ISTE 2015 - A Reflection

I attend ISTE this year for the first time in about 12 years and it has really changed. The Expo floor was amazing and there were definitely way more people. During the opening keynote, I believe that it was stated that there were 20,000 in attendance.

So I was asked, by an ed tech friend who was unable to attend, what was the big buzz at the conference. I believe that the big push is for visual literacy. What is visual literacy you ask? It is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Have you noticed the explosion in infographics and other images on the Net? It's the reason Instagram is so popular! A picture is worth a thousand words. Meaning we can convey complex ideas through a single image. In order to navigate the Net kids will need these skills to be able to read and create in a visually rich media. We need to teach these skills. Making good visuals and pairing it with reliable information will be so important to our students in the future. 

What the Journey to Success Really Looks Like - Carl Hooker

I attended quite a few sessions. Seems like I was always running somewhere. I don't know how you can work for a school district, and justify going to a conference if you don't attend at least some sessions. 

They are in no particular order. Opening Keynote: Soledad O'Brien; Digital Parenting: Carl Hooker; ISTE Ignites Round 3; The Changing Role of the Cheif Technology Officer: Kevin Honeycutt, Brad Waid, Susan Beardan, Alice Keeler, Matthew Miller, David Maline; 1 in 3 Session: Round 3; GripCase SAMR Session: Shannon Soger; Successful Parent/Educator Partnership in the Inclusive Classroom: Luis Perez, Shannon Soger, Christine Southard, Jack Gallagher: iPad: An Out of the Box Look: Tim and Kathy Yenca; Developing an Innovator's Mindset: George Couros: Closing Keynote: Josh Stumpenhorst. 

from George Couros's Session

I presented at the conference. It was a phenomenal experience. My session was called Tech Coach Therapy. The session was a Birds of a Feather. Basically, this a round table discussion format. I prepared a very short presentation about the way I feel about the power of coaching, how I coach teachers and the resources that I use to support my craft. I prepared a Google Slide presentation, but I'm not sure that too many of my 23 attendees used it. Instead they just talked to each other about their jobs. I was able to give the attendees a framework to support meaningful conversation around their job titles. That doesn't always happen when you are sitting in the Blogger's Cafe at ISTE. There is so much power in telling your story. People want to connect by their similarities and even their differences. This group was able to learn what works and what doesn't in other districts, and make connections with other educators that will support them in their mission. They can continue to connect through social media or email to share and grow. I heard and participated in discussion in all the groups. The talk was very powerful, very productive for all of them.  I was shocked when one group stayed about ten minutes past the sessions end time, especially since it was the last session on Monday afternoon. Sometimes we, as coaches, are like the therapists in a school. Even real therapists need therapists. 

The other lens in which I viewed ISTE was through that of someone who has planned and hosted an ed tech conference, ie iEngage-Berwyn. After all, ISTE is the grand daddy of them all. They do it right. I found myself looking at traffic patterns, floor layouts, signage, maps, all the small details that make a conference user friendly. I made a few notes to share with the iLead team. 

The fabulous Jordan Garrett working the Swivl booth

One final note - the social events in the evening are another great way to connect with those that you can learn from all year long! I met a lot of my #edurockstar heroes too. I wish I could follow all of the great people that I met at ISTE, but I'm in Twitter Jail. So if you have a Twitter account and you are not following me PLEASE do so, @rmbtowner_tech or click on the follow link at the right. 

Drew Minock, Brad Waid, George Couros, Kevin Honeycutt

iEngage-Berwyn...We did it!

Hosting a two day Educational Technology Conference is a lot of work! We spent 10 months planning for it and it seems like it was here and gone in the blink of an eye. I was on the sponsorship and PR/social media committee for the planning team, dubbed iLead. Here we are at our kickoff which took place at one of our institute days.

There were many committees and we learned a lot along the way. On my committee we solicited sponsors. Then we got the word out about the conference. It is important to keep really good notes, admit when you are wrong, and reflect after the experience about what went well and what did not. I'm not going to air all of that here.

Friday, May 8th
On Friday morning we arrived early. There was nothing left to do except let the people show up. The LaVergne Gym looked fabulous and we were ready to go. We started with an overview of what makes +South Berwyn 100 special. The site visit welcome was given by +Shannon Soger. She talked about our state report card statistics and the five categories that make us an Apple Distinguished Program; visionary leadership, innovative teaching and learning, flexible learning environment, compelling evidence of success and ongoing professional development. She did a fabulous job! Next we were on our way to start the first of two site visits for the day. I was assigned to Emerson School. I taught in that building for 17 years, so I was glad to showcase it. The visitors were able to go to different classrooms and see 1:1 computing in action. One of the visitors remarked after seeing the first grade bilingual teacher, "Let's stay here. I could watch her teach all day." It was so great to hear that. 

Site visitor talking about 1:1 with one of our 1st graders

We traveled back to LaVernge by bus to see the lunch time keynote speaker +Carl Hooker of Hooked on Innovation (read his blog post about the conference here). His keynote was thought provoking, interactive, and funny. Carl also brought with him the App Mazing Race - iEngage-Berwyn. It was a big hit! 

