International Society for Technology in Education

ISTE

2016-Denver

ISTE Ignite

"Wouldn't you love it when your students are so engaged that they climb on the table so they don't miss out? The boy with the drone, that's what I call a curious mind in action." With those few sentences, I opened up my ISTE Ignite speech.

ISTE really brought me out of my comfort zone, I was given the chance to speak in front of a large crowd (about a thousand) about Super Saturday. A story about how parents can really make a change in the experiences of children's learning experience. This is my first public speaking in front of such a big audience. I practiced rigorously for four weeks. Tweaking my speech more times than I can count. Years of Toastmaster's, don't fail me now.
The presentation is on Tuesday of the ISTE conference. At 2 pm I attended the practice session, I was hyped and ready for this. Okay. Breathe. Relax. Drink hot tea. And then the show time.
My happiness swelled when I heard the applause of the audience at the end of my speech. It was truly an amazing feeling. It got even better when I checked my Twitter and the amount of followers I had accumulated in just fifteen minutes. Go check it out!

Sketchnote from Carrie Baughcum @HeckAwesome

Makerspace Playground

The next amazing opportunity is when I was given a slot in the Makerspace Playground to show the MVPs / prototypes of the hands-on learning on science. This was a half hour in the 'playground' to show the teachers and technology coordinators about the products and let them play with it.  I received quite a number of interests from the audiences, as you can see in the picture.  Just browsing the playground shows how much technology can be used to teach things like science. Look how far we've come as a human race.

STEM Campfire

I visited the STEM Campfire after my ISTE Ignite session, tired but curious about the session. It is an open conversation about STEM topics. It is one of those sessions for the hardcore who want to stay after the main program is over. I'm glad I decided to stay. One of the attendees made a comment about my Ignite session, unbeknownst to her that the speaker was there.  That really made my day, to learn my talk inspired others. It was a brand new sensation, a great one.

The rest of this blog would be documentation and my takeaway from the sessions at  ISTE 2016.

Keynote Speaker: Michio Kaku

One of the memorable presentation is from Dr Michio Kaku in the opening keynote speech. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist and author. He said "In order to prepare our students for the careers of the future, we need to stress concepts and principals, rather than the drudgery of memorization".

Some other takeaways from the speech: 

• The computer will eventually disappear and the information will therefore be everywhere and nowhere. 

• Music was the first industry to be digitized. The future will be healthcare and education.

• Bouncing off from point one, information will be everywhere and nowhere.

• Educators need to stress concepts and principles, rather than trivial facts revolving around memorization. The idea of mentorship therefore become even more important.

• steer students towards the jobs of the future.

• Jobs of the future will require imagination, innovation, creativity, since robots are just adding machines. Jobs will require more science in the future.

Technology and Assessments

Many tools available today to help with assessments. There are two sessions that I attended and I want to summarize the tools that I learned here. And this is definitely not an exhaustive list, as new tools kept coming out. 

Kahoot, a collection of questions on specific topics.  Many topics available on the site.
Quizziz , similar to Kahoot, except Quizziz is player-paced. Good for students who doesn't perform well with time pressure.
Socratic, another assessment tool.
Seesaw, a digital portfolio to capture students learning.
GoFormative, formative assessments tool.
Padlet, a collaboration tool on an online sheet of paper.
ThemeSpark by EdCourage, which is a standard based rubrics creator;

This presentation from Carol Therell and Jeff Rhodus gave a pretty good idea on how to use some of the tools.  And this list from Andrew Miller gave the bigger list of the tools out there (at the moment).

The following are different kind of tools that can be used in school, some are interactive and some are media related tools.

Aurasma, which is owned by HP and is a Virtual Reality development tool;
Educreations, which record lessons from anywhere so you can teach and involve interactive whiteboards and screencasting;
Thinglink, which is an interactive media platform that creates links in photos or videos;

Holography by Diana Bidulescu

One of the session that is quite memorable is the presentation by Diana Bidulescu.  She spoke about Augmented Reality, Holography, 3D and 4d and showed some simple but impressive example, especially on Holography. Holography technology apparently is no longer difficult to produce. (Now I can recreate  Prince Leia asking help from Obi Kenobi.) It's just a matter of making the video and run it through software processing, like Holapex, Video Hologram, PowerDirector, Holus or Holho.

Some interesting references that Diana mentioned.

