TIES is off to a great start! As usual, I’m both exhausted and invigorated by being at an edtech conference. Here’s a brief summary of what I learned today:

Connecting

I fully intended to go to a session right off the bat, but ran into my co-presenter for tomorrow’s poster session. We had a great conversation about the session and about other ways of delivering content using iTunesU. This is what TIES is about – the connecting and sharing ideas.

I also connected with a few other folks that I’ve been meaning to contact. It’s always easier to send that email after seeing them at TIES. I missed a few too, so hope to connect with them tomorrow.

Inspiration

The keynotes are usually more inspiring that full of new things. This was a bit of both. Marc Prensky introduced his new idea, “Future-cation” as opposed to “Past-ication.” He talked about the need to teach to the future – not the past. “While we need to honor the past, we do not need to repeat it.” Even though I am a historian, I agree! We need to learn about  the past, but we do not need to learn as if it were the past. We need to learn for the future. Prensky argues that content areas (math, science, English, etc., even social studies!) aren’t necessary if we teach “verbs.” (Details on this were in a later session I wasn’t able to attend, sadly.) I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from Marc about this.

Research

I talked to a few vendors about the project I have at work. Seems we’re still seeing the same issues in delivering digital content that is beyond a pdf…..  I did see a booth about an interesting site, facts4me.com, that was built by a couple of early elementary teachers who were frustrated that they couldn’t find safe, appropriate, leveled content online. They built curated content with images and information about a number of subjects. I was intrigued because it’s exactly what we’ve been hearing from teachers!\

Confirming

My favorite session today was by Scott Barry Kaufman talking about redefining how we measure intelligence. As he talked, I had a feeling I’d heard some of it before… turns out I had seen an article about his book and had blogged about it. Must read his book!

Overwhelming

One session today went through 50 websites to try! I wrote down a few that I’ll test, including Google Tour Builder, a couple of free image sources.