"Bricks and Mortar Schools are Detrimental to the Future of Education"

Tuesday Morning Keynote - Dialogue and Debate

Moderated by NPR All Things Considered, journalist Robert Siegel

Oxford style debate which featured education and technology leaders presenting opposing arguments.

Arguing for the motion:

Michael Horn, educator and author "Distrupting Class: How Distruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns" co authored with Clayton Christiansen

Gary Stager, visiting professor at Pepperdine University (no, not one of my professors) and executive director of the Constructivist Consortium

Marshall Thompson, soon to be senior at Walt Whitman HS in Bethesda, Maryland

Arguing againist the mtion:

Brad Jupp, senior advisor to Secry of Education Arne Duncan

Cheryl Lempke, served with the State Departments of Education in Illinois and Washington. Now she is the executive director of the Milken Excahnge on Education Technology

Erik Hakke, soon to be a senior at Springfield HS in Springfield, Virginia



All of the debates can be Googled. The Google results will provide in depth background information regarding their educational philosophy.



The ISTE daily news will provide detailed information regarding comments from the debate teams. More to come

News from NECC - Keynote Speaker Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell keynote kicked off the 30th annual NECC with a message about creating meaningful learning environments that included examples from education as well as diverse disciplines such as economics, sports, literature and music. His keynote was NOT about technology, but about learning.

Galdwell is the author of "The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers - The Story of Success

Here's my take away:

• "Sometimes the struggle to learn something is where the actual learning lies."
• Two learning strategies: capitalization, leveraging our strengths and compensation, focusing your efforts on weaknesses. Galdwell believes we "that we spend too much time capitalizing when we'd find much more success by compensating. We should embrass failure because that's how we learn."
• Did you know that Fleetwood Mac's Albumn "Rumors" was their 16th. Can you name their first 15?
• Cognitive complex tasks take 10,000 hrs of practice for anything near success. That's 4 hrs. a day for 10 years.
• Bobbie Fischer, chess great, made it to the top in 9 years. In comparision, Mozart was a late bloomer. It took him 14 years to find success with concert 9- 271. The Beatles did not just brust on the scene in 1964. They played 1200 live concerts together many in a stripe club in Hamburg Germany before "bursting onto the scene". Mark Twain did not write Huck Finn until he was in his 50s and it took him 9 years to conclude the book. Why? He didn't like any of his endings.

FEEDBACK - There is value in timely and targeted feedback. Do we provide timely and targeted feedback to our students?

Notice - have I mentioned anything about hardware, software, or tech integration? Nope, gosh, I thought I was at a technology conference. Yes, the newest tech toys will be displayed and students and teachers discussing, demonstrating and advocating for technology will be front and centered. More importantly, this is a learning conference and technology is one of the tools.

More to come ........

Hi from NECC/ISTE in Washington, DC

This is the 30th anniversary of NECC, National Education Computing Conference, and the 8th NECC I've attended in the past 10 years. 2010 NECC will be changing it's name to ISTE, International Society for Technology in Education Conference. This name change reflects the educational transformation of using technology, not just computers, in the educational environment.

My plan was to blog each day of the conference, beginning Sunday, June 28th. However, at the end of the day when returning to the hotel I discovered that the hotels wireless is only in the lobby and the "tied to your desk" connection was not functioning because the hotel is being updated to wireless throughout. Probably a good thing because I would have been up late into the night.

This blog will include links, activities, general comments regarding the direction of technology in education and maybe my opinions. Not all materials will be of interest to everyone. So, pick and choose. I've streamlined the information because of time constraints. If you'd like more details regarding a link or concept, just let me know. Blogging should not be a static conversation, so I'd like to hear from you.

Regards,
Carol-Lynn Petras
Instructional Technology Facilitator, Affton High School