NCTE Conference
I spent this weekend in Nashville TN at the annual conference for NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). What an incredible group of people. This conference is annual chance to really talk to K-12 English teachers about technology in their classrooms. There seems to be a stereotype that in all of their concern about standards, grammar, and correctness that K-12 teachers are squeamish or skeptical about technology. This just isn’t true. The teachers I talked to were technosavvy (or well on their way) and eager to learn. On Saturday night the ACE (Assembly for Computers in English) special interest group and the 20+ folks who came were predominantly K-12 teachers already doing amazing things in their classrooms. Most were using blogs, podcasts, and Moodle in some capacity. As we went around the room introducing ourselves the themes that kept coming up over and over were: 1. A lack of professional development opportunities for teachers who want to integrate technology into their classrooms. Most in the room were self-taught. 2. Disconnect between IT and teachers. Many folks talked about nightmares with the computers their IT departments install in their classrooms. There weren’t enough machines, the machines didn’t work, or there were so many filters installed that most of the functions teachers wanted to use were blocked. (can you believe that most school systems block the word “blog” in any search?) I got the sense that I was surrounded by teachers who were eager and ready to tap into their students’ ability to use technology and that they were being held back by their administration (either on purpose or just out of lack of knowledge about pedagogy and technology). On Monday I was fortunate enough to present to the ACE workshop about Second Life. I was afraid that the talk would scare some of the teachers or that they would see Second Life as too intimidating and shut me down. Their reaction was exactly the opposite. The room was full of great questions, ideas about how SL could be used with K-12 standards for English, and excited shouts of “I can’t wait to get in there!” If these teachers are any indication of the enthusiasm for technology in K-12 education…well we all have a reason to be excited.
