Representatives from Sony, Adobe, Dell, Microsoft, Google, Panasonic, Discovery, Texas Instruments, and so many more big and small companies were there to show off their solutions.  I was able to interview representatives with products ranging from animated educational videos and interactive whiteboards, to Legos and Netbooks.

I was overwhelmed to see how many of the technologies I might not have even thought would be at an ed tech conference were there to show that they too could contribute to the growing number of resources for students and teachers.  There were information and demonstration sessions going on throughout the day, with enthusiastic individuals demonstrating touch screens and new ways to turn in homework.  And of course, lots of freebies.

Don’t worry if you missed out, we interviewed dozens of representatives to give you the short, sweet and succinct versions of their products and how they relate to ed tech.

When we go to conferences, part of what you gain is perspectives from outside your school, your district, and your state. In an era of scripted curriculum, you cannot underestimate the value of this. At the same time, I need to make what I’m learning work in the context of NCLB, my high-needs school, and within a district that has a pacing guide. How do I make this make sense to my fellow teachers? This is a juggling act I do after each conference. I’m not complaining, I find it challenging and exhilarating at the same time. My site is pretty supportive even if most of them are not putting the same things in practice that I do. They want to do more, and I want to help them, but I have to respect their concerns about cell phones, and one-to-one laptops, and not treat them as “retrograde”, but instead work with towards change (maybe for both of us). When I hear someone at a conference discuss project-based learning, I have to hear that it may well be far superior to practicing “fidelity to our textbook program” and that there are other ways to educate students that what passes for “scientifically proven” instructional methods my district uses. I may look like I’m hanging out with my “clique” at NECC, but the reality is I may be expanding my circle of thought.

Photo credit: Opening Night on flickr photo sharing

Being the parent of a child with autism makes you a little more aware of eye contact in conversation. I’m noticing some interesting patterns at NECC that say a lot about how I socialize. First, there are times when it has become painful for me to make and maintain eye contact. That has to be a sign that I’m overwhelmed by the sheer number of folks I’m seeing and meeting. While this year’s conference has a smaller turnout, 18,000, that’s still a lot of people to plop down in one place.

Sometimes when I’m talking to folks, I find my eyes wandering to scan the crowd and I’ve seen others do this as well. We are either trying to find someone we were waiting for in the sea of people, or checking for faces we know in person already. Sometimes we are checking for someone we have only known online up to this point and have been dying to meet IRL. This is that one golden chance to meet others we haven’t seen face to face and we don’t want to miss that opportunity.

Those of us who have already been to conferences, even local ones, have a circle of people we know and hang out with. They are our base camp in this sea of humanity. It is easy to stay in a tunnel here. If you are completely unfamiliar with teaching conventions, and never go online for PD and professional social networking (and there still are folks like that even at a place like NECC), you will stay in your bubble of local district buddies, an “accidental” tourist at the convention.

If you are too wrapped up in your “network” you already have, you will miss conversations with the person in front of you, or next to you as you go down your must meet check list. You will be in your own bubble that includes only folks you KNOW are like minded, but may miss a conversation you should have had with the person in your district back home, or in a session at NECC who is from the other side of the country.

My favorite meetings are the ones that are impossible to plan, but easy to undermine. You miss them when you only talk to the folks you already know. Those are the connections based on nothing more than propinquity. You sit next to someone at a session, and one of you strikes up a conversation. You are invited to tag along to a dinner, and are seated by someone from the other end of the country that you’ve never met before. Someone strikes up a conversation as you wait for a shuttle bus. You could learn a lot, or, you could miss that metaphorical bus, as you avoid eye contact and conversation.

Photo credit: My eye on Flickr

Thing got off to a triumphant start with a keynote address (for the second year in a row) from famed author and New Yorker staff writer, Malcolm Gladwell.  Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point (2000) and Outliers (2008), used some obscure triva about Fleetwood Mac, the British-born rock band, to argue that effort — and not talent — is the cornerstone of a successful adult.  To see a video of Gladwell’s complete speech, click here.  To read my live-blogging from Gladwell’s keynote address, follow this link. (For those who are interested, all of my live-blogging was done using coveritlive.com.)

Throughout the week, Joe Corbett, the man behind @isteconnects, interviewed countless NECC participants throughout ISTE Central and streamed hours and hours of footage direct to your favorite website, isteconnects.org.  Check out the highlights at ISTE Central Interviews, Part I and ISTE Central Interviews, Part II.  Here’s a little sample for your viewing pleasure:

On Tuesday, June 30th, the flagship event was the “Oxford-style debate” held in the grand ballroom.  Moderated by NPR’s Robert Siegel in front of a crowd of thousands, the debate featured two teams of three who attempted to answer the question: “Are brick-and-mortar schools harmful to the future of education?”  Much to the surprise of some, the bricks-and-mortar team trounced the digitalistas on the other side.  But there were really compelling points made on both sides.  You can check out my live-blogging of the event here.

