Richard Culatta, director of the Office of Educational Technology, will participate in three sessions at the annual South-by-Southwest (SXSWedu) Conference in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday-Thursday, March 5-6 at the Hilton Austin Downtown Hotel in Austin.
In the first session at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Culatta will speak on a panel, "To LMS or Not to LMS," which will discuss the Learning Management System tools available for effective learning, both in and outside a classroom, as well as explore how LMSs have changed the educational experience, how LMSs fill the need to meet new learning standards, and identify new LMS tools that are evolving with the changing educational landscape.
At 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Culatta will talk about the new ConnectEDucators program in a session, "ConnectED: The Future of Learning." Participants will engage in an open-dialogue with facilitators on how to build high-speed digital connections for America’s schools, invest in digital devices, develop support services and professional learning for educators, and leverage high-quality open learning content. ConnectED is major initiative of President Obama, designed to enrich K-12 education for every student in America. ConnectED empowers teachers with the best technology and the training to make the most of it, and empowers students through individualized learning and rich, digital content.
In the third event at 9 a.m. on Thursday, he will join a panel discussion titled “Flipping Procurement: District Software Challenges.” In that session, district, state and federal experts will discuss how some are flipping procurement by using the principles of user-centered design, crowdsourcing, prototyping and co-creation to bring procurement into the modern age.
SXSWedu seeks to drive meaningful conversation and collaboration around promising practices to improve teaching and learning. Programming is designed for SXSWedu’s diverse audience of education stakeholders. During SXSWedu, education's most energetic and innovative leaders from all backgrounds of the learning landscape, including teachers, administrators, university professors, business and policy leaders converge each March at the SXSWedu Conference & Festival. The four-day event is a platform for the growing SXSWedu community to connect, collaborate, create and change how we teach and learn.