Noah Wittman is a new media architect and project director with more than fifteen years of experience developing tools and environments that foster learning across borders and communities. As Co-Founder and Program Manager of Open Knowledge and the Public Interest (OKAPI), Noah brings together faculty, students and staff at the University of California, Berkeley, to share knowledge and creativity using the Internet and new digital technologies. Noah leads numerous open education and public outreach projects, including a campuswide digital preservation initiative, a public research program, and a US Department of Education project to open and reuse digital research collections for teaching and learning. These projects have received both national and international recognition, including the 2007 Open Archaeology Prize by the American Schools of Oriental Research and the 2008 Virtual Learning Prize by the New Media Consortium. Before coming to Berkeley, Noah directed the Educator Network and Interactive Media Department at the Exploratorium, a museum of science, art and human perception, located in San Francisco, California. Under his tenure, the Exploratorium Website received Webby Awards for “Best Science Website” and “Best Education Website.”
Projects:
Media Vault Program: Developing partnerships, community and new services to improve the long-term preservation and broad dissemination of digital research.
Praxis: We are working the the Blum Center for Developing Economies to develop a web-based platform for student learning, project collaboration, and social networking.
Ars Synthetica: A Collaboration with the Human Practices Lab of the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center
Berkeley Humanities Lab: A virtual humanities lab to support interdisciplinary research, dialogue, and the development of new digital technologies in the arts and humanities
Digital Nineveh Archives: A multilingual multiinstitutional project to preserve the archaeological history of Nineveh
The Scholar’s Box: The Scholar’s Box is a three-year project to enable campus scholars, academic departments, and libraries and museums to create and share open and reusable digital collections to improve campus scholarship and K-12 education
Okapi Island in Second Life: Our piece of virtual property for experimenting with new forms of teaching, learning and public outreach
Omeka Template: Our custom software package for publishing online exhibitions and museum collections
OKAPI Public Understanding of Research (PUR): Our Public Understanding of Research (PUR) program helps campus scholars translate research data and knowledge into valuable public resources for teaching and learning
OKAPI Studio: A physical space for tinkering with technology and inquiry-based teaching and learning
