COE Alum is Guest Speaker at Oklahoma State Student Media Festival

The 2nd annual Oklahoma State Student Media Festival was held Wednesday, February 7, 2007 at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City in conjunction with the Oklahoma Technology Association's Learning Technology Conference and Exposition.

According to COE’s Dr. Susan Stansberry, 476 students in Kindergarten through 12th grade produced a total of 308 project entries for the festival. 45 teachers from 34 schools in Oklahoma participated. Stansberry is also the founder and co-director of the event.

The purpose of the Oklahoma State Student Media Festival is to stimulate student interest and involvement in all types of media production. Judges for the event included faculty, staff and students in OSU’s Educational Technology program area.

This year’s event featured award-winning student productions as well as special guest speaker, Piyush Patel, CEO of PLStudios in Oklahoma City (and a College of Education alum).

As a senior elementary education major at OSU in 1998, Piyush Patel founded the “I Wonder” Fair, an annual hands-on fair designed to educate more than 6,000 Oklahoma fifth-graders about opportunities available in science and academics. After earning B.S. and M.S. degrees in Education, Patel developed a highly regarded associates degree program at Northern Oklahoma College. Patel is currently the founder and CEO of PL Studios, a multimedia company whose core product, Digital-Tutors training suites, is used by nearly every motion picture company in the world. Pixar (producer of Toy Story and Cars) uses Digital-Tutor software to train its employees. Other clients include Walt Disney Animation, Warner Brothers, Nike, and Motorola.  

Digital-Tutors was recognized as a 2005 Innovator of the Year and was recently featured on channel 4’s “Is This a Great State or What?!”  According to Dr. Stansberry, Patel’s continual efforts to serve students and teachers made him an excellent choice for the OKSMF 2007 Honored Guest.

For more information on the Oklahoma State Student Media Festival visit: http://librarymedia.okstate.edu/oksmf/

Video of Piyush Patel’s segment of “Is This a Great State or What?!”

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Last Updated Thursday, February 22, 2007 10:02 AM