Philadelphia Story
RSSTop ed-tech show explores the latest tools for learning
By Kathy Ishizuka -- School Library Journal, 08/01/2005
A forum for student voices, a call to advocacy, and a new concept of knowledge itself were all featured at this year's National Education Computing Conference (NECC) held in Philadelphia, June 27 through 30.
Nearly 17,000 educators and exhibitors attended the 26th annual NECC, the country's largest education technology event. Sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the conference offered a dizzying array of exhibits representing more than 500 ed-tech companies, nearly 300 con­current sessions, 145 workshops, dozens of poster pre­sentations, and more.
Student voices and the need for educators to listen to this tech-savvy generation—the first born into the digital age—to help inform technology-infused learning of the future was an overarching conference theme. Thus, kids were front and center at NECC, showcasing their work at a student film festival, among other presentations, and running a free software/open source venue.
So what's this all mean to librarians? Plenty, according to Deborah Stafford, a librarian at Gen H. H. Arnold High School, a U.S. Department of Defense school in Wiesbaden, Germany, attending her fifth NECC. “Librarians are very much a part of the conference both as participants and as presenters,” she says. Citing the diverse presence of administrators, tech coordinators, and teachers of every stripe, Stafford says, “NECC is a great opportunity to mix with the whole gamut of educators and be able to showcase libraries within the whole education field.”
In a program “A Key Tech Team Member—Your School Librarian!” Sally Brewer, associate professor at the University of Montana-Missoula, and Peggy Milam, a library media specialist at Compton Elementary School in Cobb County, GA, presented the results of SLJ's Technology Survey (a PDF is available), revealing the major role media specialists play in tech-related learning. Brewer, however, cautioned that “media specialists must be more involved in technology as budgets are cut.”
Indeed, threatened education funding, namely federal support of education technology, sparked a call for activism at NECC. In his June 27 opening remarks, ISTE President Kurt Steinhaus called on educators to answer the challenge on behalf of “the students we serve,” urging their participation in ETAN, the Ed Tech Action Network advocacy campaign. Currently, supporters are focusing efforts on the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) grant program, which President Bush slashed from $500 million to zero in his proposed 2006 budget. Although House and Senate appropriations committees have recently approved funding for EETT at $300 million and $425 million, respectively, advocates are maintaining pressure on legislators to support the program, the sole source of ed-tech funding for many states. “We may be strangers to advocacy, but let me assure you that it's learnable and doable,” says Steinhaus. “I urge you to commit to this effort today, this week, at this conference.”
Harvard fellow and Internet pundit David Weinberger also stirred the audience with his lively keynote, “The New Shape of Knowledge,” in which he described how our accepted body of knowledge has grown increasingly narrow through efforts to map it.
Using the Dewey Decimal System as an example, Weinberger revealed the limitations of hierarchical classification. Melvil Dewey did not assign a category to Asian languages, for instance, while the Victorian-era pseudoscience phrenology gets its own number.
Classification is impossible, Weinberger argues, because there is no single knowledge, as evidenced today by the seemingly infinite sources on the Web, where users exchange ideas and freely alter and reorganize content, creating their own in the process.
Thanks to the Internet, knowledge has evolved into an “endless conversation,” he says, in which kids are already engaged—by instant messaging, for example, they're developing knowledge socially. Weinberger sees this as a perfect opportunity for educators to further the dialogue. He urged them to help students “learn how to listen, seek ambiguity, love difference” in their quest for truth. After all, says Weinberger, “sharing knowledge is the only way to share the world.”
