Award-winning entrepreneur Matthew Pittinsky is keynote speaker for Teaching Tools 2003 at SU

Monday, October 6, 2003, By News Staff

Award-winning entrepreneur Matthew Pittinsky is keynote speaker for Teaching Tools 2003 at SUOctober 06, 2003Judy Holmesjlholmes@syr.edu

Matthew Pittinsky, co-founder and chair of Blackboard Inc.-the Web-based course management tool for educators-will be the keynote speaker at Teaching Tools 2003: Chalk it up to Blackboard. His presentation will begin Oct. 16 at 12:45 p.m. in Syracuse University’s Schine Student Center, Room 304. Pittinsky’s keynote address is free and open to the public.

Pittinsky’s presentation is part of the daylong Teaching Tools 2003 conference presented by SU, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, SUNY Upstate Medical University and LeMoyne College. The conference, which begins at 8:15 a.m. Oct. 16 in the Schine Student Center, is free and open to education professionals. Pre- and post-conference workshops will be held on Oct. 15 and 17 respectively. Registration information for the daylong conference and the workshops is available on the Web at http://ttools.syr.edu/index.html. Information is also available by calling 443-2604 or by e-mailing ttools2003@faculty.syr.edu.

“In Teaching Tools 2003, we are excited about the focus on the Blackboard learning management system,” says Michael Morrison, faculty liaison and manager of SU’s Faculty Academic Computing Support Services. “We have a wide variety of presenters and are happy that Matthew Pittinsky will be presenting the keynote address. Matthew is a gifted teacher, as well as a leader in the field of educational technology. We look forward to his visit to Syracuse.”

Trained as a social studies teacher, Pittinsky is a leader in the field of e-Learning. He co-founded Blackboard in 1997 with a goal of transforming the Internet into a powerful environment for teaching and learning. Today, with 2,400 client institutions, 415 staff members, four acquisitions and more than $100 million in investment financing, Blackboard Inc. is considered to be the leading provider of e-Education systems worldwide.

Prior to founding Blackboard Inc., Pittinsky worked as a consultant for KPMG Consulting’s higher education practice, where he was an early participant in the Educause IMS standards project. Pittinsky is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University Teacher’s College, he is the editor of “The Wired Tower” (Prentice Hall, 2002), and he serves as a contributor or commentator to numerous print, radio and television media.

In 1999, Washingtonian Magazine named Pittinsky as one of the “100 People to Watch;” that same year, he was named one of “Washington’s Youngest and Coolest Entrepreneurs” by the Washington Business Forward. In 2000, Pittinsky and his business partner, Michael Chasen, CEO of Blackboard, Inc., were named “Entrepreneurs of the Year for Emerging Companies in Washington, D.C.” by Ernst & Young. Both also received the “Young Innovators” award from the Kilby Awards Foundation, and in 2001, Pittinsky received the “Visionary of the Year” award from the Northern Virginia Technology Council.

Teaching Tools 2003 sponsors are the Visual Technologies Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Impatica Inc., and the SU Bookstore.