AssortedStuff

The biggest problem with this year’s conference is that there is just too many good sessions, or at least ones that sound good in the program. Fortunately, most of the presenters have placed materials on the web for their sessions, so at least it’s possible to get the information if not the actual presentation.

In addition to NECC’s list of bloggers reporting on the conference, eSchool News is also offering a way to catch up on what’s going on in the sessions. They have a team of volunteers who are posting summaries and reviews of the sessions they attend. Most seem to be very comprehensive and include links mentioned during the session.

There’s one very annoying problem with this conference, however. Wireless access in the convention center. Or rather the lack of a connection in the meeting rooms. I’m not sure why, but it seems a little strange for NECC to have requested that arrangement. At past conferences it’s been great to be able to pull up web sites during a session and further explore the topics being discussed by the speaker.

This afternoon I was finally able to spend some time in the exhibit hall. As big as it is, however, there’s no good reason for me to devote more than a couple of hours to the exhibits. I’m not blessed enough by our district to buy anything (as my boss reminded us before we left :-). So, wandering the aisles is more for my own education, one way to figure out what the education industry is pushing these days.

So, what’s "hot" in ed-tech this year? For one thing, lots of companies seem to have student response systems. That’s a combination of hardware and software that allows teachers to display a multiple choice question and have individual students enter an answer using a handheld device. (One package has even licensed the rights to use the television game Jeopardy.) The systems are just as boring as that description.

Many vendors want us to know they have THE solution to our NCLB problems. I won’t be sitting through any of the booth demos to find out exactly what that means but I can imagine. Plenty of testing and drill of standardized test questions plus promises to organize the resulting data. There’s certainly a need to assess and track student learning but I can’t help but feel that there are other, better ways to do it.

On the other end of things, there are still a few companies featuring more creative ways of reaching students. Apple again is promoting it’s iLife and other tools for creating video and music and showing how they can be used in the classroom. Several companies are approaching the video-on-demand that has been promised for many years with some good examples of creative teaching.