The North Dakota K-12 technology conference (Teaching and Technology) is this week. The keynote presentation was given by Susan Patrick U.S. Education Department Office of Educational Technology (sorry about the image – I wanted to emphasize the message on the screen). The message — there is a major role for technology in NLCB. Integrating technology to improve student and school performance is the key. Access to technology is no longer sufficient to generate federal support for school proposals.
I enjoy attending sessions and I try to pick out things I need to learn about. I can take pictures of Cindy without permission.
More tomorrow on some of the sessions (even on Windows products).
One observation – after listening to the keynote (technology integration as viewed from the federal level) and also attending a session on the state technology plan (pretty much the same message) – I started paying attention to the attendance in other sessions. Those who attended sessions seemed to prefer “how to do it sessions” over sessions emphasizing curriculum examples. I wonder why? Perhaps many feel they have yet to get to the point at which they feel integrating technology is possible. Perhaps classroom integration is very teacher, school, and content area specific so that there is less interest in how someone else does it. Perhaps people who pay to attend technology conferences really enjoy learning about the technology and will worry about the planning stuff when they get back home.
