The 25th annual Risky Business conference will be held on Monday May 1, 2012, at the Scheman Center (at Iowa State University) in Ames. This one-day conference brings adults and youth together to develop skills and increase knowledge of community youth development and the critical issues confronting youth and professionals who work with youth today.
This year’s adult keynote speaker is Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., an associate Professor of Educational Leadership at the University of Kentucky. He also is the Founding Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation’s only academic center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators, and was a co-creator of the wildly popular video series, “Did You Know? Shift Happens.” He has received numerous national awards for his technology leadership work, including recognitions from the cable industry, Phi Delta Kappa, and the National School Boards Association. In the Spring 2011 he was a visiting Canterbury Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Dr. McLeod blogs regularly about technology issues at Dangerously Irrelevant and Mind Dump and occasionally at the Huffington Post.
Conference participants will be equipped with strategies to help teens recognize and alter patterns of thinking that are most likely to lead to unnecessarily risky and dangerous behaviors.
High school youth will start their day with Marco Antonio Torres. Torres has been recognized internationally, including being honored as a California Teacher of the Year, for his accomplishments in the classroom and for the use of technology to empower students. Torres has presented at numerous conferences throughout the world and his practical workshops help teachers push their teaching and learning to new exciting levels. He is a consultant for many U.S. and international schools and has keynoted in almost every state. He sits on the board for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, New Media Consortium and Full Sail University Online Advance Studies.
