From June 29th to July 2nd, 2008, over 17,000 K-12 educators met in San Antonio, Texas to discuss promising trends in educational technology at the annual National Educational Computing Conference (NECC). We’d like to review here two major themes that emerged from this important gathering.
In our previous entry, we identified four ways in which computing technology helps children learn. Now, for technology to do its thing, children must have ready access to computers in school. Unfortunately, the ratio of students to computers in K-12 is 4:1. Schools simply don’t have the funds to buy each and every one of the 55,000,000 students a computer. The buzz at NECC was about the possibility that low-cost mobile computers (a.k.a. smartphones) could solve the cost problem. Schools don’t need to purchase a laptop for each child—each child will be bringing a highly functional mobile computing device to school anyway so why not use it for curricular activities? Cellphones are banned from schools today, but educators might become more receptive to cellphones once they learn that they can control what students do (and don’t do) on their phones—such as turn off cameras during gym, turn off texting during a test, and so on. Cellphones can save a great deal of money and still enable each child to have an Internet-connected, multimedia computing device that supports the curriculum. Last year, cellphone was a four-letter word at NECC; this it's the buzz; next year—stay tuned!
Second theme: the world is flat. We are connected into a global community and to think otherwise is to play ostrich. This year’s conference revealed an explosion of exciting global learning activities. For example, in RockOurWorld children are creating and sharing music in dozens and dozens of classrooms around the world. In the Zero Carbon Footprint Project, children are computing their carbon footprint and sharing their findings with other children, again, all around the globe. Interestingly, these projects are grassroots efforts, initiated by teachers who feel it’s important that children communicate with others all over the world. These sorts of projects help our children see others not as strangers to be feared but as children just like themselves. Dr. Seuss would definitely approve—the Internet helps today’s children see the folly of the Zooks fighting with the Yooks.
We look forward to next year’s NECC in Washington, DC, June 28 through July 1, 2009.
