Emily Fitzpatrick
Negaunee Public Schools
About Emily’s role: Emily teaches general music to over 600 students in junior kindergarten through fourth grade at Lakeview Elementary School in Negaunee, Michigan. She also leads a select chorus of fourth grade students.
Something Emily is proud of accomplishing in this role: During 2020 and 2021, Emily put together many virtual ensemble videos in place of in-person performances. Her favorites included one with over 50 5th-12th grade students in her district playing and singing the high school’s fight song, one with music educators from her ISD singing “Let Music Live” by Greg Gilpin, and a virtual Christmas production with 26 different groups of students performing holiday songs while social distancing.
Antonio Aguillon
GRCC
About Antonio’s role: Coordinate Desktop Support activities. Teaching area design, technology installation, procurement, setup, planning and overall tech support to students faculty and stuff.
Something Antonio is proud of accomplishing in this role: Antonio oversaw the installation of 400 to 600 new computer systems campus-wide every summer. He also ensures that all of GRCC’s faculty and students get the best experience possible by refreshing the Operating System on all our student-facing computers (over 1800 systems) across GRCC’s multiple campuses and buildings.
Caitlin Manson
Kearsley Community Schools
About Caitlin’s role: Caitlin interacts with K-12 teachers in her district to talk about technology integration. She helps design and curate professional development experiences and loves to learn about all new things in ed tech!
Something Caitlin is proud of accomplishing in this role: Caitlin has been tremendously helpful in guiding teachers as they shift their thinking from technology as a means of instruction to technology effectively implemented within their instruction. She is the only technology coach in the district and is proud to serve all her fellow teachers.
Melissa DeMull
Montgomery County Public Schools
About Melissa’s role: Melissa DeMull is an educator of thirteen years and is currently the content specialist of the magnet department at Argyle Magnet Middle School. Her department includes the areas of technology, music, and art, while the courses she has taught include programming, engineering, and digital media. Every class within her department incorporates digital design, art, programming, or advancing technology. Prior to working at the middle school level, Melissa taught elementary school, from second to sixth grade. This is where she discovered her love of technology, while teaching and developing coding clubs for students and holding technology help sessions for fellow teachers. Melissa received her undergraduate degree from Alma College, Michigan, where she majored in Elementary Education with minors in Mathematics and Social Studies. She also holds a Master of Arts in Educational Technology degree from Michigan State University. During the 2017-2018 school year, Melissa was awarded the TEEAM New Teacher Award of Excellence. She will soon be finishing her Administrator Certification from McDaniel College.
Something Melissa is proud of accomplishing in this role: Melissa DeMull is proud that every student (over 1000) takes a technology course every year. Being the head of that department requires constant curriculum updates and opportunities as technology changes. Additionally, during the past virtual learning year, she was a founder of “Eagle Talks: STEAM Careers Worth Talking About.” This platform brought in professionals explaining and sharing their careers within STEAM.
Pilar Quezzaire
International Baccalaureate
About Pilar’s role: Pilar works in curriculum design and policy development in educational technology and the future of learning. Working across 152 countries in a minimum of 9 languages while imagining how learning will change and transform is challenging but exciting. Pilar has used her MAET to design digital systems, rethink data collection analysis in education, and delve into learning futures, highly theoretical work that her MAET experience prepared her for.
Something Pilar is proud of accomplishing in this role: Pilar specializes in framework design and implementation. Her recent work on the definitions and frameworks for technology literacy development have helped schools make decisions on how to implement technology effectively in schools. She also developed support for schools facing emergency learning during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that turned out be beneficial for school leaders and teachers.
Blair Stamper
Wife & Mom. Instructional Designer at UNC Charlotte. Founder of Blair Stamper, LLC. Associate Editor of CIE. Co-instructor at ASU.
