The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has their 2014 conference in Atlanta this weekend, and frankly, such a major conference like that is hard to pass up when it's in my neighborhood. I regret that I didn't submit to present at it, because over the past several years, that's become something I enjoy. It's my personal belief that every educator - teacher, support personnel, administrator - should take the opportunity to attend professional conferences. Why?
It lets you see the bigger world. Not everybody does it the way you do it within your school walls - and school-based staff in particular tend to lose sight of that. No, that's not right - they get so involved with the way they do it on a day-to-day basis, they often don't have time to look at it from a different perspective. Collegial conferences are a great way to break out of that - not only can you see how other schools "do it," but you can take the opportunity to show off how you do it. I think my teachers often forget just how much awesome stuff we do in our district, and so I encourage them to share as much as possible. One of my rock star teachers, Ann Kohler, is presenting at ISTE this year, and I couldn't be more excited for her to show off some of the awesome things she's doing with her special education kids!
It broadens your personal learning network. Especially with a conference like ISTE, which expects attendance in the neighborhood of 18,000 from all across the globe, you meet all kinds of people. Some of the best experiences are the one-on-one conversations you have over lunch sharing a table with strangers or trying to figure out which session is the best one to attend next or just camping out on the conference facility floor taking a break. More and more conferences are taking advantage of that informal learning notion, and have things like Lounges and Playgrounds for you to just hang out and meet other people. Connecting on Twitter, Facebook, or even a conference-specific app helps you stay in touch with those folks, to reach out to them when you get home and forget everything you were inundated with at the conference.
It gives you great new ideas. There's so much to choose from when attending a conference - I suggest getting outside your comfort zone and learning about something new. Whether it's a simple new classroom tool, to learning about the latest education trend that you've only just begun to hear about, there's something going on at that conference that you don't know about yet. Getting new ideas - and, more importantly, hearing about them from educators who have tried and tested them - can re-energize anyone.
Get free stuff. Yep. Visit the exhibitor's hall, stock up on extra pens, jump drives, and notepads, and maybe, if you're lucky you can win some significant prizes. As long as you don't mind the occasional marketing email (for which there are tools to help), you might score something a little bigger - software licenses, hardware, and more. Can't hurt to try...
If you're at ISTE 2014 this weekend, give me a shout on Twitter at @techieteacherga. And if you've downloaded the conference app to your iOS, Android, or Windows 8 device, send me a message and we'll trade codes for the networking game!
As an educator, free is good. And fortunately, in this day and age, it doesn't necessarily mean low-quality. The old adage "you get what you pay for" is not necessarily true anymore, thanks to the world's most popular equalizer: the Internet. From MIT's Open CourseWare to a host of free online textbooks to a wealth of open educational resources, there's a huge amount of stuff that teachers can use in their classrooms and online courses. These are not just the individual web pages thrown together by tech-savvy teachers during web 1.0 (although there are plenty of those as well) - these are professionally vetted sites with large customer bases.
However, all that may be in jeopardy.
The issue here is net neutrality, which has been getting a lot of attention the last several months. Here's the gist of it. Net neutrality is the idea that all data on the Internet should be treated equally, whether by governments or by internet service providers ("ISPs"); nor should there be any discrimination based on user, content, site, platform, device, and so forth. The issue has been taken up across the globe since the turn of the millennium, but has particularly heated up in the last 5-7 years. The European Union began looking at the legal issues of net neutrality in 2007, and proposed measures to ensure a minimum quality of service and an obligation of transparency within ISPs. In June 2010, Chile became the first country to legally enforce net neutrality by amending its laws governing telecommunications to prevent the aforementioned discriminations. In the United States, the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010 was enacted to make broadband ISPs adhere to the same standards as telephone networks, and to prevent "unjust or unreasonable discrimination" in what they charge, what they provide, or to whom they provide it.
The analogy that's going around is about building "fast lanes" on the internet, allowing certain content providers access to those lanes - possibly to the detriment of smaller content providers. Here's one problem - the internet is actually already set up that way. High volume content providers - Google, Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook, just to name a few - often already have peering connections or content delivery servers within the structure of some major ISPs like Comcast or Verizon. This means that, in some ways, they're already getting preferential treatment because such connections make it easier for the ISP to provide the content requested by the end user. (Here's a great graphic representation of that setup, courtesy of Wired magazine.)
What needs to be governed by the FCC is not keeping the internet neutral, but rather keeping it competitive - enacting policies and laws that prevent ISPs from showing content favoritism through financial means. ISPs currently haven't been charging for any of these special connections for their content - having a more efficient network connection provided by peering or CDS's allows the ISPs to provide faster service to their customers. What we don't want to happen is for the ISPs to get to the point where they want to - or have to - start charging exorbitantly for such preferential treatment.
Several weeks ago, John Oliver epically ranted about this on Last Week Tonight:
As an individual and a consumer, this has some far-reaching impacts on you...but it also impacts us as educators. How does net neutrality affect schools?
Financial Considerations
In an era of increasing budget constraints and selectivity of resources, no longer having access to a wealth of free resources can be hugely impactful no matter what level you're at - school, district, even state.
Free and open-sourced resources may not be able to afford the same access as high-priced competitors, thus limiting schools' access to those resources.
The cost of the increased internet access could be passed on to the users - schools, parents, teachers, students.
Schools may have to choose between lower-value resources provided by corporations able to pay for the increased access - for example, schools having to resort to YouTube for access to video content, instead of the educator-vetted TeacherTube.
Pedagogical Considerations
The influence of a non-neutral internet would also most likely be felt at home, by parents and students. Depending on how technology-forward a school or a district is, this could also be a major issue.
Schools using learning management systems (LMS) to house homework and assignments online may find students' access reduced, depending on whether that particular LMS has access to higher- or lower-speed internet.
Student access to internet at home may also affect their ability to complete homework assignments. If a particular resource has paid a particular ISP for increased service, those students who don't subscribe to that ISP may find themselves at a disadvantage - possibly furthering the digital divide educators already struggle against.
Technological Considerations
Schools and districts may also face some basic technological challenges.
More and more educational organizations are moving more services into the cloud, to allow for increased time and range of access to their digital resources. If a particular cloud service isn't permitted access to the "fast lane" of the internet, that could significantly hamper that cloud's effectiveness - especially when you're talking about tens of thousands of users attempting to access it.
Ironically, between the federal e-rate program and President Obama's ConnectED vision seeking to increase more robust broadband to schools, the FCC ruling on two-tiered internet access could simultaneously hamper that effort - if the FCC doesn't take educational requirements into consideration when making their policies.
What else do educators need to consider in the Net Neutrality debate? I'd be interested to hear in your comments below.
If you want to let the FCC know your thoughts on the matter, jump on over to their comments page at http://www.fcc.gov/comments and do so!
Posts
