NECC Day 1

The NECC conference is going on in San Diego this week. NECC and some of the people who are attending are doing great things for those of us at home...NECC is providing webcasts and podcasts and some of the attendees are providing us with notes through their blogs.

David Warlick, my new favorite technology guru, did a session today called Telling the New Story. A guy who attended his session, Jeff Utecht, wrote about this on his blog today. Here's a quote that he wrote from the session:

We think technology as we were born in a time that was defined by our machines. Students today think in terms of information and stories. The information is more important than the technology they use. Can we as teachers and education move to a place where we can think of information and not technology?

Wow! We really need to think about this. Much of our students' day in school is about getting information but where is the information coming from and is it in a form that our students find accessible, easy to deal with?

Here's something else that occurs to me from this blog: maybe it's not the devices that our kids crave so much as what those devices can give them. Why would a kid beg for an iPod? Because it's the best way for him/her to carry around all of the music and videos that they really love. It's not really so much the iPod as it is the access to the information that's important to the user.

Love it!