Mitchel Resnick, Professor at the MIT Media Lab, directs the team that develops, coordinates, and supports Scratch. His research group also developed ideas underlying the LEGO Mindstorms and LEGO WeDo robotics kits, and it co-founded the Computer Clubhouse network of after-school learning centers. Resnick earned a BS in physics from Princeton, and an MS and PhD in computer science from MIT. He was awarded the McGraw Prize in Education in 2011. His favorite Scratch sprite is Gobo.

Meet the other keynote speakers:
Audrey Watters – Beat Döbeli Honegger – Eric Rosenbaum – Linda Liukas – Cynthia Solomon – Michelle Thorne

Linda Liukas co-founded RailsGirls in 2010. Rails Girls aims to give tools for women to build their ideas. And the idea resonated, nowadays it’s a truly global community opening up new perspectives for girls and women all around the world.

Then in january 2014 she ran a kickstarter to raise $ 10K for Now, I want to combine software with storytelling. I want to write and illustrate a book for young children about the magical world of technology – Hello Ruby. When the campaign ended there was a staggering $380K to spend and Linda decided to rework the project to yet unknown levels. Her supporters didn’t received the book yet but receive on irregular basis chapters from the Making of-book. Full of struggle, dreams, ideas, … in one word inspiration.

Although the book isn’t there, the website has some nice activities to get you started.

Apart from her plenary talk Linda Liukas will lead a workshop at Scratch2015AMS.

Meet the other keynote speakers:

Cynthia Solomon – Michelle Thorne – Mitch Resnick – Audrey Watters – Beat Döbeli Honegger – Eric Rosenbaum

Audrey Watters: “I am an education writer, a recovering academic, a serial dropout, a rabble-rouser, and ed-tech’s Cassandra.”

We invited her to speak at this Scratch conference because of her consistent independent thoughts on The History of the Future of Education Technology via hackeducation.com.

When some of us gathered at Barcelona in 2013 Audrey visited Seymour Papert.

Meet the other keynote speakers:
Beat Döbeli Honegger – Eric Rosenbaum – Linda Liukas – Cynthia Solomon – Michelle Thorne – Mitch Resnick

Eric Rosenbaum invents things so other people can start changing how the world works. While writing his PhD at MIT Medialab Eric has invented a lot.

Chopin sideways. The good news about MelodyMorph is that it’s almost ready, the not so good news is that it’s already a few years at that stage. Enjoy his TEDxHGSE talk where Eric explains it as new pathways into musical creation.

Besides the keynote Eric will do a master class on his new Snap based BeetleBlocks.

Image Montessori Bells from educationofours.blogspot.nl

Meet the other keynote speakers:
Linda Liukas – Cynthia Solomon – Michelle Thorne – Mitch Resnick – Audrey Watters – Beat Döbeli Honegger

Michelle Thorne is coming to Scratch 2015 to share her thoughts on creative communities and participatory learning.  Her role as Mozilla’s Director of Web Literacy Programs and of the Mozilla Festival means she is immersed in a number of creative communities in the Mozilla Foundation.

She serves a global network of educators and activists striving for universal web literacy. Through leadership development, peer learning and hands-on making, she facilitates communities to teach the web in a creative way.

The range of activities and initiatives she is involved with gives her a valuable insight into what is a creative community and how to nurture these communities. The now annual Mozilla Festival (Mozfest) is a great example of her ability to bring people together to create a unique event, having grown from 350 attendees in 2010 to 1600 in 2014.

Meet the other keynote speakers:
Mitch Resnick – Audrey Watters – Beat Döbeli Honegger – Eric Rosenbaum – Linda Liukas  – Cynthia Solomon