The end result for me: I got a few ideas from this conference I can take back to ACTE. I’m thinking of ways we could get involved in the collaborative classroom, e-mail and blog services such as ePals and ways we could use online resources to connect and possibly help CTE teachers in other countries. I also heard “21st century skills” a lot and I think we need to start adding this phrase to our material.

The biggest benefit I have reaped is being reined in. I’ve gotten a little off-mission in my thinking of what I can do to support ACTE members through online resources. I need to make more use of resources already out there for helping our members with their education technology professional development and be more of a liaison.

Thanks for reading! Go back to the “CTE and Ed Tech” post and the “CTE Session: Woo Hoo!” post for CTE topics of interest from the conference.

In the Ed Tech policy session I attended after that, David Byer from Apple’s education policy division gave us some numbers:
35 Senate seats up this year
435 representative seats up for election
11 gubernatorial seats up for election
$262 million for Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT)
- down from $700 million in FY02
- there may be a small gain this year
- president recommends $0 funding
10,000 Ed Tech Action Network members (he seemed to think was impressive, and it is for a volunteer advocacy activity, but it’s a drop in comparison to stakeholders in ed tech, I’d think)
 
Then Hilary Goldmann presented. She mentioned something that I didn’t know, which is that in many states ed tech is local or federal, not state. She showed a pie chart of federal spending, pointing out all that is mandatory and the vulnerability of discretionary funds for education such as ed tech. And she said that the next administration will reauthorize NCLB and it may go back to being ESEA.

She talked about ATTAIN (Achievement Through Technology and Innovation), the new proposed EETT. ISTE voices were included in legislation, which includes more teacher professional development and improves support for disadvantaged schools. The House and Senate have released draft legislation and ATTAIN is included in both.

What does this mean? Widespread technology in the classroom must be more difficult to implement every year with this waning funding. Luckily technology is getting cheaper, especially smaller and one-item or one-service solutions. And for the brave school systems, there is open source.

ATTAIN sounds pretty good. Improved support for teacher professional development is going to be a great boon. But there was an exchange that I didn’t quite catch, in which it sounded like federally mandated professional development may not be effective or provide much choice to the individual school systems. Can anyone validate this?

Onto a discussion in NECC Unplugged (Bloggers’ Cafe) about the problems between IT departments and teachers, then one on strategic tech ed thinking wtih ISTE presidents and business leaders, then a Classroom 2.0 gathering back at the NECC Unplugged area.

For now I am in the Second Life lounge, and I’ve successfully logged in. I am on one of the ISTE islands, and there is an interesting looking presentation on administrators using Second Life. We’ll see how it goes!

As promised, here are the just released NETS, national educational technology standards, for teachers: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/NETS/ForTeachers/2008Standards/NETS_for_Teachers_2008.htm.

It looks pretty good. One of the more interesting items: teachers must “demonstrate fluency in technology systems.” I don’t think NETS can be enforced; ISTE describes it as a roadmap. That one, while I think it is important, may be a problem for some educators. I also think “communicate relevant information and ideas … using a variety of digital-age media and formats” should have some kind of caveat about effectiveness, as in, not every piece of information is most effectively presented through a digital medium. I’m really glad to see digital citizenship and collaboration with the greater community included, as well as professional development.

What do you think?