• Shuhel Mayashita and the origami based micro robots  
• Daniela Rus and the centimeter long origami robot
• Space Craft 3d from Nasa 
• Nearpod Virtual Reality 
• Thinglink a platform that creates virtual reality from 360 camera 

Here is Diana's presentation and collection of resources related to her presentation.

Teaching Difficult Science by Ralph Bouquet from NovaLabs/WGBH

I like this presentation as it is trying to pick the difficult science to teach and create applications to help teachers. This is exactly our approach as we develop our tools, and try to find the most difficult subject to teach from the science teachers.

One of the approach of NovaLabs is to use games as part of the learning experience. Following are the examples mentioned.

• Life on Earth Project 
• Cyber Security Lab
• RNA Virtual Lab
• Vax, a game about epidemic prevention

NovaLabs and its resources can be reached at  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/

ISTE Unplugged

This is the first session in the ISTE 2016 conference in Denver. It is an 'un-conference' styled session.  The following are some topics that were discussed.

• Using technology for pedagogy (method and practice of teaching)
• The kidblog hashtag at kidblog.org
• Using Google Cardboard to explain Mount Everest or the Nepal earthquake. Make the lessons matter more to the students. An example is when they have to write it, it will be more interesting to them as they can 'see' it and hear it from the news. 
• It is interesting some attendees mentioned that sometimes Admin is concerned about the use of Technology
• Technology integration specialists filling the role to bring technology to schools

Computer Science Firehose

This is a special program as a pre-conference session. The program involves multiple classes that go over anything that relates to upcoming computer science curriculum's. This includes the following topics: Computer Science Principles, Using Minecraft as a tool for critical thinking, and Google For Education. Thanks to Scott Horan, Kentucky School District, and his folks to organize these sessions.

Computer Science Principles

There is a great list of sessions to introduce you to the computer science program. The difficulty of this is because there is a plethora of choices and varieties, it could be difficult for teachers to figure out which one to use. And let's not forget the tech powerhouse that also provides their own curriculum to get teachers use their product.
To help teachers with this seemingly endless task, CollegeBoard is releasing the 'Computer Science Principles' curriculum this Fall (2016). 
There are also a number of organizations that are delivering this curriculum. For example...

• Harvard CS50
• Mobile CSP 
• Project Lead the Way CSP
• Uteach Texas CSP
• Code.org CSP
• Beauty and Joy of Computing CSP from Berkeley 

Google For Education

Google presented multiple tools provided for teachers and general computer science and coding learning experience.

• Madewithcode.com is a site that is trying to get girls into coding. Their target is starting with the girls in middle school.
• CS First attracts 4th graders to game design.
• Computational Thinking Course helps educators learn about computational thinking, and that it differs from computer science. Along with that, it shows how computers can be integrated to a variety of subject areas.
• Google Computer Science is a summer program directed towards High Schoolers for PD. This is a continuation of CS teacher professional development.
• Google Rise Awards are an annual grant program for informal education organizations around the world that promote computer science to K-12 and pre-university aged students. 
• Blockly is started as an extension of Scratch, but now Scratch is going to use this technology for its back-end.
• Pencil Code is another coding exercise
• Coding With Chrome is a Google Chrome app to learn code using block programming.

Using Minecraft(c) as a tool for critical thinking

Minecraft, that for some unexplained reason  the most favorite game for kids, can also be used for education. Here are some ideas introduced by Douglas Kiang, a teacher in Hawaii.
Construction:

• How about you build the house you would like to live in?
• How about you build your grandma's and grandpa's house?
• Perhaps your own future house?
• The point here is, how you would build a real physical building in the digital world of Minecraft.

Content:

• How can students use Minecraft to teach?
• How about creating a binary calculator?

Critical Thinking:

• Critical thinking is NOT problem solving, specifically. Rather, it is a system of analyzing how we think, and how we solve problems, to make our problem-solvng processes better. (Richard Paul, Center for Critical Thinking, 2007)

Community:

• Classroom is about relationships. Teachers manage relationships with students and between students.

Collaboration:

• Build an underwater office using a glass surface. A complex goal that requires many different people for success

Here is the rest of Douglas' Presentation on Minecraft.

