Nicole Dreiske:
The Credibility Factor

Digital media expert, author, and educational innovator, Nicole has 40 years experience in developing advanced educational strategies. An acknowledged pioneer of screen-based educational programs, she’s the Founder & Executive Director of International Children’s Media Center.

Nicole integrates media and movement into 21st Century classrooms in new ways that re-humanize the way children engage technology.

Her neuroscience-based Screen Smart approach trains teachers and parents to teach children healthy screen habits using special brain & body exercises.  Screen Smart’s proven techniques improve literacy skills, critical thinking, and social-emotional learning for children of all backgrounds, including ESL students, diverse learners, and autistic children. 

Her Fast FOCUS! techniques help teachers maintain students’ attention, even when they have to teach very young children remotely, as they have had to during COVID. 

Nicole’s book The Upside of Digital Devices: How to Make Your Child More Screen Smart, Literate, and Emotionally (2018, HCI Books) won the National Parenting Center’s Seal of Approval upon release. Her next book, Mindful Viewing®: A Guide for Parents, Teachers & Youth Group Leaders will come out in May 2022.

Nicole provides professional development and consultation to school districts, dioceses, corporations, arts organizations, and civic organizations. She has launched numerous national and international film festivals. As Founder & Artistic Director of Facets Multi-Media, she launched the first and largest international children’s film festival in the Americas, the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. 

She was the first festival director worldwide to get the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize a children’s event as an “Academy qualifying” festival. Thanks to her initiative, winners in the short film category at a children’s film festival can now compete for the Oscars®

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From 1975-1992, Nicole conducted an intensive 16-year interdisciplinary study, titled Matrix and Multiplicity, on acceleratory learning processes and peak performance techniques. Sensory learning techniques based on this research have been taught to more than 500,000 children, and are integrated into her Screen Smart® and Mindful Viewing® programs for children and adults. 

Over the past 25 years, she has conducted hundreds of workshops and seminars on media and education. Her methodologies for “turning on minds before turning on screens” at have been presented at schools, libraries, conferences and universities. 

Nicole lives in Chicago.

  • To book Nicole to speak at your next event, please email workshops@icmediacenter.org or call (773)-528-6854. Her keynote address, “How Healthy Tech Habits Accelerate Learning & Empathy” is in high demand.
  • For Nicole’s upcoming interviews and public presentations, click here 

Forums where Nicole has presented

  • TEDx Chicago
  • World Summit on Media for Children
  • Partnership for Media Education
  • Opening Minds Conference
  • National Catholic Education Association
  • National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) 
  • International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
  • Huffington Post Parent Conference
  • EY’s Disruptive Technologies Conference
  • Executive Learning Exchange
  • American Academy of Pediatrics
  • TEDx Chicago
  • 2019 Novus Summit at the UN