Danieta Morgan, Tom O’Connell, Nate Higgins, Tunisia Mitchell, and Marc Prensky.

1. The Digital Divide: Poverty and Equity Panel
Thursday June 30, 2016 6:00 PM
Danieta Morgan started her career as a public school educator in Harlem, New York City, Danieta
quickly became aware of the vast systemic organizational
problems schools and students face. Her love for education and
learning led her to live and teach in Chennai, India for 2 years
where she led the redesign of the American International School of
Chennai, India technology program. While in India, Danieta was
also selected to become a Google Certified Innovator. Currently,
Danieta is an educational engineer at New Visions for Public
Schools with a mission to disrupt poverty by creating and
integrating technology solutions for NYC public schools. Danieta
and her team support over 200 schools with the incorporation of
instructional and operational technology systems that support
curriculum and promote student centered learning. With over
100,000 users, the New Visions’ created Add-Ons have supported
schools internationally in managing workflow and creating
schoolwide, useful data systems. Her successful program strategy of adoption, Drive to Write, was
awarded the highly selective, United States Department of Education Investing in Innovation (i3) Grant for
$3 million. Danieta seeks to disrupt poverty by creating better schools.
Tom O’Connell leads Code/Interactive's rapidly growing program team
to solve a huge problem -- students around the world, especially our
lowest income students, do not have access to quality computer
science and coding education. Code/Interactive is training teachers and
empowering students to solve this problem, implementing one creative
solution after another.
Along my journey, Tom taught high school students, lead student
backpacking adventures, organized impactful events, ran smooth
operations, and built a network of individuals and organizations that
truly care about students and communities across the country and the
world.
Nate Higgins began his career in education working at the
Lorraine Monroe Leadership Institute in Harlem, NY, which
helped to train and coach school leaders to turn-around and lead
effective schools for all children. His work at the Lorraine
Monroe Leadership Institute compelled him to further his interest
in education and he joined the leadership team at The Biondi
Elementary School where he spent the next few years honing
his leadership skills. Nate’s hard work at Biondi allowed him to
secure a position as the Middle School Assistant Principal at
Bronx Preparatory Charter School where he worked for several
years to improve standardized test scores and overall school
culture. Recently, Nate was chosen by the Springfield
Empowerment School Zone, as one of two leaders from across the country to be the founding principal of
a middle school. Nate i founding Principal of Impact Prep Middle School in Springfield Massachusetts,
which will officially open its doors for students in August 2016.

2. Tunisia Mitchell is a self-taught developer who got her start doing cultural
studies within the United States. While conducting research and filming
documentaries to shed light on history and community issues, she learned
how to program to create solutions using technology. With her tech
knowledge and experience in community relations, Tunisia has taught
over two hundred youth and young adults at The Knowledge House how
to code and use technology to create and foster solutions, gain jobs and
become leaders within their own communities.
Marc Prensky is an American writer and speaker on education. He is best known as the inventor and
popularizer of the terms "Digital native" and "digital immigrant". Prensky holds degrees from Oberlin
College (1966), Middlebury College (MA, 1967), Yale University (1968) and the Harvard Business
School (1980). He is the author of seven books and 100 essays on
learning and education. Prensky began his career as a teacher
in Harlem, New York He has taught in elementary school, (New
Haven CT), high school (New York, NY), and college (Wagner
College, Staten Island, NY) He worked for six years (1981-1987) as a
corporate strategist and product development director with the Boston
Consulting Group, and six years (1993-1999) for Bankers Trust on
Wall St., where he created game-based training for financial traders,
and started an internal division, Corporate Gameware, later spun out
as games2train.