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)