovators in education and other fields together with key stakeholders across the entire learning field to spotlight, challenge, and change the ways in which education can be made relevant to learning.
An independent, nonprofit research institute, ISKME was launched in 2002 by researcher and former professor Lisa Petrides who, along with a team of educators, conducted a series of ground-breaking studies on data and information use in major urban school districts, community colleges, and other crucial parts of the education sector. Based in Half Moon Bay, Calif., ISKME conducts social science research, develops research-based innovations, and facilitates field building to improve knowledge sharing in education. ISKME helps K-20 education and the organizations that support it build capacity to collect and share information, apply it to well-defined problems, and create knowledge-driven environments focused on learning and success.
The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (www.iskme.org), located in Half Moon Bay, Calif., is a global leader in research and practice around knowledge sharing in the education sector. An independent, non-profit organization established in 2002, ISKME is well-known for its OER Commons initiative (www.oercommons.org), as well as its award winning international research on information and knowledge use in the education sector.