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Digital Summit panelists suggest you'll never keep up with technology [The Macon Telegraph](Macon Telegraph (GA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 28--The pace of technological changes are undermining traditional schooling and are costing billions of dollars to deal with, panelists at Tuesday's day-long Middle Georgia Digital Economy Summit. People are both driving the changes and needing more help because of the changes, panelists at the summit told a crowd of about 230 people in Middle Georgia State College's conference center. Mike Hall, director of information technology for the Bibb County school system, had an easy answer for how teachers can stay on top of technology. "They'll never catch up," he said, suggesting veteran teachers can become facilitators of knowledge to help students find the information they need. It won't get easier once they've graduated, said Rebecca Lee, Central Georgia Technical College's vice president for economic development. "The need to skill, retool and reskill the workforce will never end," she said. Art Recesso, a Middle Georgia State College administrator, said policy makers are asking how to support younger people to learn with technology, while some students are already learning online. Educators have a mindset of hiring full-time people to work on campus all the time in expensive buildings, but a whole new network of education is being built, he said. Such networks rely on Internet connections, of course. Company representatives on an infrastructure panel said people are putting always-increasing demands on computer networks that meld cellular, Wi-fi and wired connections. Mike Skudin, vice president of access engineering for Windstream, said the demands on his company's network increase about 50 percent a year. That means investments in the core of the network, but also locally, to homes and neighborhoods, panelists said. The conference is being discussed online with the Twitter hashtag #MidGADigital. For more on this story, read Wednesday's Telegraph and return to Macon.com. ___ (c)2014 The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.) Visit The Macon Telegraph (Macon, Ga.) at www.macon.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |