We had a great time sharing the Naiku Platform at TIES conference December 6th & 7th. The conference was appropriately named “Engage Me”; and had over 2,700 attendees representing administrators, teachers, technology personnel, and many other education professionals from across the country.
See the following links for more information on the TIES “Engage Me” conference: (http://tchlrn.ties.k12.mn.us/ties2010/main/details.asp , http://wiki.ties.k12.mn.us/)
Monday’s keynote speaker was Sir Ken Robinson. He made an impassioned plea for all attendees to think differently about how we deliver education and search out ways to help students find their passions. In his recently published book titled “The Element” Sir Ken describes how important it is for everyone to find their passion in life. The book is filled with stories from a number of famous people who found their passions in spite of their education. One good example was the fact that two of the Beatles were told by a music teacher at an early age that they had no talent. Another story explains that Elvis Presley was denied a spot in his school’s glee club because they thought he would ruin their sound. It is pretty obvious that they overcame these early snubs. As Sir Ken discussed in his keynote, we in America cannot afford to miss out on our student’s innate talents if we are to compete with China and India. They have more honor students than we have students. We believe that by using the Naiku platform educators will be better able to help students find their passions and ultimately successful futures.
Sir Ken Robinson currently has a great presentation posted on youtube that speaks to the need to change our current system: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U).
Another major speaker was Karen Cator. She is the current Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the US Department of Education. (http://www2.ed.gov/news/staff/bios/cator.html) Karen spoke about the recently released National Education Technology Plan 2010. The report is titled: “Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology” (http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010). Much of the report talks about the need to leverage technology to better serve the needs of students. Karen stopped by our booth and spent quite a bit of time with Adisack getting a demo of the Naiku platform. She was particularly interested in how we allow teachers to collaborate on creating items and sharing assessments.
This was our first conference and it was a great way to meet a number of education professionals from across the country. It also confirmed that we have developed the right product at the right time. It was very encouraging to see the number of people who stopped by our booth asked for more information. If you stopped by or gave us a card, we will be following up with everyone over the next few weeks!