WOW!  I am at the NECC /ISTE conference in Atlanta, GA.  My first introduction was at registration.  There were at least 50 registration booths.  I knew I was in for something special then.  We got a nice embroiderd bag fill with great “stuff”.  You know how I love anything free ….. 

Then I went to the ISTE newcomers meeting.  There were 100’s of people there.  Very interesting and we got more free stuff – I’m gong to like this conference.  Cool cat teacher, Vicki Davis won an award.  So, I finally meet one of my virtual mentors that I have never met in real life.  A lot of talk about second life.  I have to get myself going and learn more about it.  After the session, in which I didn’t win anything  ), I followed the crowd to the opening session.  Can you Say moooooo?

When I entered the conference room, I was inundated by a very loud, but awesome drum line.  They were excellent. What a way to start!   They were an all black group and there were several young ladies in the group – way to go!  Then the president of ISTE spoke to the small crowd of over 16,000.  Talk about overwhelming!  The president spoke of many of ways we need to make technology equitable across all races, economic, and geographical areas.   Good speaker.

The only negative is that it’s hard for me to get online – ugh!  Must be too many people trying to do the same thing I am.  When I can get online, I can’t get into my blog on edublog ….. ugh!

We must become the change we want to see – Gandhi

The keynote was from Andrew Zolli.  Tim Tyson will do the Wednesday closing session – should be good – he’s an advocate for ITF’s

Zolli:  founder of z + partners, explorer with Nat’l Geo, is a futurist in residence at popular science, and does public radio,  curator of Pop!Tech.  Pop!Tech.net

Should have brought my camera, he has some pretty funny slides.  He’s pretty funny, too.  Hope the presentation is as good. 

The Innovative imperative:  close the digital divide, will we have the resources needed for open source software.  The technology if going up, the prices are going down.  What happens when we are successful?  What would happen to the way we think?  Everything that can be done by a computer will be  - and many more things will be able to be done by machine that you ever thought possible.

Think – Look – Play – imagine  = network

Digital immigrants don’t think in network terms = we weren’t trained in that matter.  The kids were are teaching do think in those terms.

Areas of future change:

1. Demographic transformation: population is an L curve.  Africa growing at an exponential rate, Europe and Russia are shrinking. Instanteous urban development.  Population pyramid has been more younger people than older people, but now, the middle group is growing in the usa, not so in emerging countries the younger generation  is surpassing the middle group.  In 2025 we usa will almost be even all the way up….

This is from Chris at Crucial Thought….

Opening keynote live blog notes – Trina Davis

June 24, 2007

Opening keynote blog notes

MY COMMENTS IN ALL CAPS

Atlanta Drum Line – quite impressive

Dr. Trina Davis – ISTE President

Her mother graduated from Spellman, talked about Dr. Martin Luther King.

Said Atlanta feels a lot like home, group applauded. She said there’s more than 16,000 people here SHE MEANS THE CONFERENCE.

Access to technology and transformative powers has to be a reality for all students, not just those blessed by geography, birth or econonomic status. We must demand that for all students.

Technology is essential for school transformation.

3 challenges to take away from the conference…

1. It’s not about teaching kids how to use a mouse or turn on a monitor, we must provide an engaging environment and use technology to aggressively make that happen.

2. Embrace global learning and the excitement of leading students beyond the borders of time and the walls of the classroom. We teach kids to be global citizens.

We must learn with and from the educational community all around the world.

3. Grow in your role as advocates for change. Produce, innovate, and participate in the digital age.

This year Georgia earned an A grade with a score of 96 on a report released recently. NOT SURE WHICH REPORT

Bravo to GA educators who had a hand in that success.

ISTE is addressing the challenges I’ve set forth.

NETS was originally released in 1998, tomorrow they will release the new NETS.

Industrial age to digital age.

More than 50 countries are represented in the ISTE member roles.

I AM MISSING SOME OF THIS, HARD TO KEEP UP

She’s talking about e-rate NOT SURE WHAT THIS IS

You can make your voice heard at the ed tech action network, visit the booth and show support for more ed tech funding.

In April there was a capacity-building conference in Washington, DC to offer local groups help in advocacy at the local level.

She’s talking about those departing as volunteer board members

Six names about who is leaving.

Recognizing Kurt Steinhaus who is leaving as president but will still serve on the board.

6:00 PM – newly elected board members. she welcomed them aboard

Authentic leaders understand that leadership is about serving others.

We are bringing people together for a common cause. The more we work together the more we can achieve.

SHE’S RECRUITING MORE ISTE MEMBERS.

Annual report was left on our seats, showing the work ISTE’s done and will be doing.

Quoting Ghandi, “we must become the change we want to see.

Opening Keynote live blog notes – Andrew Zoli

June 24, 2007

Opening Keynote Part 2 – the main guy

He took the stage, MAKING BAD JOKES ABOUT HIMSELF

He is a founding partner of Z+ partners, is an explorer with National Geographic, Popular Science, American Demographics, and NPR’s marketplace.

He is also the creator of poptech.org

He says we’re all in the communications. History of communications, MORE JOKES, IN sign that says not an entrance.

Sign about caution water on road in rain. He asks why we need signs to tell us there’s water on the road when it rains.

Do not touch this sign, it has sharp edges. Also the bridge is out. MORE JOKES, FUNNY PICTURES

A gymnasium with an escalator leading up to it.

Preamble before we get into the change. This is the Innovation Imperative.

Will we deploy educational materials across mobile devices?

Will we have open source and creative commons licensed work to share?

Will we close the digital divide?

He is confident because he’s watching an exponential curve of new connectivity, new speed limits, and a concurrent curve driving the cost of that stuff down.

In the future, virtually anything that can be done by computer will be done by computer.

