First Day at ISTE
The first official day at ISTE was somewhat overwhelming. We started our day with a tour that utilized QR codes to learn more about the art in downtown Denver. We had two choices to choose from – modern art or western art. We chose the modern art route and learned a little about the art around the convention center and downtown Denver. This sounds like a great project and a neat way to explore and learn about your environment. It was, but there’s a catch. Not everyone has a phone capable of reading QR bar codes, downloading media via their phone and then posting a YouTube video about the process. This would be an excellent project in a school that had access to this technology, but not so much for everyone else. This may sound obvious, but for struggling school districts, it’s an impossible hurdle.
Public school is not exactly rolling in the dough, let alone has enough disposable income to invest in class sets of camera and data plan enabled smart phones. I barely have the disposable income for my own one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about this tour, in fact it was very cool. However, I don’t see a lot of relevance in my area. Others may have the ability to take it and run with it, and I hope that they do.
After our morning excursion, we wandered around the vendor area for a while and explored there. We then enjoyed a great lunch and conversation with Patrick Benko from Apple – one of the best sales/support vendor I have ever encountered. We stayed out a little too long, walked a little too far, and I missed one of the sessions I was supposed to attend. Couple that with the fact that I was absolutely sure it was on Tuesday, and, well, there you go.
Our afternoon was spent mostly in the vendor exhibition area. We saw lots of products that we had only seen on web pages or in slick full-color pages. I also got to see, in person, some of the people that fill up my inbox with the solution to the ills of education. I saw people I had hung up on repeatedly, when they won’t take no for an answer. I saw very few interesting items, which was a little disappointing, but not totally unexpected.
What made me smile all day was the Microsoft exhibit for Worldwide Telescope. Worldwide Telescope is an amazing tool, and I have recommended it in the past. The funny part was the things you had to do to experience the portable planetarium they had constructed. I will try to get some video tomorrow and post it, because there just aren’t the right words to describe it. If you visited it, you know what I mean. To sum up, it is an inflatable device, that has to shield the light from outside. So, as it was so visually depicted to me by my colleague Chris Ludwig – picture the part in Ace Venture II when he is exiting the mechanical rhino (or whatever it is) and you’ll have a good visual. Priceless.
I then enjoyed the evening over dinner with our group talking about a variety of topics from education technology to mosquitoes. I know one of the perks to coming to a conference like this is to meet others and network, but it’s also important to discuss what you’ve learned and how it relates to your environment. It was a great evening and I’m excited for tomorrow.