Jun 23, 2013
Ah, the ISTE conference. Arguably the biggest ed tech conference of the year, and yet the conference I am least interested in. They tell me there are over 20,000 attendees this year - great news, I suppose. Great news if you are one of the many sponsors of this now, heavily corporate driven conference. Today, the twitter-verse was all aflutter over Microsoft's "free" Surface RT tablet, surely one of many "magic bullets" that are guaranteed to solve all that ails eduction.

But it's not the vendors and their efforts to "own" education that I'll miss. Nor will I miss all of the "awesome" app shootouts, the "look at me" sessions by teachers who fall silent when you ask, "so who else at your school is doing this?", or the "experts" who haven't been in a classroom for years. No, I won't even miss the "edublogger" click-ups to stroke each others' egos, to the exclusion of all those whom they should endeavor to inspire.

What I'll truly miss most are the real conversations that take place outside the sessions - in the hallways, restaurants, lobbies, and every other available, open space.

Which is why I was thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with a number of top-notch educators this evening at a special "Not at ISTE" hangout. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!



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