One of NECC 09’s most memorable moments actually took place outside of the Washington Convention Center: on Wednesday, a squad of hundreds of blue-shirted ISTE volunteers took to Capitol Hill and lobbied their local representatives on behalf of educators everywhere.  I was tagging along with a team of teachers from the Boston area as they addressed one of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s senior staffers.  You can see photos I live-tweeted from our journey through the capital here.  And below is a an edited video documenting ISTE’s “storming of the Hill”:

And of course, there were the sessions.  I was really impressed by the level of depth, and forward-looking quality of the presentations I attended.  I live-blogged as many as I could, and you can read through some of my accounts here:

• Live Blogging: “Digital Citizenship: Tools, Tips and Ideas”
• Live-Blogging: “Video in the Classroom”
• Live-Blogging: “Blogs, Wikis and RSS in the Classroom”
• Live-Blogging: “Communication and Creativity: Using TuxPaint”
• Live-Blogging: “Tablet PCs in Action: Experience the Possibilities”
• Live-Blogging: “Using Games and Simulations in Learning”
• Live-blogging: “A Meeting of Moodlers”

While I was attending sessions and blogging like a madman, the @isteconnects team was walking every inch of the Washington Convention Center, recording practically everything worth seeing.  Below I’m posting a small sample of the all the videos we shot over the last four days — but you can see the everything here:

If you still haven’t had your fill of ISTE NECC ‘09 (and trust me, I understand where you’re coming from!), check out the post we compiled last night that features 26 blog posts about the conference by attendees, and our article about iPhone / iPod Touch in the classroom.  You can also read The Daily Leader (NECC09’s official newspaper)  here.

I hope everyone else learned as much — and had as much fun — as the @isteconnects team did.  See you all next year!

Zach

@zbgoodwin

Over and over again, I had discussions which related to the issue of CONTROL in our schools. Whether it was a discussion about social media policies for schools, issues surrounding content filtering, or the need for visionary school leadership, control is the issue we kept getting back to.

It was wonderful to finally meet and chat with Howard Levin at NECC this year, who is the director of technology for the Urban School in San Francisco. His students have created over 100 hours of interview content in the wonderful website “Telling Their Stories,” and have been in the midst of a 1:1 laptop initiative for several years.

Howard’s school takes a radically different approach to the issue of control when it comes to student laptops. Where the vast majority of U.S. schools today attempt to LOCK DOWN desktops for students to prevent them from installing any new applications, at the Urban School students have administrative rights on their own Macbook laptops. As Howard explained in his session, “1:1 Laptops and Seamless Integration: Peek into the Frontier,” teachers at the Urban school have found some of the most creative, constructive and worthwhile programs students are using on their laptops have been DISCOVERED by students and then shared with the wider school community. If laptops had been locked down, these students would not have been able to utilize these programs or would have been “driven underground” as hackers.

I am often amazed how common it is to find schools embracing 1:1 initiatives whose leaders are opposed to student gaming. In many cases, a primary reason given for locking down student laptops (not granting admin access rights for new software installations) is to prevent students from installing and playing games during class. If students are choosing to play games in class instead of focusing on learning, that is an issue of classroom management, the instructional tasks provided to students, and/or student discipline. That is not an IT issue. Schools should not implement IT lock down processes simply because it is an easier way to deal with instructional or disciplinary issues.

We live in a day of vastly greater digital choices. Some of those choices can be constructive, some can be destructive. Some can be educational, some may be mindless. The point is we need to equip teachers as well as students to function effectively in this new world of digital choice.

Please do not misunderstand me: I am 100% supportive of basic content filtering in both schools and homes. In part, I started the project “Unmasking the Digital Truth” not to advocate for digital chaos in our classrooms and homes, but rather to reveal the desire to CONTROL rather than comply with the letter of U.S. law which frequently drives computer-related policies in our schools.

In the end, perhaps issues of laptop lockdown come down to these questions. How much do you trust students? How focused are you as a school organization in striving to equip students to make good digital as well as face-to-face choices in our new landscape of learning? Every school implementing a 1:1 initiative needs to provide a fast, quick way to re-image student and teacher laptops when a software glitch has fouled up the system. Increasingly, we need to do our computing in the cloud. I am fully aware that students push boundaries and limits, and we need to still provide as well as enforce those for our students. Completely locking students out of the opportunity to install new software on their computers, however, communicates a lack of trust and a lack of partnership with students. It is essential that we partner with students in a digitally collaborative learning culture in schools, and that partnership begins with trust as well as responsibility. There should be individual consequences when a student violates trust or their responsibility. These consequences DO take more time to administer and navigate than a policy which simply blocks all new software installations. The long term benefits of a policy which trusts students, however, and recognizes the benefits they can bring to the learning community when they function as collaborative partners rather than learning drones to be controlled and managed, far outweigh any perceived short term benefits to a “lock down” laptop policy.