This year was my second ISTE. It was a bit less overwhelming than last year, but ISTE is still is hands down the most intense, all consuming, and exhausting conference I've ever been to. That said, you learn so much and can connect with tons of people. My brain is spinning with ideas still. Here were my highlights from this year:
Equity forum
ISTE sent out an email a while back that I think either went to all members or all registered folks for ISTE 2019 about applying to be a part of an Equity Action Forum. This took place for a few hours on Sunday morning and was facilitated by Jennie Misong Magiera, a panel, and several other co-facilitators. Before the work began in the forum, the panel gave some amazing pieces of advice for equity work. These are quotes and paraphrases of some of what they shared:
Then Jennie outlined our work for the day, we brainstormed with tables about what's inequitable in education, had each group submit their top three, facilitators posted them around the room, we walked around and stood by the one we wanted to commit to, and then met our group and dove into setting meeting dates, talking about our equity issue, and starting to brainstorm on that focused topic. It was an amazing and well planned whirlwind. I had a tough time choosing, but I ultimately decided to continue the work I've started this year about support LGBTQ+ students. (At some point I should also write about what led me to that work...so many things I need to write about...and never enough time...) There's still ground myself and my building need to cover to progress, and I am starting a GSA in my building this coming year.
These are the other lovely folks that chose the same focus topic at the forum of LGBTQ+ inequity issues in education. I am so excited to work with Sabia Prescott, Gene Williams, Matt Hamilton, Kelly Roberts, and Nancy Jo Lambert on this ongoing project.
ISTE Libs Playground
Check out this embedded Wakelet that Linda Dougherty put together with any slide decks/resources that were shared out during the ISTE Librarians Network Playground.
Playgrounds were my favorite format last year, and I was psyched to be a part of the ISTE Librarian Playground this year. I'm going to be honest here. I did not think my sessions would make it through to be a part of it, but they did. While I have presented several times within my state, I had never presented at a conference outside of Indiana. I felt like a small fish in a big pond. But I wanted to try. Why am I telling you this? (I promise I'm not trying to humble brag.) I'm telling you this, because you should totally sign up to share out ideas at a playground or in a session next year! Why not? What's the worst that could happen? As an overthinker who is afraid of failure, if I don't make myself go outside of my comfort zone or take risks, then I stop growing. (For me, that's true in both equity work and education work.) So if you're an ISTE member, I'd definitely find a PLN or multiple PLNs to join and think about entering to be at a playground next year. Not an ISTE member? No worries. There are plenty of ways to share your awesome locally in your school, in local conferences, state conferences, etc. And of course there's Twitter. I used to be afraid to say much of anything on Twitter, and now I don't shut up on Twitter. (I'll have to share that story to sometime. I have ideas but never enough time to write. I've got to find a writing routine!)
I got to talk about an ongoing project of mine this year about supporting LGBTQ+ students and about using two of my fave tech tools, Wakelet and Flipgrid. I will also be taking on a new role within ISTE Lib. I will work on writing up a separate post about that and about these two topics I presented on. In the meantime you can find the slide decks linked earlier in this paragraph.
Flipgrid Live
They shared a lot of updates that are upcoming, and the first one, AR, is live right now! See the images below. After you update the Flipgrid app, if you click on the QR/AR code button on the left side of the Enter a Flip Code Bar, line it up with a QR/AR code (and remember there's now that magic "Print Response QR Codes" button at the top of a grid's responses to do a whole class at once), and boom! The video starts playing over the QR code within the Flipgrid App without anything else needing to open or happen. If a student's code was under a drawing, project, etc. you could see their video AND the project at the same time. So many options!
Other new updates come out Aug. 1 such as:
Constructing the culturally responsive citizen: moving beyond #digcit
I knew as soon as I saw this title, I needed to go to this session. I chose a few sessions led by some of the folks from the Digital Equity PLN of ISTE and got a lot out of all of them. Thank you to the PLN leaders for the work that you do.
In this one Knikole Taylor, Desiree Alexander, and Brian Smith talked about talking more about integrating a culturally responsive focus into work we do with digital citizenship. They had us turn and talk and go through different scenarios. You can see some example scenarios and some of their resources here. Knikole powerfully reminded us, "Even when you're saying nothing, you're saying something." And that sometimes when our silence when we choose not to speak up is louder than our words when we do. They also talked about how this is an obligation that we are responsible to/for our students to help them see. They pointed out that no one is teaching students how to deal with this harmful scenarios when it happens to them or when they see it happening to others. Adults are just telling them to get over it. They asked us to make a #DigCit plan from their template here's mine: products/sites of interest
Things that I'm most interested in that I'm not already using:
Tweet highlights
I try to tweet a lot during ISTE. I was a participant in the #NotatISTE community for two years before my first ISTE last year, so I try to share as much as I can with them. Here are some of my many tweets during ISTE in the embedded Wakelet below.
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