NECC Buzzwords

Last day of NECC. Whew. Thinking a little about some of the big themes of this conference. Everywhere one hears:

• Web 2.0 (of course) and new information fluency/literacy skills
• Second Life - moving from bleeding to leading edge
  
• International collaboration/competition
• Creativity/Innovation (new ISTE NETS standards)
  
• And dare is say it, there is a role for FUN in education
  

People seem to be "getting" the visual power of PowerPoint. Number of text-heavy slides on the decline. Hurray! Wireless connectivity was excellent at the conference center (but bad at the Omni hotel). Live blogging, twittering, podcasting - ubiquitous.

My level of concern about giving my own presentation went up a notch this year. First, I knew the talk would be podcast at the NECC site (I'll link on this blog when it gets loaded),  but the live blogging meant that the blogosphere would know the quality of your presentation BEFORE you packed up your computer and left the room. A couple interesting side notes from the presentation:

• I had an 18-year-old young man come up and tell me about HIS company SCRIPTOVIA.com. He's heading to India next week to line up computer services. How much will he be worth when he is 21? (Oh, he said 95% of my comments about the Net Gen were accurate - nice to know.)
• Jeff Utech couldn't get to the session since the room was full. So David Jakes used Skype that allowed Jeff to hear it and live blog it. Is this just a little bit of nerd heaven here or what?
• One very nice you man came up to me after the talk and said, "Mr Johnson, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, (uh, oh.) but when I get  to be your age I hope I am as lively as you are."  Thanks. I'm glad I got out of the wheelchair to give the talk. It was a sincere compliment, though, and thanks.

The talk when fine thanks to the "lively" group attending. Thanks to each of you!

Peggy Milam did a wonderful job of organizing yesterday's SIGMS Forum (and other events). Good attendance. Alice Yucht is always so funny, informative and provacative!  

Of course, getting to visit with friends, too many to mention, is always fun. I always learn so much from those conversations in the hall

Flying out his afternoon. Always nice to go; always nice to come home. I am sure the ideas garnered from the conference will continue to percolate in the weeks to come. 

Congratulations to David Barr

At this afternoon's Making It Happen social, long-time friend and admired colleague David Barr was recognized for his leadership and service to ISTE and the field of education. The award could not have been given to a more deserving and nicer man. Whoever is on the committee got this one right.

David is with the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy that does the terrific The 21st Century Information Fluency Project (21CIF) that I've written about here before (and have quoted in columns.)

I've been learning from David since we did an North Central visit to Iowa City probably 10 years ago or more. So, it was great getting to see David and swap stories about what our grandchildren are teaching us!

Congratulations again! 

Bridging two mountains

Yesterday's Edublogger conference here at NECC in Atlanta was as exciting as only being in a huge group of like-minded educators can be. Keywords of engagement, authentic learning/assessment, creativity, information fluency, and global citizenry were common as ticks on a coon dog. (Sorry, being in the South has had an effect.)

What I wonder, though, is if education technology change isn't creeping up on many of us in that group from quite a different direction - through the use of technology to assess and use data to determine learning needs of individual students.

Now, by "learning needs" I would suggest that there is a dichotomy of what constitutes "learning needs" in the educational community. Look at the NETS standards, the blogosphere, and the work of Stiggens and Kohn and other progressive educators, engagement, authentic learning/assessment, creativity, information fluency, and global citizenry are the goals - the mountain the group yesterday is trying to climb.

But another real mountain exists in schools and classroom that may be more representative: the goals represented by NCLB, summative assessments, and the focus on basic skill attainment and fact-heavy content standards. To put it bluntly, test scores are of more concern to my teachers and administrators than nearly anything else. Too many of the things we believe in remain "nice extras" or more likely, distractions for the classroom teacher.

Some teachers like Vicki Davis seemed to have naturally bridged the gulf between the mountains - through her personal courage and belief that  this way of learning is just plain more important than test scores. But how do will build bridges for the rest of the educational world?

I can think of some important ones: 

Make sure assessments are used to differentiate instruction. We need to use the data we get from tests to individualize the educational process. As a teacher, I now empirically KNOW that I have kids with different skill levels in my classes. But I have to now take that knowledge and make sure every child is custom educated - not mass education. This might be the way educational technology (value-added testing) that may have the biggest positive impact on classrooms (and was not really addressed by we edubloggers yesterday to any great extent - at our peril.)

Have 21st skills recognized as being as important as the 3rs.  The "refreshed NCLB" requirements must include holding schools and teachers accountable for making sure students master the skills represented by the "refreshed" NETS standards. This will be a tough sell. (Despite the lip service, I am not convinced that business really wants creative thinkers.)

Make the case for engagement = learning. On a gut level, all teachers know that a student that is not engaged at least a certain level is not learning. (Duh.) But is there research saying the the greater the level of engagement, the greater the amount of learning? This is important given technology's power in engaging our Net Generation students. We can't rely on gut feeling to make this case, especially in a high stakes testing environment.

As you go through the vendor area (or look at ed tech publications), make a mental note of which products and services support the constructivist/21 century skill mindset (read Sylvia Martinez's June 23rd Generation Yes blog entry) and how many support the NCLB basic skills emphasis. Folks, the big money is going to the second group.

There is an old maxim about a person who climbs a huge mountain, only to turn around on reaching the summit to see the rest of his party has climbed another mountain. Are you climbing the same mountain as the rest of the educators in your schools? And if not, how do you build bridges between the peaks?