Conference Keynote Speaker

Meet Jamie McKenzie

“During the final decade of the twentieth century, schools in many countries spent huge sums running cables and buying computers to connect classrooms to the Internet. What we need now is a commitment to information learning by schools as they strive to improve the reading, writing and thinking of their students. This will entail a sincere and robust commitment to professional development to help the current generation of teachers learn how to use the new electronic tools in ways that count.”
- Jamie McKenzie

Profile

Jamie McKenzie is the Editor of From Now On - The Educational Technology Journal, and a new journal - The Question Mark. In this journal, he argues for information literate schools. In the early nineties, Jamie was the Director of Libraries, Media and Technology for the Bellingham (WA) Public Schools, a district of 18 schools and helped to pioneer their networking and program development. He has moved on to support planning and professional development for schools across North America, Australia and New Zealand. A graduate of Yale with an MA from Columbia and Ed.D. from Rutgers, Jamie has been a middle school teacher of English and social studies, an assistant principal, an elementary principal, assistant superintendent in Princeton (NJ) and superintendent of two districts on the East coast. He also taught four-year-olds in Sunday school. Jamie has published and spoken extensively on information technologies and how they might transform classrooms and schools to support student centered, engaged learning.

A full resume is available online at http://fno.org/JM/resume.html

Keynote Day 1

"Cultivating Exceptional Talents with Digital Riches"

Some of us see most students as gifted and potentially capable of writing great poems, great songs and great plans. The new tools and resources available thanks to digital environments can deepen, broaden and enhance student performance, production and invention when introduced in ways that stress rigor and responsibility. McKenzie identifies the potentials of new technologies to set students free from the ho-hum-drum of schooling but he balances his optimism and enthusiasm with cautionary tales of facile, flimsy, glib productions that are "full of sound and fury signifying nothing."

Keynote Day 1

"Cultivating Exceptional Talents with Digital Discretion"

Continuing on the theme established the day before, McKenzie asks the audience to consider the value of digital discretion - the idea that students will learn to pick the right tools for the job, whether it be oil on canvass or a digital photograph. Quality teaching and quality production must be grounded on clear criteria and standards to help separate the merely entertaining from the truly worthy.