Transform Learning Through Science and Technology

Presentation by Michelle Macloud, Marcy Faust, and Jamie Noel from Sherwood Middle Academic Magnet School

• Several Augmented Reality apps already available out there, such as:
• Augmented Reality Chemistry Blocks | DAQRI Elements 4D
• Quiver 3D Augmented Reality coloring app

• Smithsonian Institute has Smithsonian Education, a large library of educational materials

• I found it is interesting that the library supports the science learning, including by providing some funding, such as from selling old books or penalty fees. It may not a large amount, but it still supports the science education.

Augmented Reality with Ingress

Ingress is an application that is created by Niantic, the company that creates Pokemon Go. I'm glad that I attended this session, as it gave me a preview of what's coming up in Pokemon Go, before it explodes.  Ingress was created in 2012, using Augmented Reality and GPS to play game 'Catch the Flag'. Here is the rest of the presentation of Ingress game.

ISTE Seal of Alignment

ISTE Seal of Alignment is like the Good Housekeeping Seal, except it is for education product.  From my conversation with other Education Entrepreneurs during the session, the cost is quite significant that a small business has to think twice of the ROI for the seal. Here are the detail.

• The application fee is $1500.
• The review fee is $5000.
• The Annual license fee for 2 years is $3000
• The fee to renew a license again after two years is $3000 per year. 

So $9500 to get the seal, it is as expensive as getting a Patent. Is this worth as much as a Patent?

Startup/NFS SBIR

The NFS grant is a pre-seed money.  It is intended for the startup to retire its technical risk so that they can go to the next level for angel or VC. Many areas can work against the new company, for example having very clear technical implementation shows that the company does not need help anymore.  If there is a high chance of failure, then the NFS will be acting as a seed and help the company to work on the risk.

Here are some tips:

• If there is no technology risk, then that will work against you.
• Having sold the product, will work against you.
• Having solved the technical problem, will work against you.
• Having too much implementation, that means there is no technology challenge anymore, will work against you.
• MVP has to be at a minimal.
• You need to talk about the big picture, not the incremental product.

Verify the market, for example by asking the schools whether they will purchase the product if it should be available in the market today.

Review the Horizon report in education. This shows the trends and roadmap in Education.

ISTE Things I Learned

As a closing, I jotted down several lessons about ISTE, just for somebody who plans to be a presenter or just attendee in the future conference.

• Speakers have it's own World Storage as a place for presenters to quiet down and recharge. This is a good oasis in the midst of the conference noise. 
• There is always breakfast there.
• They close earlier than the conference, 6pm on all days except the last day, which is at 2pm
• Need to scan everything during check in
• There are several games that are used to get people engaged, such as entering a keyword for everytime you go to an event
• Spots in classes are not guaranteed. Preregistered class attendees get the benefit to go in first, assuming the class in not empty
• And unfortunately ISTE will not return to Denver until eight years from now (2024)

Boulder Startup Week - May 16 - 20th, 2016

This is my first time attending Boulder Startup Week and I can see why it is an amazing event.  With 203 events, 421 speakers at 71 venues around Boulder, it is so amazing the event can be made free. Applaud to the organizer, core team members and sponsors who made this event possible.

Given that I'm still early in my startup phase, I tried to take the benefits of this event and visited many talks, from a hardcore sessions such as Algorithm, Virtual Reality, Manufacturing to Funding, and to the Mental Health of Entrepreneur, speeches by Brad Feld, Tom Higley and Sarah Jane, which exceeded my expectation.

Mental Health of Entrepreneur

I also have the opportunities to talk to several mentors to get their perspectives and experiences on the business I started: Tim Wolters, Tom Keller, Brian Ardinger, Jose Vieitez, Manny Ladis, and Allan Shriver.

Overall the events have been very educational for me.

Here are some of my takeaways from the events that hopefully others may find useful as well. There are more notes that I took, but I selected a few that are more general.

On Funding:

• In doing bootstrap company, if it takes years to be profitable, it may not be the right approach to do bootstrap. 
• Doing bootstrap, it is assumed it will be a slow growth.
• A good book to read:  Hackers guide to raise fund by Fletcher Richman.
• New crowdfunding rule by federal on Title 3 was discussed in the session about funding. Interestingly the first day the Title III is allowed by law is happened on May 16th, the first day of Boulder Startup Week.
• Before going to get funding, make sure do your own due diligence.  Talk to investor first, not to ask for money, but just ask for advice after showing the product.