What in our optimal future will be left for us to do?

We are left with a world with a single priority to amplify our own creativity. That deep creativity is in all of us.

He is talking about turning off the filter that filters what we see. Dustin Hoffman and the 254 matches from Rainman.

In a world of commoditized computation we have to find out creative center.

The corporate world, organizations use cognitive styles to solve problems. Innovation is finding new sources of value in advance of new demands.

Think, look, play, imagine.

Lock good thinkers in the closet and then scream at them that we need desktop cold fusion.

Think model = 15% non-incremental 85% failure

Small groups of people – hard to come up with amazing new innovations

Look = 70% incremental, 30% failure

This is folks in the world. They discover that no one can get ketchup out of the bottle, so they invent the squeeze bottle.

Play – 40% redefine the problem, 40% incremental – 20% failure

Imagine – N/A since it’s solving the problem that doesn’t exist

What emerges is the network model, and in the future corporations will hire the people we’re training today that are living in a networked society. Most of the folks here were not trained to think in network terms.

Diagram about social networks. Source is Valdis Krebs.

In the first generation we lived and died by Metcalfe’s law.

Now we’re in the participation equation.

Five areas that are going to shape the future. We are listening to weak signals, those are going to dominate our world tomorrow.

1. Demographic transformation. – this is hugely important but we don’t get trained in it

It took 40,000 years to go from a few people to a few billion. It’s an L curve, taking off. Today 6+ billion, by 2050 9+ billion.

Population increases in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceana and North America. Declines in England and Russia.

We became an urban society.

Three major cities in 2040 are in China and haven’t been built yet. Dubai in 15 years has changed the entire landscape.

Showing a population pyramid.Typically the highest number of babies and lowest number of old folks. Average pyramid form shrinking as you go up. More likely to die as you get older.

Middle section pays into social service at the top and education at the bottom. Right now around the world there is a new population architecture emerging.

70% of Morocco is under 30 years old.

He is talking about being Italian and making jokes.

He says that intergenerational complexities.

Comparing boomers, optimism, trust, diversity, socialization, participation

Boomers love hanging out with their friends.

Gen X’ers are alienated and don’t even like hanging out with themselves.

The millenials are all off the charts. Demographic change can change an industry. The music industry has figured out that older folks like music and have the money and don’t know how to share it online.

MTV building credibility ahead of the demand. Music industry rates music G for older folks.

As boys fall farther and farther behind we’ll have to address boys’ individual pedagogical demands.

2. Innovative by nature

We are undergoing a global change about our views on the environment.

NRA and eco-bullet.

Eco-vation, ecological innovation.

Every year people die making computer chips. Some sea sponge have a level of precision five times better to produce silicon.

Someone we educate will win the nobel prize for solving some ecological problem.

3. Learning places

He wants to acknowledge we’re all primates. We are all social animals. We share four traits, we’re strongly group oriented, hierarchy, individuation, knowledge sharing.

With six of us on a boat, one will be the captain, one the oarsman, one the complaining passenger, etc. We like hierarchy.

We also trade knowledge and innovation for status.

How do we create an environment for discovery and innovation?

We have preferred habitats.

There are places in our society where no one has to demand that we come. Instead of sending kids there, we send kids to school.

Picture of cubicles – not a place for innovation. We systematically reintroduce the natural world as a reward, closer to the window, etc.

4. Coping with choice and complexity

What is the effect of enabling technologies on our lives? Almost anything we want to buy, there is an ever-increasing array of companies is creating a surplus society.

Showing picture of aisle 7 at his grocery store, it is the bread aisle.

Lots of choices for bread, he doesn’t do well with choice.

There are 40,000 choices and we can only process roughly 160, so lots of noise.

It’s getting harder for kids to get through that maze of choice. The technology of managing choice will become more important.

When you add choices, people like a few, then it levels off, and then decreases with too many choices.

Lots of choices for jeans when he goes shopping at the Gap.

5. Redefining literacy

In the post war period when Russia launched Sputnik we created a social definition of literacy.

You are smart if you passed a certain score on a certain test. Alex Trebeck model or Albert Einstein. Either more than those around you or different than those around you.

Picture of scan tron bubble in sheet.

Today kids can bring in programmable calculator. What are we testing when kids can bring in the cloud of human knowledge.

It is inevitable that people will bring the tools with them and then we’ve changed the nature of assessment. We are learning to find, exclude, search for information. Johnny is connected to 15 other people, and who does he have working on his bench?

Shifting to a more synthetic definition of intelligence, how are we defined as smart? How will we be?

To read is to author, to be tested is to author.

Really we have nowhere near the kinds of criteria to identify what people know and should know.

Applicants are showing trustworthiness using ebay seller feedback since we lack metrics.

An endnote: Bias, Blindness, and the Futures we choose.

Every society, every individual has within it an image of the future.

50 years ago we drew a George Jetson style future.

Early 19th century thought we’d all wear balloon hats.

Why do we always get it wrong? Our ideas of the future, that is.

In 1977 there were only 4 members of the Professional International Association of Elvis Impersonators, now over 4,000, if continues at this rate in 2050 one in three people on earth will impersonate Elvis.

Two risks that confront us as a species.

Hussein, bin Laden, bad dudes. Real danger to all of us.

Global warming, glaciers melting.

Chance of risk from bad dudes 1 in 28,000,000 but chance of risk from environment is 1 in 6 and we spend little money on it but we spend one trillion dollars on the bad dudes.

We don’t like it when an individual confronts us with a risk.

The personal trumps the impersonal.

The tangible trumps the intangible.

The present trumps the past and future.

Desirability trumps responsibility.

We must bake those four items into the standards by which we hold ourselves accountable,

END

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