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Secretary Margaret Spellings named Timothy J. Magner director of the Department's Office of Educational Technology on Feb. 1, 2006. He returns to the Department with over 15 years of work experience with educational technology in schools, the arts and the private sector.

The Office of Educational Technology is responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of ED's educational technology policies. Its main goal is to maximize technology's contribution to improving education through developing a coherent national educational technology policy and implementing that policy in support of the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

A Washington, D.C., native, Magner spent part of his childhood in Thailand and Japan, as his family moved to accommodate his father's Foreign Service career. He attended high school in Arlington, Va., and graduated from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., with a bachelor's degree in government and theater in 1988. He earned a teaching certificate a year later, and, after graduation, taught high school for a year at Williamsburg's Walsingham Academy before seeking a master's in education from Harvard University in 1991.

During 1992 and 1993, Magner taught at international schools in Leysin, Switzerland, and Paris, France, before returning to the states to teach and later become one of the first technology training specialists for the Fairfax County, Va., Public Schools for four years.

In 1995, he became an Internet specialist and program manager for the Kennedy Center's K-12 ArtsEdge program for teachers. Then, in 1997, he moved to Framingham, Mass., to serve as the director of technology for the Framingham Public Schools. While in Framingham, he also taught graduate-level educational technology courses for Framingham State College.

In 1999, Magner moved back to the Washington, D.C., area, where he developed retail technology standards for the National Retail Federation before landing a post as manager of online learning for the Public Broadcasting Service in Alexandria, Va. He also worked for three years as an adjunct professor at George Mason University, where he taught graduate-level classes on educational technology.

Starting in 2001, he worked for two years as the director of the Washington-based nonprofit Schools Interoperability Framework Association, a group that promotes K-12 data-sharing standards among software companies, school districts and state departments of education.

In 2003, he joined Microsoft Corp. as its executive director for K-12 education, splitting his time for a year between offices in Washington, D.C., and Redmond Wash., until he joined the Department for the first time as deputy director of educational technology in 2004. In 2005, he left ED for a year to serve as a deputy executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers with a focus on educational technology.

Magner and his wife, a Fairfax County Public Schools kindergarten teacher, have two sons, 10 and 12. The family lives in Vienna, Va.