March, 2008

MACUL-32 Years Young!

By Michael Porter, President, Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning

MACUL is 32 years young this year. What a change 32 years can make!

I first attended the MACUL conference to learn about the Logo programming language from MIT, which we were using in our schools as additions to Math, Science, and occasionally other subjects. I also wanted to find out about the newest version of hardware/software that we were using with our students. At that time, we had one computer at the back of the room for educational games, and if you were lucky, the classroom would have an extra computer on the teacher’s desk.

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) have jointly released a book based on the “What Works” series, titled Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. The book begins with a foreword by Robert Marzano and continues listing the top eleven things that are proven to help students learn, showing how technology can be used to improve these practices. I believe this book represents what MACUL has become. It is now a place where educators from across Michigan can gather to share the best practices used in education. These practices all employ technology as either an enabler of the activity, a way to engage students, or both. Today education that is delivered using best practices and that engages students is delivered with technology.

This year’s MACUL conference features National speakers such as Mary Cullinane, the architect of the School of the Future in West Philadelphia, and Hall Davidson, from the Discovery Educator Network talking about the products that students use on a daily basis and how education can embrace them as a positive force. The conference features regional experts on such subjects as Universal Design for Learning, Open Source Software, and Robotics.

The conference also includes our most exciting addition in years. Through a partnership with MACUL, School Video News, SchoolTube, TPC Technologies, Philmagic Productions, and Media Tech Partners, a broadcast center will be available at the MACUL conference where students and professionals can record, mix, and deliver video and audio content to the world. These students and professionals will be covering our conference along side podcasters and bloggers to help make our Conference a local event held in Grand Rapids, but with participants from all over the world.  

These students are doing what has become the norm on the Internet.  They have moved from being users of information to providers of information.  Web 2.0 tools make it so that anyone can become a provider of information.  Our schools and the people working in them can make it so that this content is of the highest quality.   The students of today understand the tools of today and may even be making the tools of tomorrow.  Our job is to allow these tools into our schools and integrate them into our best practices.

As President of MACUL, I hope you have a chance to attend our conference this year in Grand Rapids.  If you can’t attend this year, check out the content that is posted during and after the conference, then plan to attend next year’s conference in Detroit and become a member of the MACUL community.