Today at ISTE started off with a great keynote from Dr. Yong Zhao. He has a great mix of statistics and humor in his presentation. Some of the quotes from his presentation will be addressed in future posts, but I think his presentation and delivery was one of the best keynotes that I have seen. After the keynote, I attended four sessions with a breakdown of three of them below. There is only a breakdown of three because I walked out of a session and went to the exhibit hall.
Session 1 – EduTecher’s Web Tools Will Make Your Classroom Rock! – This presentation was not one of the one’s that I was planning on attending before yesterday because I had planned on seeing some other presentations on educational tools. Based on what I saw on Twitter yesterday, I changed my mind and wasn’t disappointed. Adam Bellow provided a list of excellent tools and short demos on how they worked. There were so many great apps that I emailed the list to four of my fellow technology teachers as soon as the session was over because I know that they will want to play with them before the school year starts.
Session 2 – Bailed out 30 minutes in and went to the exhibit floor.
Session 3 – A Broader Perspective on Data: Infographics and Visualization – David Warlick is an entertaining and informative speaker. By the time David’s session ended, I was ready to start creating my own infographics and develop a project for my students to create a relative infographic. One of the lines that David used what that he would like to see data fairs instead of science fairs. Considering that most industries are data driven in some manner, this would be a great exercise for students.
Session 4 – The Steep Unlearning Curve: Rethinking Schools, Classrooms, and Learning – There were several great sessions to choose from this time period, but I decided to go to Will Richardson’s because of the Twitter and blog posts that I have read from him in the past. His session was inspirational and also highlighted how much work there is to do to change education. I cannot disagree with the three things that teachers need to unlearn in order to rethink schools: delivery, assessment, and competitiveness. While I think that I have made changes in those three since my first year of teaching, I still have a ways to go especially in engaging others to unlearn what they have always done.
It was a great second day and I am looking forward to the third day tomorrow. There is so much going on here that I don’t want it to end, but I also know that I need time to absorb everything that I have seen and heard.