David Boulton

Louisville, KY
davidaboulton(at)gmail.com
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David Boulton is a Learning-Activist who has founded five companies, been awarded four patents, written numerous articles, and presented at hundreds of educational conferences and gatherings.  His last start-up went on to win the Smithsonian Award for Innovation and appeared on Upside Magazine’s Top 100 private companies list. His last patent, "A Method and Apparatus for Implementing User Feedback", has been applied to the intranets of many Global 2000 companies and has continuing implications for how the networks of the future will evolve. The ‘Electronic Campus’ he designed for Apple Computer won the Optimas Award for Innovation. Mr. Boulton's learning theories and learning environment designs have been featured at both the National and California Educational Summits. He is a former member of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, the Dialogue Research Project at M.I.T.'s Organizational Learning Center, the U.S. Department of Education's Gateway Project and he has been an advisor to the Chair of the California Senate Education Committee. David appeared in the PBS program "The New Science of Learning: Brain Fitness for Kids" and the Science Network’s “New Science of Educating” broadcast. In 2012 David became a featured blogger for the National Association of School Superintendents.

Work

Learning Stewards (a 501(c)(3) non profit organization): 2007-Current

 

Founder, Director:  The mission of Learning Stewards is to articulate, evidence, and advocate the scientific, economic, educational, political, parental, and social value case for 'stewarding the health of our children's learning'. 

 

Current Main Project: Children of the Code, a Public Television, DVD, and web documentary series that takes the viewer on a visual and intellectual journey into the invention of the alphabet (the code) and how it has affected our civilizations, our minds, and most importantly, our learning. Work includes conducting over 110 interviews with leading neuroscientists, psychologists, reading researchers, educators, historians, economists, technologists and policy leaders. Work involves design of Web, Television, and DVD video series including overseeing all aspects of video production and editing, website development, and project communication. The project intends to render generally-socially understood that reading is an 'artificially simulated language experience' - a virtual reality experience - that is assembled in the brain according to the instructions and information contained in a code. It is an artificially confusing challenge to the brain that, depending on the developmental readiness of children's language processing and the strength of their emotional resilience, can lead to a form of confusion the brain has no evolutionary experience in resolving and that can result in profound learning disabilities.  "Automated aversions to the feeling of shame triggered by confusion retards or cripples the health and development of learning in the areas of learning that trigger the shame".  Pre-conscious shame aversions to automatic cognitive processes are pathologically learning disabling.  For a great many millions of children the process of learning to read is profoundly learning disabling. The Children of the Code Project provides online videos, interview transcripts, DVDs,and live events that help educators, parents and policy makers understand 'what's at stake' and 'what's involved' in learning to read.  (comments from others about this project) (YouTube videos describing the project)

 

Note: The following interview: http://www.childrenofthecode.org/library/ConnectingSpring1.pdf connects the work of Implicity and The Children of the Code Project 

 

Implicity: 1995-2007 (became Learning Stewards)

Founder, Director:  Consulting, Distributed Learning and Dialogue Architecture Design, Talks and Seminars on the Future of Learning. Implicity develops  theories, models, and practices (technological and social) that lead to evidencing the necessity of "Stewarding the Health of our Children's Learning". Work for Implicity led to the realization that the one of the greatest obstacles to the health of our children's learning (in the US) was the learning disabling collateral damage caused by how we think about and teach literacy. 
The Implicity web site has won the Teacher Information Network Gold Award and the Innovative Teaching Concepts Award of Excellence.  

 

Consultant – National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) 2004-2005

Worked with Sharon Darling, president of NCFL, and other NCFL key leaders and helped to reformulate the ‘case’ for family literacy. Work involved extensive research into state of the art reading science and translating findings into NCFL’s organizational development and program strategies.

 

DiaCom Technologies: 1992-1998  

Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Director: Raised over six million dollars in private capital. Conceptualized, architected, patented and led the development of Distributed Dialogue Processing™, the world’s first context-sensitive distributed feedback, learning, and dialogue technology.  Clients included Boeing, PacBell, Arthur Anderson, Itron and the Cupertino Union School District. In 1997 DiaCom moved from California to Washington and was renamed the 2way Corporation. 2way subsequently raised over sixteen million dollars in venture capital and twice won the Smithsonian Award for Innovation. A casualty of September 11th, 2way's technology was acquired by Modern Mind Software and subsequently Validar which continues to apply the concepts, patents, and technology in the corporate intranet and internet markets. 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 1992

As an outgrowth of his relationship with the late physicist, philosopher and dialogue pioneer Dr. David Bohm, Mr. Boulton was selected by M.I.T.’s Center for Organizational Learning as a founding member of the Dia-logos Project which was engaged in researching and facilitating dialogue in organizational settings.

