Scholastic.com on FETC 2007: New Leadership, New Ideas No comments yet
Scholastic.com gives this retrospective of FETC 2007.
by Christine Weiser
Orlando’s atypically cloudy skies may have been a boon to the 460 exhibitors at this year’s annual Florida Educational Technology Conference, keeping the Orange County Convention Center’s aisles busy with about 8,000 total attendees. It may not have been Disneyland, but there was still plenty of activity as educators toted giant Best Buy bags, crammed into booths to win prizes, and gathered in excited conversations to compare notes.
The conference kicked off on January 24—just one week after 1105 Media, Inc. announced it had acquired the Florida Educational Technology Corporation, the producer of the 20-year-old FETC Conference. Keynote speaker Bill Nye, a.k.a. “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” shared his mission to create a scientifically literate society, which made a nice segue into the conference’s 200 sessions, which focused on how schools can make the most of ed-tech products.
And there were plenty of new products to see. As always, using technology to improve learning (and test scores) was at the core of many of the exhibited offerings. Assessment products like handheld “clickers” abounded, as more schools use these audience-response devices to capture immediate classroom data for formative assessment. SMART Technology (www.smarttech.com) demonstrated their new SENTEO system, which includes their Notebook collaborative learning software, and runs with most third-party software. Interwrite Learning, the new name of GTCO CalComp, showcased their Interwrite PRS student response system—in combination with their whiteboard, pad, and panel—as well as their latest Workspace Software, such as “Sims,” or simulations of concepts (www.interwritelearning.com). Other remote control devices like GenevaLogic’s new Vision Class Kit classroom management software (www.genevalogic.com) allows teachers to remotely access and control all student desktops.
