David Thornburg

Successful Meetings magazine lists David Thornburg as one of the top 21 speakers in the United States. His dynamic, thought-provoking presentations provide transformative experiences to well over 100,000 people per year. His monthly commentaries for PBS on the impact of emerging technologies on learning expand beyond the podium.

Thornburg is more than a public speaker. He is an award-winning futurist, author, and consultant whose clients range across the public and private sector, both in the United States and in Brazil. His corporate clients range from small startup ventures to some of the most dynamic large corporations in the world. He has a razor-sharp focus on the fast-paced world of modern communication media and its impact on learning.

As the Founder and Director of Global Operations for the Thornburg Center, and as Senior Fellow of the Congressional Institute for the Future, he conducts research and provides staff development in the areas of educational futures, multimedia, communications and whole mind education throughout the Americas. He helps clients think intelligently about the future and is active in exploring ways that telecommunications and multimedia will change the face of learning, both at home and in the classroom.

His educational philosophy is based on the idea that students learn best when they are constructors of their own knowledge. He also believes that students who are taught in ways that honor their learning styles and dominant intelligences retain the native engagement with learning with which they entered school. A central theme of his work is that we must prepare students for their future, not for our past.

Thornburg helps shape telecommunications and education policy for the benefit of all learners. In his capacity as Senior Fellow of the Congressional Institute for the Future, Thornburg shares his perspectives with policy makers. He was recently commissioned to write a position paper for the United States Department of Education on the future of technology for K-12 education. He has written numerous books and created several CD-ROM's. His latest book, Campfires in Cyberspace, is considered the definitive book on the true nature of the World Wide Web as a tool for learning.

Thornburg is the recipient of several awards for product design and is the recipient of both the Golden and Platinum Disk awards from Computer Using Educators, Inc. for his contributions to the advancement of learning and learning technologies. In 1999 he was selected as one of twenty "pioneers" in the field of educational technology by ISTE, an organization devoted to advancing technology in learning, and Technology and Learning named him one of the top ten most influential people in the field of educational technology in the past twenty years.

Thornburg has been featured in magazines and has appeared widely on radio and television. According to Electronic Learning, he is considered one of the six most popular speakers in the area of educational technology.