Techcon occurred October 26, 2012 at the Naperville Campus of Northern Illinois University. Over 160 local school administrators, technology leaders, and classroom teachers convened for the one-day session.
Google’s Jaime Casap (Twitter: @jcasap) was the keynote speaker. His presentation focused on the crisis of low expectations and that even though the jobs that will exist in 2037 are not known today, several skills exists today that are fundamental to success years away: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, analyzing information, and problem solving.
He noted that we learn and solve problems in different ways so we should have different types of assessment. Further students today have new capabilities to learn differently and that education is beginning to take advantage of new learning models.
With one of the themes of the conference was about cloud resources, sessions addressed the Illinicloud, and Google, Apple, and Microsoft cloud offerings. Other sessions outlined digital learning opportunities, a 1:1 implementation, digital mapping, Open Education Resources, and social networking applications in schools.
Apple’s Patrick Beedles (Twitter: @beedles_apple) closed the day with a summary of the day’s key points.
This is the second posting connected to the future of technology in schools. In the last posting, cloud computing in schools was considered. This entry considers personal technology in schools
Students should bring their computers to school and pull their phones from their pockets. Students have more computer power in their pockets and in their netbooks at home than they routinely get at school.In all good measure, school districts and states cannot sustain one-to-one computer initatives. Anything in schools that has an implementation timeline more than three years will get curtailed before full implementation because of budget reductions and yet another new program. The initial excitement of providing students their own computer soon wanes in the reality of implementation, support, professional development, and other organizational issues.
School transformation can occur when devices are routinely put into students’ hands. They own more computing power than any school district can sustain. Textbooks and teachers continue to be the most important curriculum materials in schools. The school library is now very transparent with online circulation system and online resources, yet students continue to visit computer labs or have computer carts rolled into their classrooms. With the technology available to kids, why do schools still look like this?
Kids are forced to hide their phones and access is restricted to networks for any personally owned computers. With the shrinkage of school budgets, schools should turn to students’ personal technologies (phones, netbooks, and notebooks). Technology departments will never be able to keep up with the stated computer replacement cycles. Open the wireless networks, provide power charging stations or battery exchange stations, and change the punitive anti-technology board policies.
With more features and functions in personal technologies, students should be able to use their phones as calculators or as their assignment notebooks, but because these features are in a phone, the technology is banned. Students have their phones; they are using them, regardless of how much the adults attempt to extinguish the personal technologies. Prohibition has never worked. (No, I am not promoting drug use or alcohol abuse for teens.) One thousand students with their internet-connected phones have the total storage capacity of 16 terabytes of data and a combined bandwidth of 200 megabits per second. What school can afford that storage or bandwidth?
Technology departments should begin to work with teachers who are ready for students to use their personal technologies in schools. This should be led by the curriculum not the technologists. Teachers can refine their existing materials to put learning more in students’s hands and their technologies. This is a practical direction for school districts. Schools can provider loaner system for students who do not have personal technologies. Book fees and technology fees would cover such loaner systems. It’s time to move toward student technologies rather than rely on shrinking school budgets that cannot keep pace.
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