UNC Charlotte, Blair Stamper, LLC., Arizona State University
About Blair’s role: Blair Stamper is currently an Instructional Designer (ID) with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and her own company, Blair Stamper, LLC. As an ID, she works with faculty in both higher education and K-12 to create student-centered and active online courses that align with Quality Matters standards. Blair has been working in education since 2012. Starting off as a middle school math teacher, Blair fell into instructional design and hasn’t left since 2015. Using her experiences with curriculum design as a teacher and her love for technology, Blair has found her true niche in instructional design. Blair is currently working on her Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University as an online student. Through this program, she has fallen in love with research and serves as the Associate Editor for the Current Issues in Education journal. Blair is also a graduate of the Online Learning Consortium’s Institute for Emerging Leaders in Online Learning (2018), Michigan State University (2015, Master of Arts in Educational Technology), and University of Michigan-Dearborn (2012, Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education).
Something Blair is proud of accomplishing in this role: In her career as an instructional designer, Blair has participated in the Online Learning Consortium’s (OLC) Institute for Emerging Leaders in Online Learning. This experience has allowed for networking with other higher ed professionals and the confidence to create initiatives at her workplace. One particular initiative involved creating the quality design standards based on QM standards and OLC Scorecard Rubric at her workplace. To this day, the institution uses this rubric to rate and determine quality for student success in their online courses.
Brian Carlson, Ed.D.
Milwaukee Area Technical College
About Brians’s role: Under the direction of the Vice President of Learning, I serve as an innovative learning leader who works collaboratively with faculty, staff, and administrators in developing and sustaining high quality academic programs to ensure student success and student retention in the Creative Arts, Design & Media Academic and Career Pathway. In this role, I encourage and foster a culture of inquiry about student learning in support of strategic initiatives. My work is in collaboration with district-wide administration and community partners to align programs and curricula to labor market needs to maximize opportunities for student success. I am responsible for planning, directing, and evaluating all assigned functions, instructional and support services, associated with maintaining and delivering quality academic programs within the Creative Arts, Design & Media pathway. In addition, I led the pathway through a Small Scale Implementation, becoming the first pathway at the College to launch the Guided Pathways framework while simultaneously serving in the role of dean for the School of Business and School of Media and Creative Arts.
Something Brian is proud of accomplishing in this role: As a senior academic administrator, I have provided strategic leadership for the development and implementation of academic pathways, programs, and support services to drive fiscal stability, viability, and growth. This includes over 10 years experience implementing asynchronous, synchronous, blended and hybrid online instructional programs and offerings that meet student and industry needs. In my role I employ data-informed strategies and management tools to proactively plan and meet the needs of our students within the Milwaukee metropolitan area.
I bring extensive leadership experience collaborating with cross-functional teams and stakeholders for strategic planning, implementation and assessment of online initiatives. Most recently this includes my work co-leading a strategic plan for the growth of educational technology and large-scale online learning in response to Covid-19. Prior to my current role, I served in the roles of interim dean, associate dean, and as the leader of educational technology, support and innovation for our district. During this time I founded a district-wide center for faculty innovation with technology, increased online programs offerings, and led educational technology professional development for our district. In addition, I taught classes on educational technology and online learning, oversaw the management of the district’s Learning Management System, and established a community of forward-thinking leaders who guided technological advancement for the district.
Kathryn Ellywicz
GreenPath Financial Wellness
About Kathryn’s role: Kathryn develops a variety of content to help our employees learn new concepts and stay informed. She also is part of the team creating Empathy and Human Centered Design strategy for the organization. Her day-to-day work might find her developing in Articulate or Camtasia, conducting empathy interviews to determine needs, facilitating ideation sessions, and more.
Something Kathryn is proud of accomplishing in this role: Kathryn created a course called Judgement-Free Communication, that helps our employees understand foundational empathy concepts.
Annie Kim Sytsma
(Cedar Springs Public Schools)
About Annie’s role: As the District Instructional Technology Specialist, Annie serves K-12 educators on how to integrate technology to engage, enhance, and extend teaching and learning opportunities. She aims to work with educators to ensure that all students have the opportunity to be empowered learners, digital citizens, knowledge constructors, innovative designers, computational thinkers, creative communicators, and global collaboratives to excel in a technology-rich global environment.
Something Annie is proud of accomplishing in this role: Cedar Springs Public Schools adopted Canvas LMS to help support its teachers and learners and have been able to become a 1:1 district. We continue the work of the various facets of curriculum and instruction with technology integration being one piece of the puzzle. Our focus and continued dedication is on technology enhanced learning.
