The Obligatory ISTE Conference Review

• I am thankful that I made an intentional effort to engage in more conversations with colleagues in Lutheran education during this conference. Thanks to @dgrice, @mbusch, @jsommermeyer, @kathymaske, and others for taking time to chat. It is great to feel the support of others in Lutheran schools when so often each of us feel like we are on our own education islands.
• Had the opportunity to attend a couple sessions on the educational use of Moodle, especially Deeper Learning with Web 2.0: Increasing the Power of Online Courses. As an online instructor I found the insights from the presenters pertinent and timely and was introduced to new online resources that have value for me. In addition, the session further cemented my belief that Lutheran schools of excellence need to prepare students for THEIR futures by providing opportunities for online learning at the grade school level, given the fact that the number of secondary and collegiate course offerings continue to expand exponentially. Moodle is an excellent tool for schools who want to explore this option.
• I learned a lot about the growing trend of using mobile devices in the classroom. I especially appreciated a Birds-of-a-Feather session on iPhone and iPod apps for use in education. This session directed me to iEar, a site devoted to reviewing iPod and iPhone apps from instructional and educational perspective. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to check out the http://www.iear.org/iEar site.
• I spent far less time in the exhibit hall than in my previous conference experience. I came away with far less junk and during the time I did spend in the hall I had some excellent conversations with vendors about products I targeted in advance. The vendor time was a success since I was able to keep my discipline about only approaching those companies who had a distinct product or service that could fill a need for me and my school.
• As a history teacher as well as an educational technologist, I very much appreciated the session on Teaching with Primary Sources from the Library of Congress. What is not amazing to me is how much content has been digitized for the Library of Congress site, but rather how many excellent resources I have missed through the many times I have searched that site. I am even better prepared than ever before to create dynamic learning activities for my history classes.
• I have lived in Colorado nearly a decade and yet had never set foot into the Colorado Convention Center. What a fantastic conference facility we have in Denver! I was very impressed.
• Another impressive feat by the conference committee was providing robust wireless access to over 17,500 attendees at an educational technology conference. There was only one location I visited throughout the entire conference where service was sporadic. Kudos to all who worked on this project!

No doubt that you will read about additional new resources and learning in future posts. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment to this post about any topic related to the conference.

I close with a picture of the iconic blue bear outside of the Colorado Convention Center. Enjoy!