Future of Education

I am very fortunate to have one of the largest technology conferences in the US only 15 minutes from my front door. The unfortunate part is the lack of technology available at this conference. We have some of the best minds in the country keynote every year. This year Wes Fryer was the opening keynote speaker. He brought a great message of bringing change into the educational world. With thousands of educators in the audience he tweeted a message that he was going to have a back channel open using chazzy. As the introductions were made, he chatted with those of use that were in the chat room. WOW, chatting with the keynote speaker 2 minutes before he walked on stage, this is cool use of technology. This could have been a powerful conversation, but!

There is no wireless Internet at this conference. Ok, there is a coffee shop with one small hotspot. The only people in this conversation were those of us with smart phones (as if I needed a reason to love my iPhone, it gave me another). What about all the people in the audience who could have benefited from the conversation?

So what does this mean? Every negative has a lesson. The lessons I learned are:
•    Make sure you have the connectivity to support your audience. In schools, the wires, servers and other network hardware are more important than the computers. Feed your funds into the backbone of your network!
•    It is productive to have a digital background conversation during a lecture. I was engaged in the lecture (which is what a keynote really is). Our students can text, chat, IM during class and be productive. There need to be rules and guidelines though. I need to ponder this one a bit more.
•    Even the tech people evolve. A year ago I would have never said “let them use their cell phones I class.” This showed me as a learner how it can be done productively.

Those are lessons I have the ability to affect. One lesson I can’t affect is regarding eTech Ohio. I’ve been told for years about the dysfunction of eTech. This conference displays the dysfunction. Hopefully new leadership in the state of Ohio will bring new life to the governing body of technology in the state.

As I prepare for my presentations over the next week (school board tomorrow and Ohio eTech Conference next week) I want to use this space to thank my personal learning network (PLN). In my preparations, the responses I have gotten from my twitter friends,  Diigo Groups, co-workers, and my wife (she is my co-presenter at eTech) have been an amazing resource. I would suggest to all teachers to create an online PLN to be an add on to your face-to-face contacts. You will become a better teacher in no time because of the ideas and resources that will come your way. So thank you PLN.

Today is the Sunday many educators dread. After two great weeks of celebrating the holidays and being with our loved ones, we must now cram in all the work we have been putting off the last two weeks. I am no different. I have four videos to create for a presentation to district administrators this Friday, I need to create a wiki for a central Ohio technology integration collaborative I am working to create, come up with a 15 minute how to session for elementary teacher centered around Word, update my materials for Ohio Etech Presentation, and reply to all the emails I have received the last two weeks. So, why am I writing this post?

One of my goals for 2009 is to blog consistently. This means I may have to force myself to procrastinate some of my other work in order to write (wish my high school teachers could read that line, they would pass out from the shock). I believe I have some great ideas to share, and it is time I put my thoughts out for the world to see.

I am going to start 2009 with a series of post about what a 21st century school should look like. Few of my ideas are going to be original, but I hope it to be another place to start a conversation. The first post later this week will be about assessment in the 21st century. It is time to end standardized testing and put the technology that is available to work. From there I will branch off and discuss; taking bells out of the school, integration across curricular areas, writing, research, the use of course management systems, web 2.0, etc. By the time I’m done, this may be a 30 part series.

I’m looking forward to doing the research and hope to see what the educational bloggers think and have to share.