I’ve got notes from discussions and lectures I attended at ISTE, but not the energy to put them into a somewhat informative post. I plan on making future posts from my notes. So if you follow this, please stay tuned.
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.
Today was our first day at ISTE wandering around the Colorado Convention Center. I am traveling with several other members from our school district: Chris Ludwig, High School Science Teacher, Nancy Westfall, Technical Support Coach and Carol Noll, Superintendent. There are so many events over the course of the next couple of days to choose from, it is very difficult to decide where to spend your time.
The opening kickoff was an entertaining event with Mario Armstrong giving a fun and lighthearted demonstration of what its like to be a new teacher with a great idea using technology. While some were scoffing at his success in getting his pretend technology project up and running, I have found that it is very much the case if you are committed and present a clear and good case for your project. The message in the drama was valuable – he didn’t give up, he didn’t get discouraged and he kept on going despite being shot down several times from various groups.
What I took away from that kickoff was a reinforcement of my belief that it is important to “know your stuff” when you want to do something totally different and change an old method of performing some task. It’s important to have a clear definition of what exactly you want to do, why you want to do it, and even some examples of others that have done it and had success. Most of the time, leadership is reasonable and will be willing to invest (emotionally or financially) in a project that looks like it has the potential for success. Without sounding too much like a motivational speaker, you have to believe in your project and be excited about it.
One thing I found across so many of my experiences is that people spend a great amount of time working against the system, trying to fight it at every turn and change it, sometimes just for the sake of change. What I have found as a more effective approach is to learn the system inside and out, find out how to use it, and go from there using the system that is already in place. So much energy is spent fighting processes, policies and procedures that are entrenched and extremely resistant to change. Some of these are not only resistant to change, but fortified against it. To me, this is wasted energy and can be refocused and use the momentum of the system against itself.
On the flip side of that, just because something is new and exciting doesn’t mean that it is better by default. Sometimes tried and true methods are better. They may be old and aged and designed by our grandparents, but it may be only a slight augmentation or adjustment is needed to bring them up to date. I have encountered people that are pushing for change just for the sake of change. Out of change can come amazing and innovative ideas and processes, but that is not always the case. While I love changing ideas and moving forward, sometimes these things just need to be left as is and our energies focused on something that will benefit more from change.
Speaking of old methods, let’s talk about the keynote with Jean François Rischard. I am sure that somewhere in all of those Power Point slides was a message. However, I missed it because it was simply not at all engaging. I was sitting at the Blogger area and I enjoyed the heckling from them much more than I enjoyed the presentation. It was a strange thing to be sitting in a group of innovators and people who are working in the system, looking for ways to bring it into the 21st century, while the keynote speaker was droning on with an incomprehensible Power Point presentation. It was an interesting irony, to have the keynote speaker at a conference that seems to showcase innovation and new technology tuned out because it was, well I’ll just say it, a boring presentation.
There are so many lessons that can be learned from that keynote presentation, it’s difficult to even find a place to start. As I’ve said before, I’m not an educator by trade, but watching that was like watching an investor presentation, complete with graphs and flow charts and inappropriate clip art. There was a great sense of disappointment (if that’s the right word) in the tweets about having the conference open on such an ironic note. I fully expected someone to stop it in the middle and say, “just kidding, this is the exact wrong way to give a presentation,” and then the real keynote would begin.
I know, at least in the group I was sitting with, the keynote was not well received. We will see what the mood is tomorrow, but from here they can only go up. Mr. Rischard has my sympathies if he is a Twitter user and sees the tweets about his carefully prepared presentation. I have a hunch, however, that he does not participate in the social web.