ORONO – Students from 48 Maine schools will gather at UMaine Thursday to showcase how State-supplied technology is transforming learning and better preparing them for success in their classroom, career and civic life.
The 1,000 or so students will be on Maine’s largest college campus, along with their Apple MacBooks, and 200 educators as part of the 10th Annual Maine Learning Technology Initiative Student Conference.
The event engages students as presenters or participants in a day of science, technology, engineering and mathematics focused workshops, and encourages high aspirations by facilitating what for many is their first visit to a post-secondary institution.
For more than a decade, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MTLI) has sought to provide professional development and technology to middle and high schools to support the attainment of the Maine Learning Results, including providing students with devices.
In addition to presentations from conference collaborators including the Maine Department of Education and MLTI, Apple, UMaine, New England School of Communications and educators from schools across the state, several Maine students will lead sessions, including Yuval Boss, a senior at Orono High School, Julia Bluhm, a freshman at Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, Izzy Labbe, a freshman at Waterville High School, as well as a group from Reeds Brook Middle School in Hampden.
Sessions will cover topics such as developing effective presentations with software like Apple’s Keynote; building a sustainable student technology team that meets the goals and needs of an individual school; using technology to explore space; and creating dynamic movies, websites and apps.
This is the final conference where students will have Apple technology exclusively in hand. Under a new MLTI contract currently being negotiated, the Microsoft Windows 7-based Hewlett Packard ProBook 4440 that students are more likely to see in the workplace will be the preferred technology and learning solution paid for by the State. The potential of that Microsoft software will be spotlighted in one of the day’s breakout sessions.
Schools will, however, have choice in selecting alternative solutions to that HP laptop, including an HP tablet, Apple’s iPad or MacBook Air, or a CTL Windows laptop with the State covering the cost of those alternatives up to the amount of the HP laptop proposal.
WHERE: Collins Center for the Arts, UMaine Campus, Orono
WHEN: 8 a.m. to 2:40 p.m., Thursday, May 16
FMI: Visit the MLTI Student Conference website at www.maine.gov/mlti/studentconference/ for more details, including a complete event schedule
It seems odd that this is the same day the Governor and Mr. Bowen chose to have a forum to talk with teachers.