Nicole Dreiske:
The Credibility Factor
Digital media expert, author, and educational innovator, Nicole Dreiske develops interdisciplinary strategies for accelerated learning. An acknowledged pioneer of film-based educational programs, she’s the Founder & Executive Director of the International Children’s Media Center.
Nicole integrates media and movement into 21st Century classrooms in new ways that humanize the way children engage technology.
Her neuroscience-based Screen Smart® approach teaches children healthy tech habits by combining kinesthetic exercises with Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and core learning. 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 children on the autism spectrum.
Dreiske’s 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 first 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 two new e-books, Movies Make You Smarter® and Mindful Viewing® were released on Amazon in May 2025. She has written three additional e-books scheduled for release in 2025, including Screen Smart®– The Future of Education with Salim Ismail of Open Exo.
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
