NYSCATE

From November 22-24 I attended the annual NYSCATE conference at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center. The conference brings together educators from all across New York to share and discuss technology in education.

The conference featured some amazing keynote presenters, Sir Ken Robinson (of TED Talks) and David Jakes stick out in my mind. I left both keynotes excited for what is to come for education, but also a bit concerned how the education community at large will be able to reform. The paradigm shift is large and scary and who will lead us through the shift?

Sir Ken Robinson gave an inspiring and engaging speech that revolved around the need to reinvent an education system that promotes creativity.  He pointed out that we are born creative and are educated out of our creativity. Take a minute to think about that. When students enter Kindergarten they are full of creativity, easily able to create a visual of what they are learning; project based learning. But by the time those Kindergartners are Seniors in high school, can they do the same thing? Can they create a project to show what they have learned? What can you do to promote creativity in your students? I am still trying to get obtain video or audio of the keynote, but in the meantime, check out Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talks on schools killing creativity.

David Jakes spoke of the future of education and how we need to nurture the 21st century learner, our students don’t see web 2.0 technology as web 2.0, they see it simply as the internet. Why discourage the use of social media when our students are already using it (webkinz, hotwheels, poptropica, etc)? Jakes really pushed the envelope of how education can changing when he demonstrated GE’s Augemented Reality and questioned what this type of technology could do for textbooks. Watch the video on the GE site and then ask yourself how learning could evolve if students could bring their textbook up to the computer and visualize scenes from history.

Over the next month I will be posting more reflections from the NYSCATE conference and the sessions I attended. If you are interested, some presenters posted resources from their presentations on the NYSCATE wiki.