When I heard about this “experiment”, my first reaction was to go and try to sabotage the entire nomination process and try to get Batman speaking on an issue like “21st Century Detective Skills”. The idea that one of the leading ed-tech organizations in the nation is crowd sourcing, rather than leading, the vision of educational technology was ridiculous to me. The very nature of crowd sourcing and web 2.0 is that it’s a decentralized system, that’s organic and flows as needed. ISTE is a monolithic, highly centralized organization, and no matter how nimble, should not be abdicating any authority it has in providing a vision of education to the rabble that the selection process became.

The poll daddy voting method was just an inexcusable mistake, that I would have thought an organization as seasoned as ISTE would not have made. Perhaps this will turn into a lesson well learned, but then again, we’re talking about a non-profit organization that chargers it’s members $50 for a webinar!!!