The theme at this year’s Intel Visionary Conference in Washington, D.C., was “creation and innovation” and brought together a combination of educators, vendors and the industry’s “alphabet soup” (CoSN , SIIA , NSBA , etc.).
Conference attendees get creative during a presentation by Crayola.
The event kicked off on April 13, 2011, with a compelling presentation by Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information and Innovation Foundation, who spoke of the importance of individualized learning in keeping students engaged and motivated. The following day’s events began with another inspiring speech, by Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education, who discussed new DOE plans such as the new social network Connect All Schools; the Connected Communities of Practice; and the Digital Promise, a national center for research on advanced information and digital technologies. Other speakers, such as David Warlick, shared some of their favorite innovative tools, including:
Roberto Rodriguez, Special Assistant to the President for Education, speaks at the Intel Visionaries 2011 conference.
¦ Scratch: Kids and teachers create video games using this free tool.
¦ Phonebook: Books that include a slot for an iPod to make the pages interactive.
¦ Doodlebuzz.com: A new search engine that makes searches visual through “doodles” that lead you to connected lines or search results.
¦ CoolHub.IMSA: IMSA’s videoconferencing service.
¦ Gapminder.com: Creates graphs that show trends over time. Users can set demographic data such as income, life expectancy, and health. Stay tuned for a new Intel product related to this tool.
