Sugata Mitra

Professor of Educational Technology, School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Newcastle University, UK Visiting Professor, MIT Media Lab

Sugata Mitra is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University in the UK and Visiting Professor at MIT in the US. He was recently described by The Times newspaper as a "Global Education Superstar". Sugata works in the areas of Cognitive Science, Information Science and Educational Technology. Sugata has been working in these areas as well as in Physics and Energy for more than 30 years and holds a Ph.D. in theoretical Solid State Physics.

His contributions include a number of inventions and first-time applications. Among other applications, he is credited with having started the database publishing industry (particularly the Yellow Page industry) in India and Bangladesh, as well as having implemented the first applications of digital multimedia and Internet based education in India in the late 1980s.

In 1999, Sugata dug a hole in a wall bordering an urban slum in New Delhi, installed an internet-connected PC, and left it there (with a hidden camera filming the area). What they saw was kids from the slum playing around with the computer and in the process of learning how to use it and how to go online, and then teaching each other. In the following years they replicated the experiment in other parts of India, urban and rural, with similar results, challenging some of the key assumptions of formal education. The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge.

Sugata is building on this discovery through the design of hardware and software that enable children to reach the intermediate to expert level entirely on their own. His current research is leading towards an alternative primary education using self-organised learning, mediation and assessment environments. His work inspired the book 'Slumdog Millionaire' that went on to become the Oscar winning film of 2009.

The global consequences of Sugata's discovery for closing the digital divide have resulted in many international awards including The Raizada Award for the best paper of 1999 from the Computer Society of India, 1999; Best Social Innovation of the Year 2000 Award from the Institute for Social Inventions, UK; Man for Peace Award for 2002 from the Together For Peace Foundation, Italy; Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT, Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India, 2005; Best Education Research Article in an Open Access Journal for 2005; Communication of Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, 2006.

Bonnie Hain

PARCC Assessment

Bonnie Hain began work as a Senior Adviser, English language arts and literacy with Achieve in June, 2011. Bonnie's primary work responsibilities focus on assessment development and design for the PARCC assessments in English language arts and literacy. Prior to her arrival at Achieve, Bonnie worked for ten years with the Frederick County Public Schools in Frederick, MD in a variety of positions, including Assistant Principal for an elementary school, English Curriculum Specialist for grades 6-12, and Director of Curriculum and Professional Development. Bonnie held teaching and building-level administrative positions in English and reading in middle schools in Baltimore County, MD.

Bonnie served as the English Specialist, K-16, for the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) for three years where she facilitated the development of several performance-based assessments (MSPAP, Maryland Writing Test), high school English core learning standards, and instructional frameworks and exemplars for performance-based instruction. In this position, she also worked closely with four-year postsecondary institutions to develop standards for teaching English to guide teacher-education programming and with career education specialists to develop instructional models to increase student career readiness skills in literacy for students exiting high school and community college career preparation programs.

Before moving to MSDE, Bonnie held several university teaching positions in English and English education where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in 18th century literature, rhetoric and composition, and literary theory, including positions at Bowie State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, and the University of San Diego.

Bonnie received her BA in English/Spanish education from the State University of New York at Albany, her M.A. in English from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and her Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York (SUNY), Stony Brook.

Joseph L. Willhoft, Ph.D.

Executive Director SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium

Joe Willhoft is the Executive Director for the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium. For the six years prior to that he was assistant superintendent for assessment and student information for the state of Washington, where his responsibilities included design and implementation of Washington’s assessment program and collection and reporting of student information for the state’s longitudinal student database. Before moving to state-level work, Joe directed assessment and evaluation activities at the local level for more than twenty years, primarily in the Tacoma School District in Washington and in Charles County schools in Maryland.

Joe has a doctorate in educational measurement and statistics from the University of Maryland. He is past president of the Maryland Assessment Group and the Washington Educational Research Association, and was a founding member of the AERA Special Interest Group for Classroom-Based Assessment. He has been involved in several collaborative data and assessment efforts, including the Technical Work Group for a congressionally-mandated evaluation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and as chair of the NAEP Policy Task Force for the National Assessment Governing Board, a collaborative effort co-sponsored by the Board and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Joe has served on the Technical Advisory Committee for several states.

He has a master's degree in Special Education, and in his more than forty-year career has taught at all grade levels from kindergarten to graduate school – his favorite being third grade. He and Mark Twain share the same birthday.