EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Conference Day 1

My first 3 postings are excerpts taken from my blog "Immerse Yourself" which I am keeping as a tool for reflection on my graduate program at George Mason University.  In May I will graduate with a Master's in Education in Instructional Technology. The program is known as the "Immersion Program" because it is full time and allows students to earn a master's degree in one year!

Just a few hours into the conference and already I’m learning and networking – it’s been great thus far!  It’s been fascinating to talk to people in the instructional technology field and find out how they got there – no two have the same, or similar, stories.  I ran into Lisa Andion (Instructional Support Manager at George Mason University) in the elevator – despite the fact that we are at the same institution, I only had to look at her nametag to figure out who she was. Julie Evans, who spoke at the very first session “K-12 Students Speak Up About Technology and Learning: Are We Listening?”, presented some very fascinating statistics to the audience (she later said she was going to be in northern VA Thursday of this week surveying a high school through her New Learning Project).  She revealed some things which were pretty shocking (or at least insightful):
*80% of kids between 6th and 12th grade have a cell phone
*65% of kids between kindergarten and 12th grade are gaming, girls just as much as boys
*35% of kids between 6th and 12th grade are interested in taking an online class
*9% of high school kids have a BlackBerry or smartphone

(It’s beyond me why a high school kid would ever need a BlackBerry - when I had mine, it was delightful to silence it after the workday was over.)

She also brought up the subject of online social networking (which, I had several interesting discussions today about the fact that No, I do not think that Facebook or MySpace will ever have academic value) and mentioned that 20% of 3rd through 5th graders have online “friends” they have never met.

WHOA.

What ever happened to Barbies and trips to the neighborhood playground?

Kidding aside, I know that technology’s integration with the children’s world is only going to increase, and I really do see this positively affecting the digital revolution.

I could talk lots more about this session, but there are two more sessions I need to talk about. More on those to come tomorrow.

Also, I discovered that all of the sessions will be podcast(ed?), so since humans don’t yet have the capability to simultaneously appear in and take in material from more than one location, I can listen to what I’m missing on the plane ride back. Cool.

On a side note, I navigated to blogger.com to begin blogging about ELI, and was a bit startled to receive the option of "sign in to use blogger: but first, where do you blog? New blogger: using your Google account..." It's great (and quite convenient) that the different online technologies I use are being integrated, but is everything online that requires an account sign-up being google-fied?  Yes, it is possible for great tech ideas to come out of somewhere besides Google.  But then Google just buys them up.  Hmm, maybe that is how I can make my millions...