AdvancED+2010--Fast+Forward--Educating+Beyond+the+Horizon

I am writing from Atlanta, at the AdvancEd Annual Conference. This year's theme is [|Fast Forward: Educating Beyond the Horizon]

On Saturday I attended a full day session on the visual presentation of data. The co-presenters, David Hurst and Mary Jo Rasmussen, are both Vice Presidents in AdvancEd with a lot of experience in education, education administration, and accreditation. Their presentation is inspired by the work of Yale University Professor Edward Tufte, who has written extensively on ways to present data in ways that are compelling and effective, largely by thinking about the visual components of the presentation ([]). The presentation focused both on ways to think about data in systems as well as creative ways to use visual concepts to present and communicate this data. I think there are are variety of applications for these concepts--from classroom applications to applications in our publications--which I look forward to discussing with you all.

Sunday I attended several very different sessions. The first was a roundtable on wikis, blogs, and communication via the web. I was interested to hear one school principal talk about using the Skype Whiteboard. I am not familiar with this, but it certainly sounds like something that I want to investigate. I shared some of our experiences with wikis at RE, and the group was duly impressed and looks forward to perusing a few of our wikis, most notably the Math Team wiki seemed to pique their interest. The Keynote Speaker for the conference was Monica Martinez, President of the New Tech Network, a part of Knowledgeworks. Her talk was interesting, as it noted the change from a culture of consuming to a culture of participating to a culture of creating. I think this is a clever and sharp way of characterizing the fairly rapid changes that we have recently experienced as a culture but also specifically in education. To this end, she talked about lot about the need to think about new ways of engaging students and about new educational processes and outcomes, emphasizing creativity, collaboration, technology, and generally thinking differently about what we do, how we do it, and even, to a certain degree, who we are. Her talk was inspired by the Knowledgeworks report [|2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning]which I think we would all do well to read and consider. This afternoon, I attended two sessions, one on the future of AdvancED standards and one on preparing the Standards Report in a collaborative, paperless, 21st century was. Neither were particularly complex, but it is worth noting that many of the concepts AdvancED is contemplating adding more specifically to their standards are things we are already working on here at RE: a global perspective, formative assessment, meaningful professional development, among other items.

The highlight of Monday's program was the General Session, featuring Juan Williams of NPR and FOX News. Williams' talk focused on the changing demographics of the United States and the implications of those changes for education. Williams then moderated a panel discussion with five current students (3 high school juniors, one senior, and one college freshmen) about their preparation in the education system and how they would propose to improve the way that we do education in the United States. It was most interesting. I also attended today a couple sessions on accreditation, thinking about standards and how to provide evidence of standards compliance (otherwise known as "artifacts") and about thinking, again, about digitizing what we do during the accreditation process and more generally.

JAK