Today's "keynote" was a prerecorded message by Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Despite the New England Patriots style of delivery, the message was a strong one. The unfortunate reality in education today is that teachers are forced to teach toward state tests (No Child Left Behind strikes again). The rational being that the only way to truly measure a child's progress is to compare them against everyone on "standardized" assessments. The reality is that this method of teaching significantly takes away from a teacher's ability to be creative and innovative with students, especially when it comes to exposure to technology. A student might be much better off for having enriching technological experiences at school, but at what cost when it comes to state assessments? This is a strong message, but one that we have teachers have heard from many influential people. Unfortunately, at a conference such as ISTE, this is preaching to the choir. So what really does a message like this accomplish to an audience such as us? The people who really should be listening (almighty government officials who supposedly know better than us) don't. They make the laws in spite of what the public demands.........
Today's sessions include more on robotics and Web 2.0, but my first session this morning is going to be virtual environments. I attended a session on this yesterday, but it almost put me to sleep. So let's hope that today is better. When I was at I/ITSEC in December, many booths displayed virtual reality and immersive environments as a critical tool in military training. In fact, many of the technologies we have seen so far at ISTE were initally developed for military purposes. The education sector has traditionally lagged behind when it comes to acquiring technology such as VR (mostly as a result of waiting for technologies to be declassified for security purposes), which is somewhat odd considering that immersing students in virtual environments NOW is far more likely to get them engaged in the sciences in the future.
I for one very much enjoyed sitting in the cockpits of flight and driving simulators (and firing simulated rifles...) while at I/ITSEC. Give that technological capability to middle and high school students (and even younger...), I don't think education will ever have a problem with engagement ever again.
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