Day 1 at ISTE
Is that Eric Curts? A tall, slender gentlemen who looked eerily like the Twitter profile picture of Eric Curts, walked purposefully past me on the 3rd floor of the McCormick Place West building in Chicago, IL. He is the author of the popular Control Alt Achieve blog and obviously a presenter at ISTE. I quickly opened the ISTE app on my iPhone to check the topic and location of his presentation. He was my only #edtech celebrity sighting from the first day of my first ever ISTE Conference.
As much as I wanted to see Mr. Curts’ session, I really wanted to learn more about building a makerspace since I have some robots, robotics kits, Keva Planks, and other items to organize in some way to help my middle school students grow their STEAM skills. After hanging out on the main floor, I went to check out the room super early just so I didn’t miss my first session and I’m glad that I did. I found a seat at a round table with a few other folks and struck up a conversation. The room was full with a line out the door 30-minutes before the start of the session. Little did I know at the time, this would be a recurring theme of my first day at ISTE. Jessica Wenke (@Jessica_Wenke) and her crew gave me some good ideas and questions to answer while constructing a makerspace. I’m excited to collaborate with my new library media specialist to answer those questions. I learned to start small and focus on a few standards at a time. I realized that my rather naive plan of introducing the makerspace tools to the students along with a sample lesson or two to get them started was clearly insufficient. Students will need more structure and direction. They’ll also need a larger audience for their creations. How can I share their work with the whole school or the community? Lots to consider and think about.
Onto my second session which covered the use of technology to facilitate a Socratic Seminar. Backchannel tools, annotation tools, and discussion templates sourced from Mari Venturino (@MSVenturino) were very helpful. I’ve always liked Socratic Seminars because I believe students benefit greatly from engaging in organized, cordial discussions around an interesting topic. Students learn a lot about listening to alternate opinions and carefully forming sentences to express their opinions and ideas in a respectful way. The students in the outer circle can use a backchannel to participate in the discussion such as backchannelchat.com or Verso. Presenter Diana Albanez (@DianaAlbanez) had the session participants read and annotate an article using the Kami Chrome Extension and then conduct a Socratic Seminar with a backchannel. Though I had to leave the session a little early to get in line for another session, I got enough info to use these tools and strategies with my colleagues.
The third session I wanted to attend was about building relationships with teachers to support better technology integration. The line from the door to the session seemed to span half a football field. But when everyone finally started to file in, I was surprised to be getting so close to the door. Unfortunately, I was about 30 people too late. The large red doors closed up and my fellow line-mates and I dispersed dejectedly. I turned around to walk back to the opposite end of the floor to my alternate session. I was hungry, so on the way to the session, I had to buy a muffin and chocolate chip cookie for $8! So here are some rules I learned pretty quickly in the first 2 hours of ISTE.
ISTE Rule #1: Get to your session EARLY!
ISTE Rule #2: Always have a backup session.
ISTE Rule #3: Bring your own snacks.
I got to the line for my backup session at about 1:00pm even though the session started at 2:30pm. Guaranteed to get into this one, I sat down and explored the resources from previous sessions and did some school work — don’t tell anyone! Luckily, I was able to get into the room before my session to see the tail end of the Adobe Spark session after some people left early leaving some open seats.
My third session was about empowering students through goal setting and reflection. I think we all know how important goal setting and reflection are for student empowerment and growth, but it’s also the first thing that gets cut during a lesson. When time is running out and the teacher has to make a choice to either complete the lesson activity or stop the students to reflect, the reflection gets cut. When time is running out in a marking period to cover the curriculum per the pacing guide, the review and refinement of goals gets cut. But the research clearly states that goal setting and reflection, when done right, can be powerful ways for students to build agency, self-regulation skills, and ownership of their learning. Frankly, we MUST take it more seriously by making the time for it in class.
Presenters Rupa Gupta (@rupa_c_g) and Eric Bjornstad (@E_D_Bjornstad) gave some great examples of good (and bad) reflections as well as resources on how to introduce reflection practices to students. She readily admitted that the road to meaningful, effective student reflection is slow and arduous, but it is definitely worth it. Not only does good reflection empower students, but it also raises their achievement and self-efficacy. They feel more in control of the learning process rather than just a vessel or appeaser for their teacher’s idea of quality work. Students learn to hold themselves to a higher standard in order to meet the goals that they set out for themselves. I think we would all like to see students of all ages show more personal accountability in the classroom and in their lives as a whole. And like anything else, this takes deliberate, intentional practice. I will definitely be talking to my colleagues about how to provide meaningful opportunities for student goal setting and reflection next year.
Thank you to all the wonderful presenters that I got to see today. That was all for day 1 of ISTE. Can’t wait for day 2. Exhibit Hall, here I come!
All posts in this ISTE series
Day 1 at ISTE
Day 2 at ISTE
Day 3 at ISTE
Day 4 at ISTE
Top 5 Lessons Learned from Attending ISTE 2018