Dr. Ted M. Kahn
Ted M. Kahn, PhD, is Cofounder, CEO, and Chief Future Learning/Career Architect of DesignWorlds for Learning and DesignWorlds for College & Careers, Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for Digital Curricula in the University of Michigan's College of Engineering, and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Soundscapes and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University, with over 50 years of experience in the research, development, and application of interactive digital media for creative lifelong learning.
Ted cofounded DesignWorlds for Learning in 1997 with his wife, Frona Kahn, to develop online, creative, and collaborative lifelong learning communities that integrate emerging technologies with research in the learning and cognitive sciences. Its college and career advisory practice, DesignWorlds for College & Careers, established in 2004, has coached and advised over 1,100 high school, college, and graduate students on college admissions, choice of major, and future career paths.
His current projects bring artificial intelligence, digital sonification, and futures thinking to transdisciplinary STEAM learning. With Bryan Pijanowski, Director of Purdue's Center for Global Soundscapes, and Meg Lowman of the TREE Foundation, he leads the Symphony for the Earth project, a multimodal STEAM virtual music festival for Earth Day 2026 that connects students to the sounds of living ecosystems.
He is also Founder and CEO of the Mindseum, a crowdsourced virtual museum and learning-product incubator, developed in collaboration with our Jack Park's TopicQuests Foundation, that lets young people explore the intersections of cognitive neuroscience, neurotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, the arts, and health through more than 350 curated digital assets. Watch Exploring a New Global Mindseum: Magic Theater, “Glass Bead Game” or a new kind of global crowd sourced and networked museum collaboratory?
In 2025, Ted coauthored the chapter AI as muse: How humans can leverage large language model AI for transdisciplinary creative thinking and research with Anthony Brandt in the Elsevier volume Generative Artificial Intelligence and Creativity. In 2023, he contributed the chapter Digitally Mediated Learning Modalities for Computational Thinking: Promises and Challenges for Informal STEAM Learning to Amplifying Informal Science Learning: Rethinking Research, Design, and Engagement. Watch his 2025 BayCHI talk Learning to Create: How “Kids of All Ages” Have Used Digital Technologies to Co-Create the Future!.
Ted's career tracks the history of personal computing in education. Between 1970 and 1976, at the Lawrence Hall of Science of the University of California, Berkeley, he cofounded the Math and Computer Education Project, one of the first public-access museum programs teaching children to program computers, and co-directed the Emeryville Program for the Academically Talented. From 1976 to 1978, he worked at Xerox PARC with Alan Kay and the Learning Research Group, the team behind Smalltalk and the graphical user interface.
From 1979 to 1983, he consulted on educational marketing for Atari and founded and directed the Atari Institute for Educational Action Research, a corporate grants program that placed over $1.25 million in Atari computers and services with roughly 100 innovative educators and organizations worldwide. With Herbert Kohl, he coauthored Atari Games and Recreations (1981), which sold over 50,000 copies, and Atari PILOT Games and Recreations (1982). Listen to ANTIC Interview 185 — Ted Kahn, Atari Institute for Educational Action Research.
From 1983 to 1988, he was Vice President of Education at Picodyne Corporation, where he designed four national award-winning educational software titles for the National Geographic Society and one of the first personal-computer-based multimedia training systems. From 1989 to 1991, as Manager of User Education at Digital F/X, he helped introduce Video F/X, one of the world's first Macintosh-based desktop digital video editing systems.
From 1992 to 1997, he was Senior Research Scientist and Director of Technology Strategy Development at the Xerox-founded Institute for Research on Learning, where he helped develop the U.S. Department of Education-funded Silicon Valley Challenge 2000 Multimedia Project, cochaired the DARPA ISAT study group on the National Information Infrastructure in education, and cofounded the NASA-funded Broad Alliance for Multimedia Technology and Applications. Read Rhythms of Collaboration and Scaleable Integration of Educational Software: Exploring The Promise of Component Architectures.
In 2000, Ted and the DesignWorlds team created the K-12 web content and messaging for Apple's launch of iMovie as a digital movie-making tool for students and teachers. From 2002 to 2010, he was Founding Director of the Bay Area Science Education Collaboratory, one of the earliest open educational resource projects, funded with over $290,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and codesigned by and for middle-grade science teachers and museum educators.
Read Science Museum Learning Collaboratories: Helping to Bridge the Gap Between Museums' Informal Learning Resources and Science Education in K-12 Schools and A New Model of Education: Designing Virtual Communities for Creativity and Learning.
Ted earned his B.A. in Computer Science with honors in 1971 and his M.A. in 1973 and Ph.D. in 1981 in Psychology, all from the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation was An analysis of strategic thinking using a computer-based game.
Between 1973 and 1975, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Educational Technology in Herzliya and a Research Associate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 1997 to 1998, he was a Senior Fellow at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, from 2005 to 2010, a CSTS Fellow at Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology & Society, and from 2007 to 2010, a Distinguished Visiting Scholar with mediaX at Stanford University. From 2003 to 2010, he was adjunct faculty at Foothill College's Krause Center for Innovation.
In 2003, the New Media Consortium named Ted its first NMC Fellow, its highest individual honor, for his lifelong work in digital media and interactive technologies for learning. He was one of five finalists for the 2010 World Technology Award in Education, a juror for the 2012 Brock International Prize in Education, and was featured among 18 national “Shapers of our Future 2000” by Converge Magazine.
He has delivered keynotes and invited presentations at the National Academy of Sciences, the MIT Media Lab, the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, the White House Internet Summit on Digital Media and Youth, and the World Future Society.
Ted was a founding board member of the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose from 1983 to 1989, cochairing its Program Committee with Steve Wozniak. Since 2014, he has served on the Steering Committee and National Advisory Council of the Campaign for Free College Tuition. He is a Professional Member of the World Future Society, an Associate Member of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, and a certified trainer of Business Model You. DesignWorlds' advisors include our Peter C. Bishop, founder of Teach the Future.
In 2025, he led a futurist-thinking session at the Teen Summit of the Z3 Project, an initiative of the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto.
Ted lives in San Jose, California, with his wife, Frona Kahn, cofounder of The Learning Company. They have two adult sons and one grandson. Read his Curriculum Vitae.
Visit his LinkedIn profile, ResearchGate profile, and DesignWorlds page. Follow him on Facebook and X.