David Hunter. Courtesy Zombie-Based Learning.
The South by Southwest Festival in Austin is best known for music, but it also includes a four-day conference on educational technology, which took place earlier this month.
A bunch of local folks participated. One was David Hunter of Zombie-Based Learning, a Bellevue teacher who talked about the middle-school curriculum he created that teaches geography through an imagined Zombie Apocalypse. The project also was featured on KPLU last year.
Another was Lindsey Own, a science teacher at Evergreen, a private K-8 school in north Seattle, who participated on a panel about how to help education technology entrepreneurs and teachers work together better.
One myth, she wrote in her report on the panel, is that entrepreneurs “just make a cute product, then kick back and let the $ roll in.” One myth about teachers, she said, “They want free free free.”
Her full summary can be found here.
The role of teachers in the educational technology field seemed to be a common theme. Liz Willen of The Hechinger Report provided this summary of the conference, noting many teachers are hungry for more training, and for a better understanding of how they can play a role in discussions about the use of technology in schools.
Video highlights from the conference can be found here.