Offline grabbed the wireless laptop and upped sticks over the summer to mix with 17,500 educators at the National Education Computing Conference (NECC) over four days in June in steamy New Orleans, Louisiana.
Susan Patrick, from the US Department of Education, had some tough questions in her talk, Are Schools Ready for Today’s Students? A Sneak Preview of the National Educational Technology Plan. At the heart of them was concern about the “achievement paradox”, the relationship between her 45x graph outlining increases in spending on schools ICT, a total of $90 billion over 10 years, and the dismal, flatlining graph representing national literacy levels. You can check out video of her performance along with other keynotes at http:necc2004.minds.tv
