This year ISTE put on what appeared to me to be the biggest education extravaganza to date. The number of participants was said to be somewhere between 20 and 22 thousand educators. I never verified that number but based on the food lines it seemed likely to be true.
Of course there was apparently a huge number of connected educators in attendance. I say apparently, because in reality I don’t believe it was so many. Many connected educators volunteer to do sessions. Many are also bloggers. A natural gathering place for them to gather, interact, and network is at the Bloggers Café, or the PLN Lounge. Twitter has added a whole new dimension to these education conferences where educators connected to other educators through various Social Media can meet up face to face. This enables real-time collaboration with people who have had a virtual relationship with each other for a while. Even if there were a thousand connected educators meeting at the Bloggers Café all at once (and there weren’t), It would seem to those gathered that the entire conference was connected. Of course this ignores the 21,000 other educators who were not connected.
I guess my take away for this is that being connected networks you with more people to have a good time with, as well as extend collaboration, but a majority of educators have yet to discover this. One would think that would be a lure for more educators to connect, but of course the only people who recognize these benefits are those who are connected. I imagine most of the people reading this blog are connected as well, so I am probably and again spinning my wheels on this subject.
I found this year’s conference to be a bit overwhelming. To me it seemed that many of the events and some sessions were trying very hard to create an atmosphere that was experienced with smaller numbers from previous conferences. That intimacy however, was lost with the numbers of participants this year. There were some invitation only sessions, as well as paid sessions with smaller numbers that I did find more enjoyable, but again, I attend many conferences and do not view them through the eyes of a new attendee. I might be too critical here.
I loved the fact that connected educators were actively backchanneling sessions and events. Tweets were flying over the Twitterstream as the #ISTE2014 hashtag trended on Twitter. Photos were much more prevalent in tweets than in past years, because that process has been simplified. That picture process has both good and bad aspects attached to it. It is great to see the session engagement. The pictures from some of the social gatherings however, may paint a slightly distorted view of conferencing by educators. It may give an impression that the social events outweighed the collaboration and interaction. The social events were fun, but it was as much a part of networking as any of the conference.
The vendor floor was beyond huge this year. It was quite the carnival atmosphere at times. If anyone would benefit from collaboration at these conferences it would be the vendors. There is a great deal of redundancy in education products. I wish more vendors would take a pass on the bells and whistles of their product and talk more about pedagogy and how their products fit in, as well as how they don’t. That requires an educator’s perspective, and not every product designer seeks that out. Those that do seek that perspective however seem to attract me more than the others.
One vendor had a closed booth with dollar bills being blown around inside. People lined up for a chance to step inside to beat the airflow for the dollars. The attraction was obviously the lure to get folks in, but who paid attention to the product? There were some products that I will address in a subsequent post, which I rarely do. These products were exceptional and should be recognized.
As ISTE came to a close this year, my reflection was that bigger is not always better. I was also mystified by the choices in keynotes. If one was to judge by the tweets about the keynotes, one was somewhat of a miss, one was on the mark, and one left many wondering why it was a keynote at all. I must admit that I did not view the keynotes in the lecture hall, but on screens in the gathering places in the conference. I enjoy the keynotes better when I can openly comment and yell at the screen if I have to. It would seem that I was not alone in these endeavors.
It should be noted that ISTE this year did have people’s Twitter handles on their name tags, an innovation. Of course mine was messed up, but who am I to complain? Now I wish they would take another suggestion and do an unconference, or Edcamp segment in the middle of the conference. This would allow educators to further explore those subjects that they learned about in earlier more conventional sessions. It would also break up the “sit and get” mentality of a conference. It would take as little as an hours worth of sessions.
For as much as we hear that we need and want innovation in education, I would expect to see it first in Education conferences. They are hyped to be conferences led by the innovators in education, but there is little that changes in conferences from year to year. We are still sitting through lectures and presentations with limited audience engagement. We are not yet directing our learning, but attending sessions devised and approved a year in advance. I realize that change is hard and takes time, but our society is demanding that we as educators do it more readily and now. We need to change in order stay relevant. How does an irrelevant education system prepare kids for their future?
I totally agree Tom. This was my first ISTE and I enjoyed it but I was more engaged outside the sessions and definitely outside the exhibit area.
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Hello Tom. It was great catching up with you, and several other PLN members at the Blogger’s Cafe. I took in three interesting “paid” workshops, a few poster sessions, and I back-channeled quite a bit. I also presented a few times for Schoology in the Exhibit hall. I skipped the keynotes and the other vendor exhibits. In short, I did ISTE “my way” by focusing on connecting and personal learning. From my hotel room, I reviewed the daily #ISTE2014 Twitter-stream and jotted down some notes for potential blog posts. I also took time to take in some of the sites and sounds of Atlanta. Picking and choosing from the learning buffet made the consumption and sharing nourishing and tasty. I agree that the crowds and lines were a bit overwhelming at times, but at no time did I encounter any negativity. I am looking forward to chatting with you again at #ISTE2015. As always, thanks for this forum. Take care Tom, Bob
You my friend, did it right. You took control of your learning the way all educators should. The difference however is that you are very well connected. You are connected to educators, as well as industry people. You are involved with discussions with connected educators which keeps you relevant. You use your connections for professional development. You model what educators should do with social media as lifelong learners.You read education Blogs. Unfortunately, you are not the norm, you are the exception. New teachers, or teachers new to conferences who may not be as connected as you, may not have the knowledge or strategies to gain control of their own learning at a conference that could present itself as overwhelming. We need to educate our educators how to do what it is that you did at a conference. Thanks for your thoughts.
