Like the joyful tumult spawned by a drenching downpour after months of drought, the hubbub and energy swirled through the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center at the 2002 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in San Antonio, Texas, June 17-19.

By organizer reckoning, more than 17,000 were on hand for the conference and exposition—some 5,500 exhibitors staffing approximately 450 booths and more than 12,000 teachers, administrators, and professors cramming into session rooms.

Exact numbers aside, the hall and corridors certainly were teeming throughout the meeting, and several general sessions drew standing-room-only attendance. In glowing contrast to the somber, sparsely attended confabs held late last year and earlier in 2002, the NECC show reminded some seasoned conference-goers of happier times in the technology sector.

Two main topics seemed to dominate the conversations at NECC: the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), with all its attendant opportunities and problems, and the turnout and enthusiasm of the conference itself. Both had origins in Texas.

For a sampling of the presentations delivered at NECC, visit the link below for nearly 200 presenter handouts available in PDF format.

NECC, now merged into the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), benefited because Texas has been less hard hit economically than many other states and because schools were out throughout the state by conference time. This meant districts could send teachers without having to hire substitutes.

Whether NECC's success was a singular phenomenon or the harbinger of a sustainable trend will be clearer when the National School Boards Association's Technology + Learning Conference is held in Dallas in November.

Meanwhile, the exhibit hall was alive with vendors eager to do their part in helping educators take advantage of every edge high tech has to offer in the struggle to meet old challenges and new federal requirements. Here's a quick tour of some of the key offerings attendees found in the NECC exhibit hall:

TRACKING, REPORTING, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Many exhibitors aimed their products and services squarely at the No Child Left Behind Act and its new accountability requirements for schools.

To help schools with tracking and reporting necessary performance data, NCS Learn introduced SASIxp 5.0, the newest release of its K-12 student administrative system. Version 5.0 expands the system's functionality with a new Report Designer module, which gives users access to a wide variety of report templates and the ability to create and customize reports easily—a feature that will help schools aggregate and present data as they strive to comply with the requirements of NCLB, said Allison Duquette, the company's vice president of product management and marketing.
http://www.ncslearn.com