ISTE Sessions

I discovered at last year's ISTE (or NECC) that the sessions were not the best part for me. I did attend some but was ofter disappointed. So this year I left myself plenty of time for conversations and other fun.

The best session I attended, by far, was Let's Do It: Planning for Technology in the Primary Classroom by Kathy Cassidy, Maria Knee, and Amanda Marinnan. These three educators have been guides for me since I moved to first grade. (They have also been wonderfully kind and generous.) They talked about what they do in their classrooms and why. You can get the basic idea from their wiki.

There were some good poster sessions for K-2 or K-5 but there were not a lot of options. I don't know if there are not too many proposals for sessions at these levels or if ISTE is not accepting them. However, the demand is there. Every session I attended was packed.

Two sessions were fine but very focused on tools/websites. I would guess that 95% of the audience was thrilled with this. Teachers, especially in elementary schools, are desperate for ways to get their students involved with technology. I was a bit disappointed because I was hoping for more depth. There were plenty of tools/websites shared that I will use. However, I would like more information on why to use certain things and what it will do for my students.

I hope to get some of my thoughts from the best parts of the conference, the conversations, together soon.

(For those interested, this wiki has an extensive list of websites for use with primary kids.)

ISTE 2010 Presentation

We (myself and two other fabulous teachers from my school) are presenting at ISTE in about 8 hours. We are discussing the real world application of web 2.0 tools in K-5 classrooms. We have a delicious site with links to the examples we are sharing.

I'm really excited about it, but it also signals the end of the fun. We're heading home early tomorrow afternoon.

I miss my daughters and my husband greatly. Still, I'll be sad to leave. Not sad to go home, but sad to leave ISTE. That may not sound like it makes sense, but it is perfectly clear to me.

This has been five days of jam packed fun, thinking, and some chaos. Hopefully I will manage to make some time to seriously reflect and post some thoughts.