Month: June 2014

ISTE Day 2

My ISTE Day #1 wasn’t really an ISTE day…. spent the morning at the World of Coca-Cola. Definitely a polished, high budget experience – very directed. They used an interesting combo of text labels and short 30-second videos scattered throughout. We then went to the new Center forĀ Civil and Human Rights. Blew me away. Deep look into the Civil Rights movement in the Atlanta area. It was fascinating, moving, disturbing and well-done. While it was quite directed, there was still more free exploring. Well done media, lots of reading.

ISTE Day #2:

  • Our poster session was bright and early at 8:00. I arrived at 7:45 — there were people there waiting! We were out of bookmarks (I brought 60) by 8:10. Tons of people, lots of interest, great questions. We have lots of ideas about what to do next year!! Looking forward to it!
  • Caught the tail end of a couple of sessions.
  • Exhibit hall: oddly, had a great time in the exhibit hall. Connected with a few vendors I’d talked with in the last year about digital books. I will follow up with one of them – to keep our options open.
  • Talked with a couple of cool sites/ tools: knewton.com and tackk.com. Tackk.com is a free basic webpage (single page) builder. I can totally see using this in sessions with teachers!
  • Went to a last session about digital content. Very interesting. Confirmed what we knew – teachers want something beyond a pdf. Comments include: extra multimedia, annotation, ability to add content, social sharing.
  • EdTechWomen dinner — awesome! Met a number of interesting and accomplished women: principals, Microsoft employees, business women, teachers. Great conversation and connections. Thanks for the advice, @teachwatts. Will let you know when the book is done!
  • And in true ISTE fashion, I had a great conversation with someone in the hotel elevator that we continued in the lobby. Tip about a digital storytelling session that I missed, but has resources. And we did some great AP History bashing – one of my favorite things! šŸ™‚

Iste is really about the people.

More Cs!

2 Layers of Learning and Teaching with Technology | IGNITEducation.

Great post with a new framework for thinking about teaching and technology. To summarize: Three Cs for students, Three for Teachers.

Student: Collect, Create and Contribute

Teachers: Curate, Conduct and Connect

(We are, of course, familiar with the other Cs – collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication. In my work, we add content and context!)

From a personal point of view, I definitely don’t see this happening in my daughter’s school. It’s more likeĀ memorize, regurgitateĀ and fill in a bubble.

Professionally, I can see keepingĀ this framework in mind as a model for building content for schools. How do we make content available that students can collect?Ā thatĀ teachersĀ canĀ curateĀ (although we do the initialĀ curationĀ forĀ them)? How do we make it availableĀ that it can be repurposedĀ into various types of projects?

How can we finance the time it takes to curate the content into something manageable for teachers or students? How do we finance the tech infrastructure that is necessary to deliver this content in a manner that is usable? How do we find tools that all schools/students can work with? In this era of ever-shifting platforms, tools and approaches, it’s impossible to land on one solution that fits every need.