Thank you Sir. Like usual, I agree with you. There is tremendous value in the discussions that take place at conferences. Sometimes we get distracted by the fluff and the shiny new toys. You tossed a lot of praise my way, but the readers should know that you reached out to me on Twitter, and that’s why I made a special trip to see you and shake your hand. I admire you for your perspective and the eloquent ways that you share it. Until next time…
Hi Tom,
First, thanks for taking the time to share your ISTE “One” in our connected educators’ video. I hope you had a chance to see the finished project. And my real reason for checking in…our state elementary principal’s association is in the planning stages of the big Winter Institute (largest conference for MN admin). We discussed embedding an “unconference” portion and I’m really excited about the plan/approach. Do you have any additional thoughts or suggestions to make this time impactful? Would you suggest two 30 minute un-session slots? Just curious.
Thanks again…great to meet you in person.
Kind regards,
Brad
Brad, check out the very active EdCamp in Portland, OR at http://edcamppdx.wikispaces.com/. I’m sure the organizers would be happy to talk to you!!
Excellent perspective, I really wanted to go this year knowing perfectly well the approach would very similar to San Antonio. Instead of forking out the thousands of dollars I would have needed to really enjoy the Atlanta trip, I decided to archive on Facebook all the sharing that took place on iste2014 Twitter feed. So many resources were tweeted out including some motivational quotes and posters. Sadly it required much time and effort on my part to sift out the valuable info that was shared vs all the feel happy type tweets. I may have got more out of the experience doing what I did though vs actually attending the circus. What I miss ofcourse is all the vendor hall excitement, giveaways and ofcourse the face to face connections that I value dearly. Tom Whitby did an excellent job here of capturing the big issue though. I’m a 4th grade teacher in an absolutely amazing school chalked full of technology and yet our classrooms resemble that of ISTE classes. Lots of direct instruction and sharing out. If we want to change the face of how our schools look on the inside, then the conferences that should inspire us need to reflect these changes more. I don’t want to knock ISTE because despite the expense that I have to incur out of pocket, I still greatly value attending. I just hope when they come to Philly next year they try to consider modeling more what educators should be modeling more in their classrooms. Inquiry based learning.
It was great to be able to watch the ISTE backchannel via Twitter from my home in Australia. The upside of having such a big conference is that global sharing of big moments and ideas CAN take place. Down here we are lucky to crack 1000 attendees for big conferences (so if you like your conferences smaller, consider a trip down under!), the downside of which is that the number of truly connected educators is small, maybe 10-20 people at an event.
But I agree that big is not always best. I had my first taste of a 10,000+ conference at AERA in the States, and there was a LOT of ordinary, derivative, hardly innovative work to sort through. Mostly a lot of show and tell, and it sounds like ISTE is no different. But meeting a handful of people face to face also leads to lasting connections for me in a way that virtual-only connections never do.
As for trying to do something more innovative, and what holds organisers back…planning by committee, that’s what! Conservative choices always win out in my experience.
[…] This year ISTE put on what appeared to me to be the biggest education extravaganza to date. The number of participants was said to be somewhere between 20 and 22 thousand educators. […]
Interesting. I’m just new to this whole ‘connected educators’ thing myself. I’m blogging, and reading other people’s blogs and it’s been very useful to read other people’s thoughts.
However, I just haven’t understood Twitter yet. I’ve joined, and followed a bunch of people who seem interesting, yet I’m overwhelmed by the volume of stuff. And it seems to me that most of the useful tweets are just links to actual blog posts anyway. Not much of substance gets said in the actual tweets. Or am I missing the point?
Cheers
Sarah
It is difficult to get a great deal of substance into 140 characters. Tweets are great for guiding people to substance. It also creates a great many collegial sources, people who you can call on for answers or direction. Twitter enables you to be aware of that which you do not yet know and offers you places to direct your learning so that you will know.Build and expand your PLN from Bloggers and people who contribute positively to education Chats. You can also follow educators who they follow by checking their profiles. I use Twitter as the backbone of my PLN. Tweetdeck or Hootsuite will help keep you organized. You cannot read every tweet.
It was very nice experience for me. Its my first ISTE conference. I love this concept “connecting educator”. We can easily get in touch with people and their products. I personally like some products such as Deep Freeze Cloud. Awesome experince. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about it.
[…] This year ISTE put on what appeared to me to be the biggest education extravaganza to date. The number of participants was said to be somewhere between 20 and 22 thousand educators. I never verifie… […]
Thank you for a very insightful post! I agree that ISTE felt a bit too crowded this year. I, too, skipped the keynotes this year in favor of meeting face to face with people I had previously only known on Twitter or through their blogs. I found those conversations to be a much more valuable use of my time. Of the sessions I attended, the ones that were most engaging were also the most interactive. I attended a paid session on Minecraft and a free session on using Scratch with Lego’s WeDo platform. Besides the interactive sessions, the thing I enjoyed the most this year were the playgrounds. The Google playgrounds and the MakerEd playground were electrifying – exactly the right mix of information, conversation, and play. I spent hours in each, learning and connecting with like-minded people. Does ISTE this way made me feel like a kid again and isn’t that the point?