
ISTE is like NETA only bigger and better! Yes, that was what you could hear being said by many Nebraska teachers this June in Denver! ISTE, International Society for Technology in Education, held its international conference in Denver this summer. This year there were more than 17,500 attendees, of which 800 were from outside the US, and
4,000+ were vendors. Can you imagine? That is a lot of people! Then consider the equipment they brought. Most likely, they had a laptop and possibly an iPod or a Smart Phone. That is a remarkable amount of network connections! There were no glitches or problems. It was great experience!
The conference officially started Sunday evening with a keynote address by Jean-François Rischard, the former vice-president of the World Bank and the author of High Noon. He opened everyone’s eyes to the need for global education. Global education is a strong player in 21st Century Skills (http://www.p21.org/). It has less to do with being “green” than being aware of what is going on in the world. What are
the economic conditions of the entire globe? What are the worldly environmental conditions? What are the health conditions of the people of our world? The most powerful recommendation that Jean-Francois had for this enormous auditorium full of educators was to focus on thinking and teaching GLOBALLY in your classrooms. Then the national, state, and local support and concern will naturally occur!
Video conferencing was a major piece of the conference puzzle this year. With today’s technology, video conferencing can be done by any teacher in their classroom! The static distance learning classrooms are quickly becoming a tool of the past with the mobile set-ups taking over as necessary tools for learners and educators of the 21st Century.
Along the same line of global thinking was the ubiquitous presence of social networks! The Blogger’s Cafe was always filled with people who are informally learning and networking during this conference. There were also some “unplugged” sessions happening in the Blogger’s Cafe. These were kind of like side-shows of the big conference and incredibly valuable to those in attendance.
THE most popular sessions at the conference have recently been the Bring-Your-Own-Laptop sessions. These required preregistration and some required a registration fee. I attended two of these sessions, Geo-Tagging and Diigo.
Geo-Tagging is basically adding geographic information to your photos. Tools used in this were GPS devices, iPhoto, Microsoft Pro Photo, Google Picasa and Google Earth. Many of the smart phones and new cameras are adding geographical information to the photos as you take them!
Diigo is an online bookmarking tool with an aspect of social networking. Do you have dozens of bookmarks in your browser at school? Do you sometimes wish you could get to those bookmarks at home or while you are at a conference? Diigo is the tool you need to sign up for! Go to http://diigo.com and register for your new free account. Your new
account will save your bookmarks online so that you can get to them from any machine that is connected to the internet. This also makes it very convenient to share bookmarks with students!
SMART was again a major sponsor of the ISTE conference. There were other new tools that were quickly being talked about. One that isn’t really new in concept but is a fantastic price is the IPEVO document camera for $69.00 (http://www.ipevo.com/Point-2-View-USB-Camera_p_70.html). The other is the Epson BrightLink short-throw interactive projector (http://www.epsonbrightlink.webengager.com/) This projector runs about $1700. There is no need to buy a special whiteboard with this projector. Your only cost is the projector!
I get a lot of teachers that ask me after these conferences, “so, what is the latest and greatest this year?” In the past I could usually answer that in one word or one vendor name. That is education of the past. Kids have grown up in a very visual environment compared to what you and I grew up in! Because of this, teaching them differently is a
necessary adjustment. Working online, social networking, visuals and project-based learning are all ways to do this. The vessels to make these changes are no longer laptops in a one-to-one environment. Our eyes were opened to the fact that our schools are already almost a one-to-one environment with smart phones. Kids are always connected! It is predicted that in less than 5 years, every student in the US will have a smart phone in their hands for use in school. For more educational predictions, check out the Horizon Report (http://www.nmc.org/horizon linked along the right side of the web
page). Cell phones were a huge topic at this year’s conference because they can do almost everything a laptop can do, with some limitations of course, but they are far more accessible! What does this mean for education in the US? Our state? Our ESU schools? Our students?
Today’s students have never had to learn in black and white; their world is animated and colorful. They never have to say good-bye to their classmates because they are always connected though cell phones and social networks. ISTE 2010 brought together the predictions of the Horizon Report and the guidance of the 21st Century Skills. There is no longer one technology tool that will be easily implemented to update instructional skills. There is no longer one new approach to try once a school year to meet requirements. This is new education! Think globally!


