Forum Network

Andrew Dreyfus is Executive Vice President of Health Care Services for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. In that position, he is responsible for the company's health and wellness, performance measurement and improvement, and provider contracting and services divisions. He also leads the company's health care collaborative initiatives to improve the quality and safety of health care in Massachusetts. Andrew previously served as the first President of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, which works to expand access and reduce barriers to health care for Massachusetts residents. During his tenure, the Foundation awarded nearly $17 million in grants to community organizations and launched a series of policy initiatives, including the "Roadmap to Coverage", which contributed to the successful passage of the state's landmark 2006 Health Reform Law. Andrew is a member of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System, and serves on the board of the Kenneth B. Schwartz Center, the Harvard Risk Management Foundation, and the Board of Advisors for the Brigham & Women's Hospital Center for Surgery and Public Health.

Mitchel Resnick is LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, Director of the Okawa Center, and Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. Resnick's research group has developed a variety of educational tools that engage people in new types of design activities and learning experiences, including the "programmable bricks" that were the basis for the award-winning LEGO Mindstorms and StarLogo software. He co-founded the Computer Clubhouse, an award-winning network of learning centers for youth from under-served communities. Resnick's group has developed a new programming language, called Scratch, that makes it easier for kids to create their own animated stories, video games, and interactive art. Resnick is also involved in the next generation of Programmable Bricks and in the $100 laptop project. Resnick, a graduate of Haverford High School (Pa.), earned a BA in physics at Princeton University (1978), and MS and PhD degrees in computer science at MIT (1988, 1992). He worked for five years as a science/technology journalist for *Business Week* magazine, and he has consulted widely on the uses of computers in education. Resnick was awarded a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1993. He is author of the book *Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams*, co-editor of *Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in a Digital World *(1996), and co-author of *Adventures in Modeling: Exploring Complex, Dynamic Systems with StarLogo* (2001).

Keith Hampton, an expert in the study of social networks and new technologies, says that rather than destroying community life, being wired actually helps people connect. In fact, people who frequently use e-mail are more likely to be in frequent touch with others by telephone and in person, too. Seven years ago, Hampton set out to discover how online communication vehicles like e-mail are likely to impact our social contacts with family, close friends, and casual acquaintances. Are we going to meet less frequently in person? Are we going to become cut off from our communities? He also wanted to learn the extent to which global communication technologies can affect us at the local level particularly within our own neighborhoods. Keith Hampton is assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is completing a doctoral dissertation at the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

Andrea Walsh teaches in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, as well as the Women's Studies and Comparative Media Studies programs at MIT. Her academic background is in sociology and literature. Her teaching and research interests center on gender, popular culture, and aging. Dr. Walsh's publications include *Women's Film* and *Female Experience: 1940-1950* and various articles on gender, visual media and aging. Honors include among others, Bunting Institute Fellowship, Mellon Grant, Curriculum Development Project in Women's Studies, Clark University and Outstanding Academic Advisor, Northeast Region, American College, Testing, National Academic Advising Association.

Brian R. Jacobson is a Ph.D. Candidate in Critical Studies at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and a member of the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate program. He is a graduate of the Master's program in Comparative Media Studies (CMS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Appalachian State University. Brian is a 2008-2009 Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) Scholar. In 2007 he was a member of the Visual Culture research field of the Social Science Research Council's inaugural Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship.

Navajo artist Melanie Yazzie graduated from Arizona State University in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in studio arts and entered graduate school at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She pursued printmaking with a passion becoming a beginning, advanced and intermediate printmaking instructor at CU to pay for school. After receiving her master of fine arts degree in printmaking in 1993, Yazzie started to feel the pull on her heartstrings from the reservation. She wanted to live in a place between Colorado and the Navajo Nation. So she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and became an art instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Yazzie is now back at the University of Colorado, where she is an associate professor of art. She's exhibited her work in New Zealand, France, Russia, Canada, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland and South Africa.