Sitting amid the few thousand technology leaders who packed the convention center in downtown San Antonio, and listening to James Surowiecki discuss the ideas in his book, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” I felt inspired about the future of education.
Here were thousands of people, some who had traveled from as far afield as Shanghai, all gathered to discuss the future of education, and the role of technology in it.
Yet the experience was also a little overwhelming.
Billed as the largest gathering of technology educators in the world, this weekend’s National Education Computing Conference (NECC) in the Alamo City witnessed over 18,000 educators and vendors descend on the famous River Walk to shop, trade philosophies and most importantly, talk about what comes next.
The ideas were huge—simultaneously moving and confounding. With so much information out there, great and terrible, how do you make sense of it all, especially in an education or classroom setting?
There was no shortage of people trying. While their approaches varied widely, the consensus seemed to be that the future lay with those who wanted to make the process easier without sacrificing the excitement of discovery.
In the coming days and weeks we’ll write much more about the NECC and everything we learned while there. We will also provide an interview with Hillary Goldman, the director of government affairs for the International Society for Technology in Education. Goldman has been a part of the collective effort to put technology at the forefront of the debate over education reform in this year’s presidential election.
Chris Coats
Senior Education Writer
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