On Technology:

• If you are developing IoT product, it is better to start with Off-The-Shelf product, where you can take the benefits of the certification that product has passed.
• The main strength of Virtual Reality is to play in the scale manipulation
• Intellectual property, as you are using open source code, make sure it's clear what is Open Source, and what is yours.
• Starting from 2012, US Patent rule changed from "first to invent" to "first to file"

Intellectual Property

On Mental health:

• It is important to manage the mental health of entrepreneur. Brad Feld talked about incorrect sense of responsibility that makes us do many things that we don't need to
• Starting a business is hard, so make sure it is fun. Make sure to understand the sacrifice being made by member of the family. At the end, the family is important.

On Mentoring:

• Be prepared when speaking to mentor. They are busy people, so make sure the goal is clear. Learn about their background so you can ask relevant questions.
• Advisor vs Mentor: advisor is more public facing, while mentor is more informal.

On getting into Accelerator:

• Your team is important, 
• Show that you are coachable
• Show your traction, show the progression
• Understand what you want to get out of the accelerators
• Think from the accelerator perspective: create the sense of missing out

Creativity Quest at University Northern Colorado

Creativity Quest is a monthly Saturday program for creative and/or high potential learners. This program is sponsored by the Center for Education and Study of Gifted, Talented, and Creative Learners, University of Northern Colorado at Greeley. We have an opportunity to use our Electronic Stream Table to teach lesson in Erosion. It is exciting to be able to see how the students used the prototype of the product and heard their comments.

We used the Intel Edison for the prototype which communicates using wifi.  There were several improvements from the solution at Intel Hackathon.  One improvement is based on the feedback from SteamFest. Instead of displaying a photo, the apps will display video of the real stream table experiment when the students select the scenario. Another feature added were the ability to select between sands or rocks substrate.  The video will be played from YouTube, which means the product has dependency to the Internet connection.

Unfortunately the dependency becomes the achilles heel.  The wifi system inside the University of Northern Colorado has some security features that is causing both the computer and Intel Edison couldn't be in the same network. This is causing the YouTube video isn't accessible.  Luckily we were able to replace it back to photos, and play the YouTube video from the university's computer. The class survived!!

The class allowed us to test the usability of the product, and to observe how the kids use the digital stream table. Although the best lesson that we learned is to remove the dependency to the wifi system. Setting up this environment multiple times, whether it's in SteamFest, or during another experiments in Monarch K-8 in Louisville, we observed using the wifi in Edison will be a continuous challenge for the setup. We need to use Bluetooth.

Rocky Mountain STEAM Fest at Boulder County Fairgounds

Rocky Mountain STEAM Fest is where you want to be to check out latest development on education and maker communities The E is actually for Entrepreneur. 4000 kids of all ages were in the event, along with parents who has interest in STEM or wants their kids to be exposed in STEM.

Our participation in the STEAM Fest this year is not trying to sell the products ... yet. We want to learn whether there are customer needs with this product. Taken a page from 4 Steps to Epiphany by Steve Blank, our goal is to talk to parents and educators and learn their interest and needs for a technology product that use hands-on approach to teach STEM.

The event was a huge success for us, as we received plenty of feedback.  We observed how the kids like the product, and in one case the kid immediately asked the parent whether they could purchase the product (well .. unfortunately we are not ready to sell yet).  We also received additional suggestions, such as some parent want to incorporate the technology portion by letting the kids to assemble the product themselves (sounds like an excellent idea).  Many thoughts that this product should be part of the schools, since it really helps the learning process. And some parents would like to purchase it  themselves when it becomes available.

We showed two of our prototypes: the Erosion lesson where we won the prize in Intel Hackathon, and the earlier Soundwave lesson. We also showed some of the concept product in the form of video, and it attracted many people.  We received many contacts for potential customers and collaborators. Overall we considered the exhibition was a great success and we received confirmation on the product that we are developing.

Intel Hackathon

Last weekend we went to Intel Internet-Of-Things Hackathon, a two days event Saturday and Sunday in University of Denver, and came back winning third place for our project. Here is the view from a first-timer hackathon.

                


We have been working with STEM Launch in Thornton, Colorado to try to solve a problem in Science teaching.  The week before the hackathon, we finally defined the pain point. The problem is on how to teach Erosion and Deposition, part of Earth Science subject. Typically teacher will use water table, such as in this video.  It may take days for the preparation, and then minutes for the experiment. It also tends to be messy so that it discourage the usage of this approach. Unfortunately this will cause the hands-on activity missed out in the learning process.

