How To Prepare For ISTE and This Year's Experience

6/23/2017

To an EdTech, the ISTE conference is the biggest and best there is. The annual conference serves as a place for exploring and exchanging ideas about education technology with educators from around the world. Each year the venue changes; this year being hosted in San Antonio. I can't remember my first time going to ISTE, but it has been quite a few years. There has been a progression to the flow to how I approached ISTE as a participant, leader, and presenter.

A Preview

This year is a real highlight for me personally. I have the great pleasure of working with some amazing staff here at Omaha Public Schools. Over the course of the last 3-4 years, we have been in constant transformation. One of the great outcomes of this transformation has been about telling our story. Books like BrandED, Learning Transformed, and Innovator's Mindset tell much of the importance of storytelling and it's impact now in our current educational climate. Especially today in public education, if you aren't telling your story, someone else will.

As you can see above, we are very present at ISTE this year. OPS has incredible talent and we are sharing many of our ideas at ISTE. That is one thing I love about education, we share freely among one another. We are synced on our purpose, and that purpose is what's best for students. Preparing students for what the future brings, that is part of the promise of great education. ISTE does a great job of showing the best practices of integrating technology and aligning them to sound standards that are common language for teachers.

As of this morning, there are even more presentations we are a part of that aren't listed above. For me, this is a time of celebrating the year end and reflecting on what is needed moving forward. Much of our efforts have been in collaboration with Microsoft. This year we are sharing our work with them around Microsoft Teams with Classroom and PLC integration.

#HackTheClassroom

Hack the Classroom is an exciting, online, live event designed to show you what’s possible and ignite new ideas. Last year one of my colleagues and long time friend Dyane Smokorowski spoke at #HackTheClassroom on Skype and it's effectiveness in bringing experiences outside of traditional boundaries to students. This year, Omaha Public Schools gets to share our collaboration with them around Teams. Eileen Heller and Kelly Means will participate with me in a Q & A session around Teams.

You can register for #HackTheClassroom by visiting here:

Microsoft Hack the Classroom Registration - Microsoft Education

Sign up for this free digital event designed to give educators insight into the latest trends in education.

#CDELive

The Center for Digital Education is a great resource for districts of any size across the nation. Over the course of the last three years, Omaha Public Schools have used multiple resources from within the Center to assist in our transformation. The Center has many sessions outlined above and one that I would like to highlight since I will be participating in:
Digital Districts: A National Perspective
10:00 – 11:00am
Convention Center - Room 220

#FutureReady

As technology changes, society has changed with it. Social media and technology together are making a lasting impact on our youth. Districts must respond to these changes with thoughtful planning to align necessary technologies with instructional goals to support teaching and learning. The Future Ready Framework provides great resources to do just that. If you would like more information, go to Tom Murray's session at ISTE, it will be a great one:

What does it take to become Future Ready?
Tuesday, June 27, 2:45–3:45 pm
Room 212
https://conference.iste.org/2017/program/search/detail_session.php?id=108371337

Some Pointers...

First, don't try to consume too much. Keep it simple. Take 3 important initiatives or ideas back to your district. Second, take notes. If you are a leader, incorporate a plan for your team to collaborate in something like OneNote. As a team, tackle the exhibit hall strategically. Otherwise, you will end up spending too much time there and not enough in sesssions. Below are examples our our OneNote collaboration in events like ISTE.