Tell President Obama About EdTech

If you had 5 minutes to tell President Obama
what is most important about edtech and why,
what would you say?

On Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 6:00 pm Second Life Time (that’s 8:00pm Central Time) the University of Michigan, Metanomics and ISTE are supporting an event to take place on ISTE Island in Second Life. Here are the details from the organizers of the event:

Community Meeting in Second Life: NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY PLAN (NETP)
The federal government of the United States of America has assembled an 18 person team to update and revise the National Education Technology Plan. Their report deadline is November 11, 2009. There will be a community meeting in Second Life for educational technology stakeholders to provide input into the planning process. Currently, we expect that a representative of the national team will be present as an observer at the SL event.

The key topic discussion points are:
* Learning: Providing unprecedented access to high-quality learning experiences.
 * Assessment: Measuring what really matters and providing the information that enables continuous improvement at all levels of the education system.
 * Teaching: New ways to support those who support learning.
 * Productivity: Redesigning systems and processes to free up education system resources to support learning.

Four Sims allocated for this meeting, all at the ISTE site:

1.       http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/92/83/30

2.       http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island%202/128/128/2

3.       http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island%203/2/190/30

4.       http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island%204/208/215/25

This Public Forum on the US National Educational Technology Plan is open to all stakeholders and interested parties. We are not requiring registration, but it would be helpful to us if people would list themselves as attending on the Facebook Event page. This would help us get a sense of what crowd to expect and what arrangements are needed to make it possible to include ALL interested voices. We don't want to exclude anyone if at all possible.

Updated information about the event will be available at the Facebook event page and the Simulation & Learning @ University of Michigan wiki.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=163866392474&ref=nf
http://slum.wetpaint.com/

The focus of the event is on educational technologies throughout all of education for a diversity of needs, purposes, and audiences (not just how wonderful SL is, but we know that and I am sure SL will shine). I don't know yet if it will be possible to stream the event to the web, to include people who can't get into SL, but if we can figure out how to work it out, we will.

The basic idea the elevator-pitch idea. ***If you had 5 minutes to tell Obama what is most important about edtech and why, what would you say?*** We will have notecard collectors at the event, so folks who want to prepare their thoughts in advance, please feel free to do so, but please remember that all content submitted will become part of a public archive. The chatlog will also be saved and posted online. Remember, you are also strongly encouraged to join the online community at the main website and share your ideas there as well. I am hoping that some of the SL specific outcomes can be preserved at SIMTeach or a similar home.

We are lucky that one of the members of Obama's team is able and willing to come into SL and observe this conversation. I am really excited about this and believe it is a really wonderful opportunity for all the amazing educators and edtech visionaries who I know are in SL to help shape future educational and edtech policies in the USA, as well as to really show what a wonderful place Second Life is for the educational community.

We hope that this event may attract some new educators to SL, so will be providing a packet of information and freebies that we hope will be helpful to them, as well as a notecard with a few examples of exceptional Second Life educational builds to help them get started. Feel free to post your suggestions at the Facebook Event page for us to include (location, topic, what makes it wonderful).

The event coordinator is Perplexity Peccable (RL: Patricia F. Anderson, patriciafanderson@gmail.com. Perplexity is the University of Michigan Emerging Technologies Librarian for the Health Sciences, and the community manager for Wolverine Island in SL. Contact Perplexity for more information or to volunteer support or services for this event.

Information on prior versions of the plan is available here.
National Educational Technology Plan: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/plan/index.html

Information on the current planning process is available here,
National Educational Technology Plan: https://edtechfuture.org/

The team is seeking input from the public. You can join the conversation on their website here.
Opportunities for Input:  https://edtechfuture.org/?page_id=888

Whether or not you are able to attend, it is important for your voice to be heard. Spread the word - invite your colleagues, let them know they can also contribute.

Please share your thoughts at:
https://edtechfuture.org/