After the meeting, my partner and I discussed how to solve this problem, and suddenly a light bulb moment sparked. We are going to Intel IOT Hackathon, and we can pitch this idea. We figured out what kind of sensors that we can add, such as gyroscope to sense the inclination.

I pitched this idea of Education Technology to teach Erosion lesson.  Five minutes .. ten minutes .. half an hour .. nobody approached me. Even three folks from my table left (okay, they probably just came to get the free Intel Edison kit, as I didn't see them anymore throughout the event).  Hmm .. I started doubting myself that this may not be a good idea. But I decided to charge ahead and approached some folks to join my team. Four folks joined my team, all newbies and I was the only developer. Although all of them are smart folks, and all contributed to the completion of the project. In retrospect, after the events couple of people came to me and mentioned they actually considering to join my team. So the lesson here is "Don't give up if you don't see any sign/feedback immediately"

The steepest learning curve is to acquire the knowledge on node.js as a webserver. I have used other web server prior to this, but have not touched node.js and minimally used javascript.  After unsuccessful attempt to reuse the sample code on Saturday, I decided to start my Sunday at 5 am to do crash course on node.js. This tutorial and the nodejs documentation assisted me through the early morning class on node.js. By 9 am, I understood how it works, had some code - still buggy, and joined my team back at University of Denver.

It was final 2 hours, the application is still not working. I started thinking that we are fighting the wrong battle since the problem is in understanding how node.js works, not in the hardware or the sensor. Finally  in desperation I went back to the template code and made the modification one at a time. Around 12:30 pm the code finally worked ... phew, and for the next hour we added the rest of the functionalities back. The hardware portion is so smooth thanks to one of the team member (Sir James Fleit), that it is a matter of copy and paste the code and they just worked. Half an hour before the deadline we have all functionalities worked and tested, and I was totally exhausted. After several tests, we decided to stop tinkering and waited for the final bell.

We are team number 11 out of 13 teams. During the presentation I checked out the body language of the  judges and they seemed already exhausted and uninterested, and we only got 1 question. I thought this is not a good sign. So I was totally blown when we were announced to win the third place. One of the judge later stopped by and asked us about other product that we have created. This is really adding conviction to myself that what we are doing is in the right direction. I came home physically tired but mentally ready to continue the journey.

Positive Thinking

One of the Bertrand Russell quotes says “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.”

One of the problem with most of us is we are full of self doubt. The more we understand "something", the more we question whether there is something else we don't know. Many gifted kids (or adult) tends to be introvert, who contemplates first before making an opinion. In the world of fast moving conversation, they will look like somebody who doesn't understand anything, or not willing to share their knowledge, as the self-doubt will keep him/her quiet.

This is where the concept of Positive Thinking will make a difference.  Our brain is continuously making new neuron connections and pruning less used connections, which means thinking about positive experience will actually build the positive thinking, and hence build your brain (and you) to be a happier, optimistic and positive brain.  One method to do this is called ROSE, it stands for Recognize, Observe, Soak in, Engrave.

• Recognize an experience, for example where your idea makes a difference.
• Observe how your body reacts to it, maybe your heart has that warmth feeling that your idea is accepted by your peers.
• Soak in the experience a bit longer, don't just humbly dismiss it and move on, this is where you exercise your brain to create that new neuron connection.
• Engrave it by sharing with somebody, maybe create a habit of discussing your positive experience at dinner time with your family.  This will create a good neural pathways in your brain that you can tap in the future when you need it, maybe the next time you feel dreaded since you have to talk about your idea in public.

Hopefully by doing this frequently, the next time you have an idea, your brain will remind you how your idea was accepted in the past, and you are going to be more inclined to remove your self-doubt and involve in the group conversation.

This thought is inspired by Janise McNally's (from Cherry Creek School District, Colorado)  talk at Boulder Valley Gifted and Talented event.  Janise brought up the idea about ROSE, and you can read further in this article.

Introduction

Finally, after contemplating for few years, the introvert in me finally surrendered and allowed the inner spontaneity to break loose. What will be a better day than 4/4/16 (4 times 4 is 16, see how it is an important math date .. ) to start my blog experience.

Couple of months ago I started my journey into the startup world by focusing on my EdTech idea on hands-on approach to teach STEM lessons. This blog is my channel to share the knowledge I learned, to ask the questions that I don't know the answers, and all other experiences that came along.