The folks over at the Educational Technology by IQity blog are at the T+L Conference in Seattle. They’re doing a bang-up job of reporting on presentations and workshops, which are leaning heavily on the interactive, high-tech approach.

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is presenting the conference. The folks at IQity noted the NSBA’s top 3 educational trends were: Online learning opportunities; Access to school related software and projects anywhere on the network tied with unlimited Internet access; and Online communication tools, notably global social networks. There has long been a convergence of social sites with gaming. Many social sites offer games which members can play together with friends. Meanwhile, many online games serve the same functions as social sites, allowing friends to play together while socializing. A lot of interest is percolating around the idea of harnessing social networks for education, as we saw recently with the development news of a MMORPG for SAT studies.

Another interesting post at the IQity blog centered on virtual science lab software from Toolworks. Virtualizing lab experiments has always been a good idea, and I was impressed by a presentation on Virtual Chemlab earlier this year at FETC. It’s heartening to see the concept produced by a variety of companies aiming at the whole of spectrum of age and grade groups.

You can keep up with all the great posts over at the IQity blog by checking in on their October archive here. I’ve also added them to the blog roll.