The annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival takes place on March 9-13th in Austin, Texas. There is a planned higher-ed meetup there, but I was having trouble finding K-12 attendees. If you are interested, please leave a comment on the K-12 SXSWi meetup page.

Hope to touch base with some educators there...

Let me tell ya' something. Back in my day, we had a think called Discipline. It did NOT involve a prescription from a licensed dope dealer. "Being sent to the office" didn't mean the psychiatrist's office for a few pills and a bill; it meant the Principal's Office. Sittin' in that office was a big fat bald man with a purple face and a paddle. If you didn't behave, you'd discover the business end of his perforated "Attitude Adjuster" connecting with the soft tissue of your tender and soon-to-be repentant backside. Back then, "Sit down and shut up" meant something. Of course, that kind of thing is now as ancient history as Coca-Cola with real sugar, and kids are being told to let their ADHD run rampant for the sake of fighting flab. That's right--no need to sit still and listen; heck, let's jump around while listening to iPods instead of this multiplication and spelling crap.

I just watched Voices from the New American Schoolhouse trailer at YouTube after hearing about it at Boing Boing. The clip concerns a radial experiment in education taking place in Fairhaven. It's a school where kids (of all ages) make the rules and decide what they want to learn and when.

Of course, I've heard about projects like this before, and we can find parallels in the history of universities (such as those of Bologna). Somehow, though, I'm skeptical. If I were 12 and allowed to "make my own lesson plan," it would consist entirely of videogames and the occasional SF flick.

Michael Schrage of the MIT Media Lab wrote a piece for The Financial Times saying that there should be no computers in schools. He argues that billions could be saved by keeping useless technologies out of schools. As an educational technologist, I felt that I needed to address his critique.

 
I think his main argument is with educational software companies, but he fails to differentiate between them and between teachers using technology in the classroom. His article cites nothing other than his own opinions, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.