Presented and attended the 2012 NJASA Techspo in Atlantic City, NJ the past couple days. Great conference!
Thursday's keynote was Ian Jukes and he presented on the Understanding the Digital Generation. In his presentation, Ian mentioned about the effects of digital bombardment and the implications this holds for the future of education. Today we have a new kind of student. Due to this bombardment, the today's students brain is wired differently. Naturally, our brains designed for visual content, therefore visual learners. Students today are more inclined to process images than texts. Scanning technologies have found that the digital generation reads in a F-pattern versus previous generation reads in a Z curve. They are wired for multimedia content. Nothing is wrong with the present generation, they are just different. Just as previous generations complained about their own children. Ian compared digital learners versus the educator how they received information, parallel and multitasking, digital learners prefer processing pictures, sounds, color, and video before text while many educators prefer to provide text before pictures, sounds and video. Jukes' presentation can be found at
21st century fluency website. Thought provoking and invigorating presentation!
Presented with Ed Aguiles, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, on A Practical Approach to Leadership Through the Use of Available Technology. Presentation can be found in Prezi at
http://prezi.com/bq5z3ru0v8ji/njasa-techspo-2012/.
Attended presentation Bullying and Social Networking: Legal Challenge for Students, Staff and Boards of Education in the Age of Cyberspace. The attorneys presentation focused on cyberbullying that takes place off campus. NJDOE includes anyone being bullied and harassed. Not only student to student but also teacher to student or student to teacher. Many questions were raised and the discussion included different court decisions regarding student freedom of speech and what school district's can do to discipline students. New information for me.
Friday's keynote was done by Jhone Ebert from Clark County School District, Nevada. She presented on how she provides technical services for students in the 5th largest school district in the nation. She mentioned that 21st century learning as part of a greater learning community that includes online learning and 24/7 access to resources and the need to harness technology to advance a new model of schooling. Looking at the movie the "Wizard of Oz", we all grew up in Kansas but now we are living in Oz. We are need to ask the right questions regarding schooling of today and the need to embrace a new ways of thinking. Ebert mentioned the need to have a reverse mentor. She talked about having a student to have a conversation on what they see as a need for their school or how they would like to see their school. She showed a presentation done by a student that believed in an iSchool. Great presentation.
Saw Web 2.0 Tools for Administrators by Sammantha Morra. Her presentation can be found at
http://www.slideshare.net/smorra/web-20-presentation-1940869. Morra talked about twitter, quizlet, social bookmarking using delicious, and the need to tag. Other resources can be found
https://sites.google.com/site/web20samanthamorra/education-blogs. Really enjoyed this presentation! I learned about many new tools.
Attended a late presentation by Woodcliff Lakes on globalization of educational services. Collaboration was done in social studies between Woodcliff Lakes students and students in China. Great project and presentation.
