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FETC Review

Why don’t they make “Happy Belated Blog Post” cards? Am I the only one who thinks there’s a market there?

I had the opportunity to attend FETC in Orlando, Florida for the first time this year (yeah, yeah… a couple of weeks ago). Perhaps I’m just getting better at picking my sessions and strategically mapping my route through the vendor floor, but for reasons even beyond the gorgeous weather, this conference rates among the best I’ve attended.

It never fails that I return to Lincoln from an experience like this re-invigorated, inspired, and, to be honest, incredibly overwhelmed with the challenge we as educators face. Here’s a run-down of what I saw, heard, and experienced while there:

1) Top 3 “terms” used in the program: 21st Century Skills, podcasting, Web 2.0…

2) Jeff Corwin delivered the opening keynote. He didn’t wow the audience with hilarious video clips of elephants chasing him or monkey’s touching him inappropriately, but he did have some great thoughts. How ’bout this one: “We now live in the age of extinction.” He also discussed the importance of information sharing and the value of awareness…

3) The new site from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, called Route 21, is filled with potential…

4) “Skills matter more than content (content becomes the context and skills become the standards)”… chew on that for a minute… swallow… now try spoon full of this: “we need to get back to the basics… we just need to redefine what those basics are.” mmmm, delicious…

5) “many students feel that what they are learning academically is fundamentally irrelevant to their lives in the 21st century”

There’s a lot more I could share… but that seems like a good one to end on…

Posted in What I think.


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