Games and Learning

One of scores of sessions hoping to draw a crowd at this year’s SXSWedu. Photo by Zach Hale

Maybe it is a bit of a victim of its own hype, but this year’s SXSWedu conference felt at times more like one big edtech vendor presentation as it did a hothouse for ideas about evolving education.

There was a lot of news that came out (or at least got reinforced) at this year’s conference. But most of it was about platforms and tablets.

Amplify announced a new tablet and technology partner in Intel, re-establishing itself as a player in the battle for mobile technology in the nation’s classrooms. The company also unveiled a broader, more complete English Language curriculum connected to Common Core standards.

Over at the Google Lounge, the technology giant was showing off two new in its almost-dizzying array of Chromebook products from Samsung, Toshiba, Dell and others. The company also posted an update on its effort to add texts to the Google Play for Education effort.

The lounge, with is ubiquitous technology, cool chairs and tshirted assistants, was often busier than the sessions taking place in the conference rooms around the Austin Hilton and the convention center.

Apple, meantime, quietly shepherded selected journalists and players out of the conference and over to the Four Seasons to walk them through the substantial changes the company has been making to its educational offerings in the App Store and efforts to build more affordable solutions for schools.

But SXSWedu often champions itself about breaking new ground in thinking about education reform and that seemed in shorter supply this past week.

There were the reheated debates about standardized tests and developers preaching to other developers about the efficacy of games. Former Assistant Secretary of education Diane Ravitch offered a blistering condemnation of standardized tests, declaring, “’No Child Left Behind’ was a hoax. The ‘Texas Miracle’ never existed, but you already knew that.”  Texas Democrat and U.S. Senate candidate Wendy Davis used the conference as a chance to rally supporters.

And even the big policy announcements seemed to reflect a reaction to the marketplace. The College Board rolled out a reformed SAT with the goals of, according to Politico, “putting SAT test prep companies out of business and aligning the test to the Common Core academic standards.”

There were moments of creativity and excitement. The SXSWedu Playground  featured a variety of app demonstrations and STEM projects that brought some fun to the proceedings. Also, watching a roomful of developers and educators playing Minecraft and considering its use in the classroom was exciting to watch, but is it radically new?

Instead this conference spoke to the slow work still to be done about spreading the word of technologies and games. And many appreciated the more measured content in this year’s conference.

“I loved the fact that this year there were many sessions where the focus was not necessarily on the newest, shiniest edtech apps or toys,” wrote Stephanie Sandifer in her “brain dump” about the conference. “Sure there was plenty of that, but this year people were talking about the other ways in which we need to innovate within our learning spaces — and some of those ideas are not new.”

But with hundreds of sessions and keynotes crammed into essentially three days – one time slot on Wednesday morning had no fewer than 20 sessions going on at the same time – the conference was also deeply fragmented many sessions attracting only a handful of attendees.