Jeff Herr will talk about the workings of a K-12 virtual charter school, how this model has impacted the performance of the youngest students at the school and what the future of virtual education looks like in Utah and The United States.

Individualization has been described as an educational imperative and a economic impossibility — even in K-3 education. This presentation discusses this dilemma (data!) and suggests ways in which today’s computer technology does and does not solve the problem.

Once upon a time, children’s ebooks came on shiny CD-ROMs and ran on a Mac or PC. Not anymore. The iPad’s effect on children’s interactive publishing has pulled many publishers (some very unwillingly) into a new space, resulting in thousands of children’s ebooks, of very mixed quality. Here’s a closer look at the quickly growing ebook category, including an overview of text-to-speech techniques, a glossary of terms, an ebook evaluation form, and live demonstrations of the current state of the art. You’ll leave with a much better understanding of the future of children’s ebooks.

Dustin Heuston will review the lessons of his 50 + years in education including his 8 years of being a college English teacher, 8 years running a K-12 school, 8 years of running a for-profit educational corporation and 35 years running the nonprofit Waterford Institute.

He will discuss the core concepts he has had to master in order to understand the emerging potential of educational software including delivery systems, Moore’s Law, approximation to precision, Christensen’s concept of extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation, Paul David’s 40 year law, and a host of new metaphors that must become commonplace before the full potential of technology can be understood and applied.

He will also discuss the dawning knowledge of the importance of the preschool years and the new approaches to providing access to instruction for children in their homes during their preschool years from what he calls the Third Source, as well as the stunning preliminary data on the UPSTART project.

That technology will impact levels of literacy and alter its status has been argued by many. For some, as at this conference, the argument is that technology holds unique potential for supporting and strengthening literacy instruction. Others have argued that technology will render reading and writing obsolete. Both sides have pointed to the mounting evidence that technology is already undermining literacy growth among our students.

In this talk, Adams will review the linguistic and cognitive insights through which literacy took shape historically and on which it depends developmentally. While the immediate goal is to help you reflect on what to teach, a parallel objective is to help you think about why: Is literacy worth protecting and promoting in a technological world?