David Beck
Multimedia Specialist
Exploratorium
Online Engagement
3601 Lyon St.
San Francisco CA
94123
USA
http://exploratorium.edu
David Beck has a long-held interest in investigating novel ways of communicating complex information with new technologies. Formerly a beat reporter, he transitioned to new media as an editor on the LA Times' Prodigy site (remember Prodigy?), and then as producer for the newspaper's first Web site in 1995. He has since worked on a broad spectrum of projects, including pioneering online election reporting for the Associated Press and building web-based financial management tools for Microsoft and Merrill Lynch. He consulted for most of the Internet boom, working on projects ranging from designing content management systems for the Web to creating Flash-based science learning tools for young children. He joined the Exploratorium in March of 2006, and is currently involved in three major projects: Evidence, the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net), and the Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS). David has a B.A. in Italian Language and Literature from Stanford University, with a large helping of physics along the way. (Often he worked in both at once, including authoring a paper investigating Dante's Divine Comedy from a relativistic perspective.) He also has a J.D. from the University of Southern California.
David will demonstrate Polynesian Navigation: Communicating Oral Tradition Through a 3-D Immersive Interactive. [Demonstration]
