Ed Tech Blog
The first Tuesday of every month, the Huntington Chamber Of Commerce Education Committee meets to discuss relevant topics and challenges faced by today’s modern workforce. Then we decide which topics are most important to our local professionals and create hour long seminars. It is a great resource for the business community because these seminars are free, we provide breakfast, and the content is presented by experts in their particular field. The committee is made up professionals from a number of industries including financial planning/ wealth management, graphic design, business consulting, insurance, higher education administrators, architects, you get the picture. We are a diverse group.
Today’s meeting was interesting because we had a guest speaker who happened to be the Assistant Superintendent of Instruction and Curriculum for my school district, a K-12 public system with about 6,000 students. He was talking about the nearly $2.9 million in technology grants the school district has received in the past four years. This has allowed them to continue to expand their wireless bandwidth and initiate and grow their STE(A)M programs. Kindergartners are learning drag and drop code, 3rd graders are using a 3D printer and 3D immersion for their robotics and other classes, 4th graders are learning to write code, 6th graders are beginning career readiness training, 6th and 7th graders are rolling out an ongoing 1:1 program with Chromebooks. I can go on.
As is inevitable with business discussions that include the word “technology,” many of the committee members started commenting to this Superintendent about the lack of workforce ready students coming out of high school and college “these days” because they have no soft skills. That is, they don’t know how to interact with “the rest of us,” their communication skills and attention to detail are deficient, pretty much what you...
Four well known audiovisual and classroom technologies manufacturers, FSR, Inc, Biamp Systems, Utelogy Corp., and SpinetiX, have partnered to create the first Higher Education Technology Summit (HETS). Created specifically for college and university managers of educational technology, HETS is designed to combine a day of product training, networking and peer-to-peer discussions in a fast moving format. The first HETS of 2016 will take place in Burlington, MA; a location conveniently situated (located off I-95 and 93) for many schools throughout New England.
Gina Sansivero, Director of Business Development, Education at FSR, Inc tells why an event like HETS was created. “As industry leading manufacturers, we understand that educational technology managers are technically educated and experienced and are increasingly taking on more design and installation responsibilities in house. They are also developing technology standards and specifying products for the AV systems campus-wide. Technology managers typically have limited budgets for training and travel. A regional, cost- free, single day event provides the training they are asking for as well as time for time to network with their colleagues in schools throughout the region.”
Biamp, SpinetiX, Utelogy and FSR strategically aligned for the April event to help technology managers expand their knowledge...
Originally Published in the Winter Issue of SEEN (South East Education Network):
In part one of this two part series, we looked at steps to transform a traditional classroom into an engaging learning environment. There were some key takeaways from that first article which will be the backbone of this section’s focus: While it’s clear that some things/people may never change, there are those who have the ability to influence many of the barriers to the effective use of classrooms and technology as learning tools. First is including those who have passion for modern learning to have a voice in the learning space design. Part two focuses on classroom, technology and how it influences learning and behavior. Read more here: http://seenmagazine.us/articles/article-detail/articleid/5372/designing-modern-classrooms-1.aspx
A number of recent articles have highlighted colleges and universities that have successfully developed processes to take classroom technology standardization, design, installation and support “in house.” There are some exceptions (summer projects for which they may need outsourced labor to complete the rooms before classes begin, or new buildings for which they may not have hired additional staff, etc.) but it is more common now for higher education technology departments to rely on their own teams to not only oversee upgrades and installations but to develop the skills to be the consultants/ designers, installers and technicians for the entire job.
While this may prove to be economical and efficient, it puts some new stress on these technology departments. An obvious challenge is hiring enough staff for these new responsibilities- and maybe not simply hiring new talent, but making the case to get approval to increase the budget to hire new staff. One challenge that may not be as obvious is finding time and resources to keep up with new technology, product training and professional development.
Many technology managers no longer rely on dealers for their training but it can seem that on-campus training from manufacturers is not always offered. Additionally,
Read more: AV/ IT Managers: How do you keep your team properly trained?
I don’t love country music, in general. But there is a song that makes me smile; I turn up the volume and sing and dance around like no one is listening or watching, no matter if there is. I am going to take you on my special Gina journey of conversation whiplash- please try to follow- and I will explain how this song is relevant. It came to me in the middle of the night (different song- but would love to see Billy Joel in concert again someday soon) when I couldn’t sleep and was trying to calm my brain….
For its relatively small size, the audiovisual industry has more proponents, fans, enthusiasts and cheerleaders within it than many other larger industries. In fact, I argue that there are more AV evangelists than in the closely related but much larger IT cousin industry. I don’t exactly have the numbers, but I’d say that the drive to “create exceptional experiences” (thanks InfoComm AVEC) cultivates an exceptional amount of passion. This passion isn’t exclusive to a single part of the industry (although I am partial to AV in education), job function, age or gender. It seems to be something that starts as...