ROBERT and DAPHNE COOK. Mr. Robert Cook is the President of the National Indian Education Association and is the Principal of Pine Ridge Reservation High School in Jackson County South Dakota.

Ms. Daphne Cook is the Executive Director of the Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates.

FRANCIS THICKE. Mr. Francis Thicke is running as a Democrat for the office of Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in the 2010 election. He and his wife, Susan, are owners and operators of a grass-based, organic dairy near Fairfield. Mr.Thicke has a Ph.D. in agronomy/soil fertility and previously served at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington , D.C as National Program Leader for Soil Science for the USDA-Extension Service. He has served on the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission and the Iowa Food Policy Council at the appointment of Governor Tom Vilsack. He has also served in leadership roles in many other organizations in Iowa and nationally, and has

Mr. Seymour Fliegel is the author of the book, Miracle in East Harlem. It is the story of how Mr. Fliegel took the lowest performing school in New York City's public school system and turned it into a model school. He currently heads the Center for Educational Innovation. Mr. Fliegel has twice been invited to the White House to be honored for his work in public education.

Ms. Mahen Bonetti is the Founder and Executive Director of the African Film Festival, Inc (AFF), New York. Born in Sierra Leone in 1956 and sent into exile in 1970, Mahen received her Graduate degree in communication from New York University. In 1993, concerned by the lack of understanding and appreciation of African culture, Ms. Bonetti, founded the AFF. The main goal of the festival is to use African cinema to promote and increase knowledge and understanding of African arts, literature, and culture. In addition, to develop a non-African audience for African Films and to expand the opportunities for the distribution of African films in the U.S. In recent years, the Festival has been hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Richard Baraniuk is the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. In 1999 he launched the Connexions project, a non-profit start-up that is aiming to bring the idea of "Rip, Mix, Burn" into the academic world. Connexions is a way for authors, educators, and learners worldwide to collaborate on all kinds of educational materials.

Richard vision is to revolutionize how we interact with textbooks, to make them more interesting, more current, and more relevant to individual academic curricula and institutions. The music world has benefited greatly by the ability to rip tracks, remix them into a different lineup, and customize tracks by our musical tastes. This is what Connexions will do for textbooks - create custom educational material to fit the learning/teaching styles of every user.

Join me on Tuesday at 7pm CST for my conversation with Richard Baraniuk. 

Other talks by Rchard Baraniuk: 

• Google TechTalk
• TED talk
• World Talk Radio