CONTACT: Professor Owen Gaede, (850) 644-1651, orWilliam Gattis, (817) 534-1220; e-mail, [email protected]
By Jeffery SeayApril 27, 2001
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGY WILL BRING HUNDREDS TO FSU
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-The Florida Legislature isn't alone this year in discussing the merits of installing Internet filters on computers to shield young eyes from objectionable material. An international conference, May 2-5, at Florida State University also will address the issue and the latest developments and thinking about computers, the Internet and related technologies in the classroom.
The 19th annual International Conference on Technology and Education (ICTE) will attract more than 500 teachers, professors, administrators and publishers from 36 countries - including 90 Leon County teachers - to FSU's Oglesby Union to focus on "Making Technology Effective in Learning."
According to conference coordinator William Gattis, the conference will address ways to effectively use computers in the classroom.
"We'll look at what works and what doesn't work, and we'll look at the differences and parallels of how technology is used in education throughout the world," Gattis said. "It's going to be an exchange of ideas. And even though we won't have the latest computer hardware on display, people will be able to learn how to use such hardware in the most effective ways."
In addition to daily plenary sessions, presentations of papers, roundtable discussions and workshops, conference participants will be able to tour local educational institutions - a local elementary school and high school, and university facilities - courtesy of the Leon County School District and Florida A&M University, two sponsors of the conference. The optional tours, which are traditional ICTE events, are always popular with conference attendees, according to FSU computer science Professor Owen Gaede, another conference coordinator.
The participants will examine eight supporting themes: harnessing the Internet to raise educational standards; policies and strategies to evaluate, identify and acquire effective software; technology resources in support of learning; distance, flexible and open learning; creating digital assets for education and the environment for their use; virtual institutions; teacher training; and cooperative ventures between industry and education.
Anyone can attend the conference, but registration is required. ICTE conferences most recently have been held in South Africa, Scotland, New Mexico and Norway.
Other conference sponsors include the FSU Learning Systems Institute, the department of computer science and engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, Tallahassee Community College, the University of West Florida, the Florida Department of Education, and the Scottish Interactive Technology Centre and Faculty of Education of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. For more information, visit the ICTE Web site http://www.icte.org.
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