Michael Cafuta  has spent more than two decades in education, with most of his teaching career taking place in Japan. Along the way, he has taught students of all ages, served as an Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE), led an English department, and was one of the founding members of Seto SOLAN, helping build the school and its learning culture from the ground up.

Throughout his career, Mike has been driven by a curiosity for new ideas and a belief that learning should be engaging, meaningful, and connected to the real world. Whether exploring educational technology, supporting fellow educators, or creating new learning experiences for students, he enjoys finding practical ways to make teaching more effective and enjoyable.

Now back in British Columbia, Mike continues to explore innovation in education while completing his Master of Educational Technology at UBC. Outside the classroom, he enjoys spending time with his family, playing disc golf, tennis, and pickleball, and taking on new projects that combine creativity with education.

Gerta Heba is an elementary school teacher with the Vancouver School Board (VSB) in Vancouver, Canada. She has an educational background in Communications and Education and has spent the past five years teaching students from grades 3-7 with a primary focus on Grades 3 and 4. She also holds a postgraduate diploma in Mathematics for Elementary Education from Queen's University and is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Educational Technology at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

Gerta is fluent in English and Albanian and also speaks French. She is passionate about creating engaging, experiential learning opportunities that thoughtfully integrate technology into the classroom. She strives to foster this type of learning environment for her students and is particularly interested in exploring how artificial intelligence can be used responsibly to enhance student learning, engagement, and growth.

Outside of teaching, Gerta enjoys running, weightlifting, exploring the mountains, serving in her church community, and singing and writing music with friends.

Neonatal Rios came to education after a career in investment banking analysis, now based in British Columbia, where he teaches JK-12 STEM and leads STEM education programs for a community nonprofit, and is pursuing a Master of Educational Technology (MET) at the University of British Columbia.

His interests center on the overlap between educational neuroscience and AI-enabled EdTech, and on making STEM instruction more accessible, equitable, and inclusive for a wider range of learners. His contribution to this OER applies an investment analyst’s rigor to evaluating the growing opportunity for hyper-personalized EdTech tools adapted to how students actually learn. Outside of education, Neonatal enjoys spending weekends out on hiking trails, pickleball courts, or with his local run club.

Note: “Neonatal Rios” (also credited as “N. Rios” in the Creative Commons license) is a pseudonym, used to keep academic and professional identities separate. The accompanying profile photo is a stock image, not a photo of the contributor.

Monique Saunders is an Alberta-certified secondary science educator teaching Grades 10 and 11 at a STEM-focused school in Edmonton, and a graduate student in the University of British Columbia’s Master of Educational Technology (MET) program. Her work focuses on inquiry-based learning, technology integration, and the role of emerging tools such as generative AI in K–12 education.

Through her MET studies and work in STEM education, Monique has become increasingly interested in how neuroscience can help us think more carefully about the way educational technologies are designed and used. She is especially interested in how AI might support neurodivergent learners without taking away the thinking, practice, and reflection that learning still requires. Her contribution to this OER focuses on the balance between helpful AI support and cognitive dependence, with particular attention to retrieval practice, cognitive load, and metacognition. Monique approaches neuroscience-informed AI with cautious optimism and believes these tools should be designed with educator judgment, inclusive practice, and input from experts who understand both learning and cognitive diversity.