Well...#ISTE18 is officially over and I, along with my brain, legs and feet are TIRED!!!!! I am sitting in the lobby of the hotel, waiting to check out and thought I'd jot down my highlights from this amazing conference! As I'm reflecting, this post may be a little all over the place, so bear with me! Update....I am now home, unpacked and finishing this post! 😀First, Chicago is BEAUTIFUL! This is my third time visiting The Windy City, The Second City, whatever you want to call it, but this was definitely my favorite visit! Probably because of all of the like minded individuals that I was surrounded by while I was here!
ISTE is a time to connect with all of your ed tech colleagues and friends from around the WORLD! While here, I was able to connect with colleagues from Australia, Canada, and all across the United States.
So....here are SOME of my takeaways:
- I am UBER inspired to REALLY learn how to sketch note, like for real this time, by listening and being around Sylvia Duckworth (@sylviaduckworth) and Wanda Terral (@wterral)! Wanda sketched the opening keynote and at the time that I'm typing this, she has over 490 retweets and 966 likes on this ONE post! She was so excited that this post had such a far reach! And it's REALLY a well deserved honor for her! If you know Wanda like I know Wanda, she pours her whole heart into all of her sketches! Congratulations, Wanda!
- There are some new updates coming to Google for Education and I am so excited to dive into them and share them with my team in Atlanta Public Schools! Pretty soon you will be able to keep your students from being distracted during a quiz by locking quizzes in Google Forms. You'll be able to create quizzes directly in your Google Classrooms. You will also be getting some more organization features within Google Classroom. I might be the most excited about that one! The Training Center is getting an update and will be called the Teacher Center. There are a ton more updates coming, so get ready! Read more about them here: https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/education/live-iste-12-google-education-launches-save-time-creativity/
- Microsoft for Education is rocking and rolling with new and updated accessibility features across their apps including but not limited to Sway and One Note! If you have not checked these out, you definitely need to. They bring learning to the levels of all of our students and make reading and fluency so much easier! You are able to make your screens larger, and brighter. There is a narrator built in that can read the text to you. It will highlight the text as it reads. It can break down the syllables so as you are reading, it makes the words more digestible. These tools make sure that all students are able to learn, the way that they need to each and every day!
- In case you have been living under a rock and haven't heard....my AMAZING friends at Flipgrid talked to my AMAZING friends at Microsoft and now FLIPGRID IS FREE FOR ALL EDUCATORS!!!! This is the most AMAZING news ever!!!!! Now everyone gets to take advantage of unlimited grids and not be confined to recording limits, etc! If you're not yet using Flipgrid, let THIS be the year that you dive in! Check it out here: www.flipgrid.com
- zSpace has announced that they are releasing a NEW more portable augmented reality device! They are going to release AR laptops!!! Say what!?!?!? Our district will be the FIRST district in the world to get their hands on them and we are SUPER excited about it! Check out the Forbes article announcing it's release, including thoughts from my executive director, Dr. Aleigha Henderson Rosser here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2018/06/25/the-biggest-ar-company-youve-never-heard-of/#70b4703c282a
- The power of a tweet should NEVER be underestimated! In line with Wanda's AMAZING tweet-feat, I snapped a picture during a presentation by Laura Bradley (@LAMBRADLEY) while she presented about coding at the EdTechTeam booth. It was a quote by Jamie Casap and boy has it traveled! At the time that I'm typing this, it has 221 retweets and 478 likes with a reach of 32,365 impressions! The picture is below! I think that it's the most genius thing that we can do for our students to dive into inquiry (Trevor, see what I did there?) and REALLY work towards solving real world problems THROUGH learning the content.
- I met sooooo many AMAZING people this year! This is going to be a LOT of "I met" so hang on! I met the actual creator of Google Docs! I met Captain Kindness (who you TOTALLY need to follow through her father's Twitter account @BrianRSmithSr). I FINALLY met Claudio Zavala Jr from #singasong! I met a lot of my Innovator #LAX18 peeps! Glad to say that I'll actually go into the experience in a few weeks knowing some people! I met Heather Dowd from EdTechTeam, who I've been working with and Google Hang-outing with for months regarding Applied Digital Skills! She is much taller in person! 😀 I met THE Eric Curts from controlaltachieve.com, and on his birthday I might add! If you haven't checked out his blog, you NEED to! Trust me! Mark Wagner, the CEO of EdTechTeam was amazing! He even autographed a copy of his new book, More Now, for me! I can't wait to dive into it! THE Dee Lanier was just as awesome in person as he is on the internet! There are a TON more people that I met! And of course I took pictures with them all! There is a link to my #ISTE18 photo album at the end of this blog!
- It was TOTALLY inspiring to see so many ed tech people of color at ISTE this year! One of Microsoft's Hack the Classroom keynotes was a teacher from the DC area who looked just like me! She's doing phenomenal things with her elementary students in getting them to read using accessibility tools. Check her out at @meryljgravey ! There were students of color presenting and checking out the exhibit hall! My Our Voice Academy cohort members (new and old) where everywhere! We had an awesome meet up and go to chat with Jennie and her bump! And to top it off, my friend, Ken Shelton (@k_shelton) received the 2018 Digital Equity Excellence Award from the Digital Equity Network! He is sooooo deserving of this honor! He lives, breathes, and eats digital equity for ALL students, EVERY day! I think it's soooo important for us to share these types of success stories with our students of color that need inspiration to continue to dream and know that ALL things are possible!
- It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to do and see EVERYTHING! While I did get lay eyes on a lot of my edtech peeps from Google, Microsoft, EdTechTeam, Our Voice Academy, and my Innovator #LAX18 cohort, scrolling through Twitter, I realize that there are a LOT of people that I didn't get to see and there are some awesome sessions that I didn't get to attend. While scrolling through, I definitely felt the FOMO, but what I've come to realize is that there is value in the time that I spent with those that I did see as well as valuable takeaways from the sessions that I did get to attend. I was EXACTLY where I needed to be and I was with who I needed to be with!
- One of the moments that stuck out to me was at Hack the Classroom and included Toney @herhymeswithme (from the Surface commercials currently airing on TV). I tweeted (of course I did) during his portion of this event. He stated that EVERY student deserves to be heard and none of their voices deserves to be silenced! Students should wander AND wonder! But what REALLY got me was when he said that students are what stands in between what currently is and what COULD BE! Let that sink in....I'll leave you with that!
Regardless if you were in Chicago this week or not, be sure to follow the hashtags, #ISTE18, #ISTE2018, #notatiste, and #notatiste18 to learn all about the amazing things that happened!
Here's a link to my Google Photo Album with all of my #ISTE18 fun!!!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zH5LdNgmX33sZ4QRA
I look forward to ISTE being back in Philadelphia again next year and maybe I'll even run up the infamous ROCKY steps while I'm there!
After flight delays due to rain, we finally made it back home to Atlanta! Chicago was amazing and the learning and networking was phenomenal! Thanks to all that made attending ISTE 18 such an awesome experience! Adios, Chicago!
What was your favorite part about attending ISTE this year? What were your biggest takeaways?
No comments:
Post a Comment