SESSION TYPE: Featured Speaker SESSION TITLE: Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier STRAND: Instructional Technology DAY: Friday TIME: 11:15 - 12:15 pm LOCATION: Sutton Parlor North, 2nd floor

FRONTLINE producer Rachel Dretzin and correspondent Douglas Rushkoff examine how the Web and digital media are changing the way we think, learn and interact in the multiplatform documentary project Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier. Their report examines education in the digital age and how technology is changing schools, teachers, students and the way we think about learning. Join Rachel and Doug for an interactive presentation and share your stories about learning and technology.

To view the entire program, go to: http://video.pbs.org/

***BOOK SIGNING AT ONSITE BARNES & NOBLE BOOKSTORE TO FOLLOW SESSION (click here for schedule)

BIOGRAPHY

An award-winning journalist, Rachel Dretzin has been producing documentaries for FRONTLINE since the mid-1990s. She and her husband, filmmaker Barak Goodman, are joint partners in Ark Media, a documentary production company based in Brooklyn, New York. Together, they have produced and directed numerous documentaries for FRONTLINE, including: The Lost Children of Rockdale County (1999) winner of the George Foster Peabody Award; the three-part series Failure to Protect (2003), winner of the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize; Merchants of Cool (2001); The Persuaders (2004); and A Hidden Life (2006). Independently, Rachel’s films for FRONTLINE include Hillary’s Class (1994); Betting on the Market (1997); The High Price of Health (1998); The Search for Satan (1995) and Growing Up Online (2008). She has also produced for WNET New York, NPR’s All Things Considered, MSNBC’s Edgewise and most recently, a short film for The New York Times Magazine on the Web. She and Goodman have three children, ages 11, 8
and 6.

Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff has written ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. He has just finished a book applying renaissance principles to today’s complex economic landscape, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out, and his newest book that defines the corporate spectacle, Life Incorporated: How the World Became A Corporation and How To Take It Back will be released in June 2009. His comic book out on DC Comics, Testament, has a huge cult following as he continues the story of the Bible in modern times. Douglas just recently started a weekly talk radio show, The Media Squat, on WFMU which highlights a weekly guest to discuss an array of ideas and issues. He has co-written and hosted two past FRONTLINE documentaries, The Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders. Doug has taught at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and will begin a new semester this Fall teaching at The New School. His articles, columns, and voice has been featured in numerous outlets including Arthur Magazine, The New York Times, Discover and NPR Radio.