DR. WILLIAM RANKIN JOINS PI-TOP AS DIRECTOR OF LEARNING AND RESEARCH

Former Director of Learning for Apple to Lead Pi-Top’s “Learning by Making” Education Initiative; Joins Newest Executive Additions Graham Brown-Martin and Tim Bush to Help Drive Learning Innovation, Provide Platform for Student Growth

Learning company pi-top™ today announced Dr. William Rankin has joined the company as Director of Learning and Research. Rankin is an award-winning educator and technology executive known for promoting and enhancing educational innovation. 

He will lead a global team of teachers, curriculum designers and researchers focused on the design and creation of engaging educational approaches and content to support pi-top’s unique “Learning by Making” initiative. 

Rankin brings to pi-top 26 years of experience as a teacher and technologist in education.  Previously, he was Director of Learning for Apple Inc., where he had responsibility for developing, promoting, and enhancing innovative teaching and learning in pre-K to post-20 education. 

In his role as a globally recognized education expert, he worked with K–12 schools and universities to design and create breakthrough learning environments.

Prior to joining Apple, Rankin worked in higher education for 24 years, concluding his time as a Professor of English and Honors College Fellow at Abilene (Texas) Christian University, where he helped design the world’s first one-to-one technology program using an iOS device.

This program sought to break through classroom isolation by giving every student mobile educational technologies they could use for real-world learning. As project lead for this initiative, Rankin was named Campus Technology Magazine’s 2008 Innovator of the Year for mobile learning.

He has received numerous other education awards and has presented on educational technology and emerging teaching and learning strategies at national and international conferences in more than 30 countries.

“Bill Rankin has been at the forefront of innovation and change in education for more than 25 years,” said Jesse Lozano, pi-top CEO.  “As we continue to expand our educational content on the pi-top platform, Bill will play a key role in helping the company deliver on its promise of helping prepare students for success in the 21^st century and the advent of the fourth industrial revolution.”

Rankin’s team forms part of the Learning and Product Design Group within pi-top, headed up by pi-top’s Chief Education and Product Officer, Graham Brown-Martin, who joined the company in September. 

The mission of the Learning and Product Design Group is to align product design and development with the company’s teaching and learning strategy, helping provide students with the resources to develop collaborative problem solving, project-based learning and 21st-century competencies.

Brown-Martin joined pi-top after a 30-year career in the educational technology, entertainment and publishing sectors where he built a number of fast-growth businesses, including Learning Without Frontiers, one of the world’s foremost think tanks focused on the future of learning. His best-selling book, Learning {Re}imagined, was published by Bloomsbury in 2014 and he has consulted for some of the world’s largest corporations and leading government agencies.

Reinforcing the company’s commitment to the education market and its ability to drive customer engagement, Tim Bush has joined the company as Global Chief Marketing Officer. He leads the company’s worldwide team of product, event and channel marketing, media and public relations, global customer champions network, market development, and customer content.

Prior to joining pi-top, Bush was responsible for education marketing at Microsoft in the UK, where he led the integration of social, print and digital media marketing efforts, leveraging advanced marketing tools to drive the company’s education marketing efforts. 

About pi-top™: is one of the industry’s fastest growing learning companies, with headquarters offices in London, Austin, Texas, and Shenzhen, China.  The pi-top hardware platform is an award-winning ecosystem used around the world in more than 2,000 schools, blending physical computing and project-based learning with Computer Science and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) education.  The company’s goal is to inspire students to develop the skills of tomorrow and create their future, today.