At FETC in Orlando last week it was hard to turn around without meeting someone in my educational technology network or adding someone new so, as one friend remarked, the conference offered a very low cost-per-lead. But networking wasn’t the whole of it — there were the keynote and breakout sessions as well — and two stood out.

Alan November of November Learning spoke on “Preparing Students to Succeed in a Global Economy” and made several thought-provoking observations. He asserted that to be successful, “Every student needs the ability to learn on line as well as face to face,” while observing that the most popular out-of-school activities of today’s teens — blogging, IMing, watching web video, downloading music, and playing video games — are all banned in school. “What would happen if we infiltrated ‘their’ technology with ‘our’ content,” he wondered. Most poignantly, he observed “Today’s students are the first generation where most parents and teachers don’t know how to play the games their kids are playing.” Now that’s a gap that needs closing.

Karen Billings, Vice President of the SIIA Education Subcommittee chaired “Can Games and Simulations Reach and Teach the 21st Century Student?” that was notable not only for the excellent panel she assembled, but for the number of people attending. While most “breakout” sessions had no more than 30 or 40 participants, this session drew more than twice that number and filling nearly every seat available. Serious games may still be relatively rare in K-12 classrooms, but from the attendance and good questions at this session clearly interest among educators is growing.