Keynotes

VWBPE 2021 Reconnaissance Keynotes

We are pleased to introduce these three illustrious individuals in the field of education technology and virtual worlds.
Please join us in the VWBPE Main Auditorium on the days and times listed below to hear the messages of this year’s VWBPE keynote presenters.

Dr. Undine Froemming

Keynote Presentation
Thursday 18 March
9:00 AM SLT/PDT
VWBPE Main Auditorium

Dr. Undine Frömming

SL: augenblick Winkler

Undine Frömming is a professor at HMKW Berlin, University of Applied Science for Media, Communication and Management in Berlin, Germany. She is the head of the Master’s Program in Visual and Media Anthropology at HMKW Berlin. She received her PhD (Dr. phil.) in 2005 from the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany and was a junior professor and professor at Freie Universität Berlin from 2009 to 2019. In addition to her interest in Visual and Media Anthropology, she specializes in Environmental Anthropology. She has completed several visual anthropological fieldwork studies in Eastern Indonesia, in East-Africa (Tanzania), in Iceland and in different online communities and virtual worlds. She published many articles and books about Digital Environments, virtual worlds and on disasters. She was one of the principal investigators of the third party funded (BMBF) research project ANIK (Visualization and mapping of Alpine risks in times of climate change) and one of the principle Investigators of the European Union research projects 1) WRITER. Writing, Reading, Inclusion. The European Richness. She worked for TV Broadcasting studios in Berlin and has her own company that produces viral videos for environmental education. Most important publications:

Digital Environments. Ethnographic Perspectives Across Global Online and Offline Spaces, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2017
Virtual Environments and Cultures, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag, 2013
Journal of Visual and Media Anthropology (editor)

Heike Philp

SL: Gwen Gwasi

Heike Philp is CEO of let’s talk online sprl, based in Brussels, Belgium, immersive education specialist. With over 20 years in language education and with Germany’s first live online language school, Philp co-initiated four European funded projects and has been working with 49 European partners including 22 universities to develop accredited and certified teacher training courses for language teaching and learning in immersive environments. These EU Projects are:

LANCELOT (LANguage learning with CErtified Live Online Teachers, 2005-2007) and AVALON (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live Online, 2009-2011) about language teaching and learning in a virtual classroom or virtual world,
CAMELOT (CreAting Machinima Empowers Live Online language Teaching and learning, since 2013) about machinima (videos of 3D worlds) of language learning conversations and
GUINEVERE (Games Used IN Engaging Virtual Environments for Real-time language Education, start 12/2017), about games in virtual worlds.

Philp runs her own web conferences: Virtual Round Table Web Conference on Language Learning Technologies, DaFWEBKON for teachers of German and SLanguages Annual Symposium. She co-owns EduNation islands in Second Life and in OpenSim.

Heike Philp

Keynote Presentation
Friday 19 March
8:00 AM SLT/PDT
VWBPE Main Auditorium

Dr. Bryan Alexander

Keynote Presentation
Saturday 20 March
9:00 AM SLT/PDT
VWBPE Main Auditorium

Dr. Bryan Alexander

SL: Bryan Zelmanoff
Twitter: @BryanAlexander

Bryan Alexander is an award–winning, internationally known futurist, researcher, writer, speaker, consultant, and teacher, working in the field of higher education’s future.

He completed his English language and literature PhD at the University of Michigan in 1997, with a dissertation on doppelgangers in Romantic-era fiction and poetry.

Then Bryan taught literature, writing, multimedia, and information technology studies at Centenary College of Louisiana. There he also pioneered multi-campus interdisciplinary classes, while organizing an information literacy initiative.

From 2002 to 2014 Bryan worked with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE), a non-profit working to help small colleges and universities best integrate digital technologies. With NITLE he held several roles, including co-director of a regional education and technology center, director of emerging technologies, and senior fellow. Over those years Bryan helped develop and support the nonprofit, grew peer networks, consulted, and conducted a sustained research agenda. In 2013 Bryan launched a business, Bryan Alexander Consulting, LLC. Through BAC he consults throughout higher education in the United States and abroad.

Bryan speaks widely and publishes frequently, with articles appearing in venues including The Atlantic Monthly, Inside Higher Ed. He has been interviewed by and featured in the Washington Post, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, National Public Radio (2017, 2020, 2020, 2020, 2020), the Chronicle of Higher Education (2016, 2020), the Atlantic Monthly, Reuters, Times Higher Education, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, Pew Research, Campus Technology, The Hustle, and the Connected Learning Alliance.
He recently published Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education for Johns Hopkins University Press (January 2020), which won an Association of Professional Futurists award. He is currently working on Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Age of Climate Crisis (2022). His two other recent books are Gearing Up For Learning Beyond K-12 and The New Digital Storytelling (second edition).

Bryan is currently a senior scholar at Georgetown University and teaches graduate seminars in their Learning, Design, and Technology program.

You can find his c.v. here: BryanAlexander_cv 2020.