Apple Computer - Apple University: 1990 - 1992

As a special consultant to Apple Computer’s corporate university, co-conceived, engineered and led the development team in designing and deploying “Project Virtuality: the Electronic Campus”. The Electronic Campus was a performance support and on-demand learning system that interfaced desktop computers via network or remote access modem to Apple’s organizational learning resources. The project was awarded Personnel Journal’s Optimas Award in 1993.

Apple Computer - Apple International: 1988-1993

As an “Evangelist for Learning” Mr. Boulton was engaged dozens of times by Apple’s International Marketing Division to present his ‘Future of Learning” vision to government and education leaders from around the world.  (YouTube Examples: Atlanta, Ontario Ministry of Education, Cobb County, Carlton School Board)

CompuRead & Learning Insights: 1985 - 1988  

Founded these two R&D partnerships to patent, develop, prototype and explore market opportunities for an Electronic Book, whose operating system and ‘Learner Interface and overall 'Electronic Publishing for Learning' system were designed specifically to meet the unique and dynamically changing needs of individual learners. In addition to the Electronic Book, while at Learning Insights Mr. Boulton also developed a patented technology for multiplexing and broadcasting multiple streams of data (the 'Pipeline') over standard cable TV coaxial cable. The intellectual property and patents generated by these partnerships were incorporated into DiaCom Technologies.

Dynamic Processing Equipment: 1979 - 1984

Founder and CEO: Designed and built robotic wet processing equipment used by the circuit board, semi-conductor and precious metals industries. Working with Hewlett Packard, Digital Equipment, Stanford Applied Engineering and Ampex., Dynamic Processing Equipment developed the technology that made it possible to manufacture plated disks for computer hard drives. Company employed over one hundred people and achieved sales in excess of twenty-five millions dollars.

Articles, Seminars, Workshops, and Speaking Engagements:

Mr. Boulton’s articles have been published in a variety of national & international journals and magazines including: New Horizons for Learning, The California School Boards Journal, Quantum Leap: The Journal of the US-China Educational Institute, Young Scholar, Management & Conjoncture Sociale, The American Music Teacher, The Brain Mind Bulletin, Centecemes and In Context – A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture.  His work has been featured in books including: WORKING WISDOM – Timeless Skills and Vanguard Strategies for Learning Organizations; THE INTERACTIVE CORPORATION – Using Interactive Media and Intranets to Enhance Business Performance; POISONED APPLE – the Bell-Curve Crisis and How Our Schools Create Mediocrity and Failure; and SCHOOL’S OUT – Hyperlearning, The New Technology and the end of Education. He developed a satellite-distributed seminar, Designing Multimedia, for the National Technological University’s 1992 Spring series, entitled Multimedia: The Emerging Giant - New Tools for New Times which was distributed around the U.S. 

Mr. Boulton has been a keynote speaker for the Nebraska State School Psychologists Association, South Carolina Education and Business Summit, Scientific Learning’s National Circle of Learning, the Florida State Literacy Coalition, Burnaby School District (Canada), The California Education Summit, The World Futurists Society, The National Mobile Workforce Management Symposium, The State Department of Education in Hawaii, The Ministry of Education in Ontario, The 21st Century Learning Initiative, The New American Schools Design Team, The International Baccalaureate Schools, The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, The Chinese Institute of Linguistics, The Beijing Institute of Education, Dalian Medical University and many others.  He has given talks, seminars, workshops to political leaders, business executives, education professionals and organizations including the Science Network's 'Science of Educating' conference, the International Dyslexia Association (main international conference), United Way, Rotary International, the Center for Quality Leadership, the National School Mental Health Association, the National Center for Family Literacy, Lindamood-Bell, ACE of Florida, the Michigan Council for Exceptional Children, and many others.

Comments and Feedback about David's Work:

from: Leaders in Learning - Recent Attendees - Teachers - Parents - Event Organizers  

Technology Patents:

US Patent # 5537618 Method and Apparatus for Implementing User Feedback (Pattern Visualization Side)

US Patent # 5566291 Method and Apparatus for Implementing User Feedback (Collection Side)

US Patent # 4937821 Pipeline Information Delivery System

US Patent # 4985697 Electronic Book: educational publishing method using buried reference materials and  alternate learning levels