Month: June 2015

ISTE continues to be an overwhelming and wonderful experience. I have been to several sessions that were just packed with information. One of the sessions that was absolutely packed with learning focused on using Google as an assessment tool. The session was called: Authentic Publishing: Add-Ons and Scripts Case Studies by John Calvert. (You can check out his site at http://edtechtofu.blogspot.com.) This was a wonderful session that presented some strategies for using Google Forms to have students write Tweets that demonstrate their reflection on the lesson of the day. The forms are then moderated by the teacher. Once the teacher moderates the Tweet, it is automatically posted to Twitter. By encouraging the parents to follow the Twitter account, parents now have a discussion starter when the kids get home. The session also presented a way to create a timeline from Google forms. The timelines look wonderful. There are a couple of options for creating the Timeline: students can create them individually, students can create them as a group, or the teacher can create them. I’ll need to dig into the specifics to truly understand the process and each of the tools used. I’m looking forward to it. 

I’m currently at ISTE 2015. I was lucky enough to bring a group of people – there are five of us in total. For the rest of the group, this is their first ISTE experience. ISTE is an overwhelming but content rich conference. The entire day is spent either walking to a session or soaking up wonderful information. 

The first session that I tried to attend (notice the tried) was closed by the time that I got there. I had hoped to attend a session on Blended Learning, but, apparently, so did a whole lot of other people. I was able to find another session, which was filled with some good stuff.  This is probably pretty indicative of how the conference will go.