SPEAKERS
Karen Burns
Graduate of UCL and Queen Mary College, Karen has been working in ICT for over ten years in managerial and business development positions.
Currently Director of Business Development at CGI Estonia, Karen occupied the role of Head of Business Development for Mooncascade, tripling their annual revenue during her time with the company and successfully expanding their geographical reach as well as building an efficient sales team from the ground up.
Karen has also lived and worked in the UK and the Middle East, having successfully headed the ICT Project Office team at UK's health regulator CQC, where she established procedures and systems for financial governance processes and reported on a £12M annual budget. She has also had the honour of working with Abu Dhabi Government Media Zone Authority to bring productions such as fast Furious 7 and Star Wars 7 successfully to the emirate.
Karen is a regular speaker at conferences and events: Google Baltics, Nordic Testing Days; Arvamusfestival, TTÜ Cyber Conference, Digigirls with Telia, Frankfurt Mobikon, Telia VUNK accelerator and many others. Regular contributor on cyber and management topics at Äripäev and other media outlets.
Competencies: management, business development, digital transformation, product development. ITIL and Prince2 trained. Currently studying for an LLB.
Mart Laanpere
Mart Laanpere is a senior researcher at the Centre for Educational Technology in the Institute of Informatics, Tallinn University, Estonia. He holds MSc in Educational & Training Systems Design (University of Twente, the Netherlands), PhD in educational science from Tallinn University 2013 (PhD thesis “Pedagogy-driven design of virtual learning platforms”). His main focus in research is conceptual design and analysis of affordances of technology-enhanced learning systems and tools, also implementing ePortfolios for competency management in teachers‘ professional development. He is member of ACM, EA-TEL, ISOC and convenor of Open Learning Network at European Educational Research Association. He is chairman of Estonian Association of Educational Technology and member of editorial board of academic peer-reviewed journal Seminar.net.
Heilo Altin
Heilo Altin is the point person of the programme on educational robotics in Estonia (NGO Robootika) since 2008. In the course of the programme the concept of educational robotics has been worked out. At the present moment more than a half of the schools in Estonia are supplied with robots, several competitions and trainings are being held. More than 3000 students participated in the programmes FIRST LEGO League and FIRST LEGO League Jr. last year.
Janika Leoste
Janika Leoste holds a position of an analyst in the Center of Excellence in Educational Innovation at Tallinn University. She is also a PhD student in Educational Sciences. This autumn she starts an experimental research lasting one school year and involving more than 2000 3rd and 6th grade students. The goal of the research is to clarify the influence of robot-supported learning in regular math class. During the last 4 years she has taught over 10 educational robotics platforms to thousands of teachers. Also, she has produced several robotics MOOC-s and curricula. Her hobby is gymnastics.
Maarja Punak
Maarja Punak has been a police officer for 14 years. At present she works as the Head of Social Media Department at Police and Border Guard Board.
Applied higher education (Estonian Academy of Security Sciences), Master of Public Administration (Tartu University), postgraduate studies in Finland, UK, Latvia and Germany.
She is keen on orienteering, shooting and football, her favourite writers are Terry Pratchet and Astrid Lindgren.