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Midwest Express Center
Technology entrepreneur Rick Inatome leads a national slate of keynote speakers at this year's Governor's Wisconsin Educational Technology Conference, scheduled for Oct. 12-14 at Milwaukee's Midwest Express Center. Representatives from six UWM schools and colleges will showcase educational technology and applications as part of the conference exhibits. Inatome, a computer industry pioneer who currently chairs the Fortune 500 Inatome Corporation, will argue that the "istuanami called the Infostructure Shift is shaping important and unexpected changes in economics, sociology, and education."
Under the "laws of scarcity" of the Industrial Age, multiple manufacturers competed for limited natural resources. According to Inatome, the "laws of abundance" will underlie the Information Age, where it is "more productive to give away a software browser than to vertically integrate yesterday's factories."
Even more significantly, "our traditional notions of community and family are being challenged by new `net' relationships in which intimacy and anonymity are no longer strange bedfellows." Inatome sees our political traditions being shattered by a public that has access to unprecedented streams of information. "As a result, we are electing professional wrestlers while, at the same time, exposing the once hidden hypocrisies of our highest office."
Joining Inatome as a keynoter is a national figure with deep Wisconsin ties. Alan Chute, director of Lucent Technologies Center for Excellence in Distance Learning, holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from UW-Madison.
Chute's vision for the millennium includes a range of distance technologies and applications that will support and transform 21st century learning. Chute will demonstrate how today's organizations are successfully using technology such as Interactive Visual Distance Learning, Knowledge Portals, and Just-In-Time Learning systems to increase skills of employees in the global workplace.
Like Inatome, Chute sees major social changes coming hand in hand with new technologies. "Government agencies, schools, and multinational corporations are forming partnerships with leading universities to deliver advanced seminars and offer degrees. New workplace challenges will require new skills."
New technology has spawned new educational relationships. Interactive Visual Distance Learning allows instructors to see students and the students to see and collaborate with their instructors, as well as with other students at multiple sites. Chute finds it exciting that "this type of visual interaction, used in conjunction with World Wide Web resources, enables instructors to present the most current information globally, to demonstrate and model skills, to conduct behavioral observations of students performing complex tasks, and to provide skills-coaching feedback to students."
Chute's credentials in distance learning are impressive. His design of AT&T's national Teletraining Center and Networks won the 10-Year Distinguished Service to the Industry Award from the United States Distance Learning Association. Chute was elected to the Hall of Fame of the International Teleconferencing Association in 1994.
The final keynoter is Janice Gordon, who represents Microsoft's Anytime, Anywhere Learning program and also is the laptop team leader for Bermuda's prestigious Saltus Grammar School.
Gordon is a popular speaker whose enthusiasm for laptop learning is infectious. Her support for the project stems from the significant contributions she has seen derive from integrating computers into the curriculum.
Gordon was a teacher at The Mott Hall School in 1996, when Anthony Amato, superintendent of New York City's Community School District Six in the Harlem/Washington Heights area, accepted a challenge from Microsoft and Toshiba by signing up for a demonstration of Anytime, Anywhere Learning, a project that assigned each child a personal computer.
Gordon pioneered the Microsoft project in an initial class of 19 and oversaw its expansion to more than 1,500 students district-wide. She both trained teachers for the program and created model lessons connecting technology to existing curriculum materials. Her efforts won her recognition as New York City's Middle School Teacher of the Year for 1996-97.
The District Six area is not resource- or technology-rich. Ninety-five percent of the 28,000 students qualify for free lunch. There were major infrastructure and security issues to be addressed to ensure the project's success.
But, according to Gordon, the learning transformation that her "plugged-in" students achieved makes the model worth replicating. "Students engaged in purposeful learning tasks and developed strategies for decision-making, cooperative learning, self-evaluation, and time management. More important, they developed positive self-esteem and became risk-takers."
For more information, visit the conference Web site at www.gwetc.org, or contact the conference manager: phone 608/264-9725; fax 608/264-9685; email gwetc@ecb.state.wi.us.