The internet, and our increasing reliance on technology, is constantly changing the way people go about their daily lives. Whether cultivating relationships with classmates or friends, conducting research for a project, or mobilizing people to take action in their communities, teachers and students live in a world where technology is increasingly becoming a part of all that they see and do.

That was the message Tiffany Shlain, founder and chair of the Webby Awards, an international awards program that honors the best and most innovative sites on the internet, and on-air technology expert for the television news program Good Morning America, had for the thousands of educators and technology experts gathered at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver on Oct. 27 for the second day of the National School Boards Association’s T+L² conference.

“It’s a little like the air we breathe,” said Shlain of technology’s impact. But while the pervasiveness of technology is viewed as a good thing by most ed-tech enthusiasts, Shlain cautions the pace of innovation, while loaded with potential, also could lead to certain challenges educators should prepare themselves for.

“We’re all so immersed in technology that sometimes we fail to see how it’s changing the way that we live,” she explained. When thinking about the internet, Shlain encouraged educators to ask themselves a single philosophical question: “Where are we today and where are we going?”

In an era when more than 500 million people in more than 40 countries now use the internet, Shlain says technology, as a tool, affects everything from how we view our own personal space, to how we communicate with friends and co-workers, to the way that we write and record our thoughts, and the information we consume.

Through interactive web sites like MySpace.com, where teenagers and adults reportedly are flocking in droves to create their own personal web environments, designed as a means of personal expression, to Wikipedia.com, the online encyclopedia that invites curious web surfers to edit and add to the comments of those who came before them, Shlain says, the internet, unlike school projects and book reports, “is organic … it’s never done.”

The result, she says, is a free-flowing culture of ideas that encourages students and others to forge new relationships, to question how they live their lives, and think critically about the choices that they make.

“People want to share what they know and people want to hear what other people have to say about things,” Shlain said.

The web also is helping many students and teachers branch out socially, she said. Dating and other personal interactions that once seemed intimidating now are becoming easier thanks to online services such as eharmony.com and other dating web sites–many of which seek to forge new friendships by helping connect people with shared interests. Similarly, in the classroom, many of these online services are connecting students and teachers with peers and colleagues from around the globe, enabling them to share best practices, learn about foreign cultures, and establish lifelong bonds that enhance their understanding of the world in which they live.

“Like six degrees of separation,” Shlain pointed out, the internet is constantly “expanding our network of personal relationships.”

With change, however, also comes great responsibility, she said, especially on the part of the nation’s teachers, whose job it is to prepare students for life and work in a new digital century.

“We need web literacy,” Shlain told the morning audience. With all of the changes that are occurring in how we access, receive, and process information in a digital world, she said, students and other members of the online community need to develop a sense for what is and what is not reliable. At the same time, she added, students also must understand that the internet, while full of useful information, is not the only place where quality educational materials can be found.

As the internet continues to play a more prominent role in the way that we conduct our everyday lives, Shlain says the needs and wants of students will continue to evolve and to grow–so too will the challenges facing educators.

Already, Shlain said, the web is providing evidence of new trends in education and personal communication. Blogs, a form of personal expression once defined by writings and commentary, are becoming more multimedia focused, including photographs, videos, and other features providing new outlets for personal expression. Search engines also are getting smarter, integrating advanced features and customized interfaces to help individual users more easily locate what it is they’re looking for online. Meanwhile, in the classroom, distance learning is becoming an increasingly attractive option for students looking to take on more rigorous courses.

So just where are we headed exactly?

Shlain says she’s not quite sure. But wherever this online odyssey eventually leads, one thing is clear: the allure of the internet will always be about the potential to be a part of something “larger than ourselves.”

Links:

National School Boards Association
http://www.nsba.org

The Webby Awards
http://www.webbyawards.com/

Narrowing the achievement gap and harnessing the power of technology to help students succeed in an increasingly global workforce were the topics of choice as thousands of educators and technology directors descended on Denver Wednesday for the National School Boards Association’s T+L² conference.

Technology is “a gateway to closing the achievement gap and creating 21st century learning environments,” said Joan Schmidt, president of the National School Boards Association in welcoming attendees from 49 states and the District of Columbia as well as dozens of countries to this year’s event at the Colorado Convention Center.

Her comments were reinforced by a stirring and visionary keynote address from Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who encouraged attendees and educators everywhere to embrace what he believes is the start of an entirely new technological revolution: The age of “personal fabrication.”

After years of harping on the coming of the “digital revolution,” Gershenfeld says, the time has come and gone. The new revolution, he claims, isn’t happening on the internet, but in the classroom, where teachers and students are using a newfound understanding of technology’s potential to create … almost anything.

Imagine an alarm clock you have to wrestle to prove you’re actually awake, or a wearable container that works as a portable stress reliever, capturing your screams of frustration in silence and recording them for release at a more convenient time. Want something more practical? How about a device that eliminates red-eye from photographs or low-income houses made from snap-together parts–giant Legos constructed to revitalize struggling downtown neighborhoods?

These and other innovations are all concepts that evolved out of Gershenfeld’s latest class at MIT. The course, called “How to Make Almost Anything,” stays true to its name by surrounding students with millions of dollars of lab equipment, computers, and high-tech machinery designed for what the professor has dubbed “personal fabrication.”

The ultimate in project-based learning, the course brings students together to create personalized products designed to meet their own individual needs. Whatever they can imagine, Gershenfeld says, the idea is that with the help of technology, they can build it.

Rather than mass producing products, Gershenfeld believes technology will evolve during the 21st century so that individuals can become their own manufacturers, using digital blueprints constructed on computers to produce products that address their own unique needs–whatever those might be.

“Technology can be as passionate an experience as painting a painting or writing a sonnet,” said Gershenfeld, who believes that in the future, rather than taking classes about how to use technology, the trend will be to offer more courses that teach students to create technology–from the ground up.

That’s what he’s done at MIT–and it’s what he is doing now through the creation of “Fab-Labs,” a series of project-based learning laboratories launched in the most unlikely of academic environments–from the poorest neighborhoods in inner-city Boston to South Africa and a remote village in Ghana.

With as little as $20,000 worth of equipment, Gershenfeld claims he can build technology labs with enough equipment to teach even the most disadvantaged students, from the most desolate of communities, how to fabricate their own circuit boards and create the building blocks of any electronic device.

While the concept itself might seem far-fetched to all those who lack the intellectual prowess that pervades the research labs and libraries at MIT, Gershenfeld insists the ability to create almost anything through digital fabrication will be a reality in 20 years.

But only, he says, if educators embrace the changes wrought by this new technological revolution.

Gershenfeld called on schools and communities to create “villages of innovation,” where different cultures and societies can congregate to share ideas and create new products from the power of their own imaginations–“not by being consumers,” he said, “but by being creators.”

Remember, says Gershenfeld, “we are limited only by our own creative imaginations.”

For more on what’s happening in Denver, check back with eSchool News each day during the conference for updates from the featured speakers as well as news from the exhibit floor and session reviews by the eSN Conference Correspondents.

Links:

National School Boards Association
http://www.nsba.org

The Center for Bits and Atoms
http://cba.mit.edu/