Shaping Future Schools with Digital Technology

Shengquan Yu is a professor, Executive Director of Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education at Beijing Normal University and Director of the Joint Laboratory for Mobile Learning, Ministry of Education-China Mobile Communications Corporation. His research interests include artificial intelligence in education, ubiquitous learning, and big data in education. Prof. Yu was funded by the National Program for New Century Excellent Talents in 2008. He is a fellow of China E-learning Standard Committee, consulting expert of 12th Five-Year Informationization Plan of Chinese Academy of Science, research fellow of China Educational Policy Research Institute, and expert committee member of Ten Year National Educational Technology Plan. He has published more than 180 academic papers and 6 scholarly monographs, has led more than 50 research projects, and owns numerous patents in his field. His main achievements include the Smart Learning Partner Platform, the Learning Cell Platform, teaching innovation with ICT in K12 projects with over 300 participant schools involved and the 4A Learning Platform with more than 1 million registered users.Hannele Niemi is a professor and Research Director at the Department of Educational Science, University of Helsinki, as well as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Joint Innovation Research Institute, University of Finland and University of China. She has served as Vice-Chancellor (2003-2009) and Dean (2001-2003) at the University of Helsinki. She has taught at numerous Finnish universities and was invited to be an honorary professor. Prof. Niemi will also serve as the Chair of UNESCO's Educational Equity and Quality of Learning Ecosystem (2018-2021).Dr Jon Mason is a senior lecturer at Charles Darwin University (CDU) in Australia, where he leads research into digital education futures. He also holds adjunct positions as a professor within the Department of e-Learning at Korea National Open University, professor of Educational Technology at East China Normal University, and project consultant for the Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education at Beijing Normal University. Prior to his current academic appointments, Dr Mason's work was at the nexus of government services, education, and international IT standardization. Since 2012 he has been an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Asia Pacific Society for Computers in Education. His research spans the learning sciences, sense-making, question technologies, and student questioning skills.