Exposure

I was intrigued yesterday as I looked at CNN that SXSW was a "trending headline."  So I clicked on it.  It talked about EVERY branch of SXSW...except for EDU.

Obviously, I was surprised--it was such a cool conference.  So I fished around online for a while...and found that even the Chronicle of Higher Ed didn't cover it.  So I got curious.

Why didn't SXSWEDU get coverage when every other branch did?

I discussed this a bit with Justin and Gerol.  We were disturbed about this.  It speaks a lot to deeper issues about education, especially in this country. But what is the culture around education that would make this a non-covered conference?

I'll be fair, here. I am an edu geek. I'm an innovation geek. Alright, put those together and you can see why this bothered me. This is shaping up to be the future of education. Why are so few talking about it?

Ok, so there was some coverage of Bill Gates' keynote address on the last day...but I'll be honest, that was pretty much it. Why was there such little coverage of the amazing work that people who aren't Bill Gates are doing?

I have no answers, here. I don't know what they are. But this just left me with so many, non-rhetorical questions. These days, there are bunches of articles about testing students and dissatisfaction with education today, and here we were at this huge conferences about changing it...and yet no one put it in the public eye. Why? Do we just love to complain, but are not willing and/or ready to be the change we need?

Is it that we, as a country, aren't ready to hear that innovation is needed in education? Do we just simply not care? Is it just not dubbed to be "mainstream" enough? Do we not want to hear it? What gives?