Activity during Hooker's keynote

Waid & Hooker

In the afternoon we went back for another site visit with a different group to see more teaching and learning in action. As our superintendent +Stan Fields always says the devices are not the magic of our district - it is the people; the teachers, the support staff, the secretaries, the custodians, the bus drivers. It is a true group effort. The other thing that makes our district different is that we are not afraid to change, to innovate. We didn't just bring in computers and iPads for everyone. We changed almost everything! At the same time as adopting 1:1 we started full day kindergarten, adopted the co-teaching model, purchased furniture for flexible learning environments, changed the food served in our lunchrooms, made our schools safer, adopted standards based grading, dual language, and so on. 

Afternoon site visitors to Emerson School

To finish the afternoon we had a debriefing panel of "experts" from our district. It included (left to right) +Stan Fields superintendent, +Jeremy Majeski building principal, +Jim Mukite technician, +Shannon Soger director of 1:1 program, +Jen Lehotsky middle school teacher, +Jordan Garrett instructional coach and +Christina Betz elementary teacher. Here visitors were able to ask questions and get detailed answers about what they saw during their visits. 

Brad Waid demonstrating Color Alive

On Friday night we went to the Carleton Hotel in Oak Park for the social event associated with the conference. +Brad Waid decided early on in the planning that a good social event was a must. We worked with myOn and +DAQRI Education to plan the event. Students, their families and conference attendees were invited. There was a viewing party for videos created using myOn books. myOn is an interactive digital library from Capstone Publishers that we use in our district. The student and class videos were phenomenal. Click on the myOn link above to see the winners. My favorite was Noor's video! Then we had an adults only party featuring Big Data, a band made up of Tech Directors from around the state of Illinois, and +DAQRI Education. +Brad Waid demonstrated the augmented reality magic of Crayola Color Alive. It combines just the right amount of hands on and tech for our students. It's the simplicity of a coloring page with the magic of DAQRI's 4D app. No social event these days is complete with out a photo booth. We used our Double Robot and the Simple Booth app. A good time was had by all. 

Anne Truger, Jordan Garrett,
Kevin Honeycutt, Brad Waid

Dancing to Big Data

An aside - While we were waiting for the festivities to begin we found ourselves in the bar attached to the hotel, Poor Phil's. It was here that the iCoach team had their first team meeting in Spring 2012. I knew at that moment that the entire event was going to be a success. 

Saturday, May 9th
We slept quickly and arrived at Heritage Middle School on Saturday, to do the conference portion of the event. There were poster sessions put on by the students and teachers. These were summations of successful tech projects from the school year. They were outstanding! John Antonetti gave the opening keynote. He talked about student engagement. He was wonderful!

Emily & John Antonetti

Student poster session

After the Keynote it was time for the concurrent sessions. There was time for two in the morning. +Jordan Garrett and I presented our Bringing PLCs to Life with Google + . There were many great sessions. You can find the presenters' slides and picture archive in the iEngage Google + Community. Next it was time for lunch and the leadership panel.

Dr Leonard, Mr Polyak, Dr Hutton, Dr Voltz

One more session in the afternoon, and then the closing keynote by +Kevin Honeycutt. Kevin's keynote was exceptional. He covered so many points. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak you should make it happen. 

Kevin Honeycutt with Shannon Soger is the background

The entire two day period I was tweeting and posting to Instagram. I was also monitoring the hashtag #iEngagebwyn for activity for our social media contests. We had plenty of great prizes to give away thanks to our generous sponsors. Here is a link to the Storify for Friday and for Saturday. We generated so much traffic on Twitter that we were a trending topic for Chicagoland on Friday!!! These Storifys give you a very good picture of both days. There are over 1,000 Tweets and Instragram posts from both days!

Shannon - Thanks for Dreaming Big!

My 10 Best Skills

I have been asked by my supervisor to list my 10 best work related skills. I've thought about this for a couple of weeks now. This is a very hard exercise for me because I just do what I do and I don't really reflect on my strengths very often. But I'm very hard on myself when it comes to my weaknesses.
I am not going to number these because they are in no particular order.

*Teaching myself new initiatives and applications

*Producing (school district accts & personal accts) and consuming (personal accts) information for/from social media and my PLN

*I am able to tell the Kind Truth (Lencioni)

*Configuring iPads from box to classroom on our local network, including buying apps and using a 3rd party management tool for distributing apps.

*Working with reluctant adopters and those stuck on one of the lower levels of the SAMR model in order to move them Above the Line.

*Presenting professional development sessions for my district

*Troubleshooting computer and network issues

*I'm the fun one!

*Most things Google and being the Google admin for the district

*I'm flexible and tolerant of all viewpoints

*Creating tip sheets and screencast tutorials to support students, teachers and staff

I know, that's 11! I guess I have more skills than I thought! Who knew?!

This exercise was inspired by Kevin Honeycutt and his video Launch Me Tips From The Road.