You can take a deep dive into coaching through uncertainty, blockchain technology, and fully embracing ed-tech on the closing day of FETC Friday.
In the final keynote, blockchain expert Primavera de Filippi will detail how the rapidly emerging technology will allow educators to create more granular curricula that, in turn, let students aggregate multiple credentials into a wide range of “ad-hoc” diplomas.
Blockchain is a highly secure and decentralized type of online database that can drive transparency, accountability and interoperability, says De Filippi, an international researcher and faculty associate at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
“We’re still in the early stages of educators actually seeing the technology not as disruptive or as something that might hinder their activities,” she says. “We need help from them to come up with original ideas for how to use the technology for their own objectives.”
22 ed-tech tools for 2022
On the Future of EdTech Coach, learn the four phrases you can use to reframe and reimagine support for educators and to better foster empathetic cultures. Featured speaker Brianna Hodges’s session, “Coaching Through Uncertainty: Sustain Support With Empathy,” will provide guidance to help administrators and their teams lead schools through waves of anxiety, adversity and seemingly unending uncertainty.
Friday’s highlights
- 8:30-9:30 a.m.: Primavera de Filippi delivers the closing keynote, “Leveraging Blockchain in Education: Transparency, Accountability, & Interoperability.”
- 9:30 a.m.-12:45 p.m.: EXPO Hall open.
- 10-10:45 a.m.: Coaching Through Uncertainty: Sustain Support With Empathy
- 10-10:45 a.m.: The Big Blank Wall: Embracing EdTech Change
- 11-11:45 a.m.: Twenty-two for ’22: Tools and Trends to Inspire & Motivate
- Find Friday’s full schedule here
“Everyone is trying to reinvent themselves or recalibrate,” says Hodges, a strategy and leadership consultant for Future Ready Schools. “There’s no way that you can easily dismiss what happened in the last 18 months. So it’s trying to put that focus on creating equitable and inclusive circumstances.”
Go back in time to learn about the future of ed-tech with featured speaker Eric Curts, in his session, “The Big Blank Wall: Embracing EdTech Change.” Curts, a technology integrationist with the Stark Portage Area Computer Consortium in Ohio, will cover the skills students need for future success as he takes attendees back to his first classroom to examine the difference between “process” and “purpose.”
“Tech is not an end in itself, but rather it’s a tool that helps us in everything we do. The wheel was once tech. The pencil was tech,” Curts says. “People ask me, ‘Will teachers eventually be out of a job because of AI?’ I say, no; the idea is not for there to be one or the other. We want to become bionic educators, combining tech with the human connection.”
In one of the final day’s “can’t miss” sessions, find your geeky side as Lesley University professor Maureen Yoder shares a list of free tools teachers can master quickly to better engage students. “Twenty-two for ’22: Tools and Trends to Inspire & Motivate” will cover virtual and augmented reality apps, artificial intelligence devices, and inexpensive little drones and robots. Yoder will also detail how kids are now learning coding in very active ways.
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