ISTE 2011 Sunday
What a beautiful day in Philly. 
It started by waking up @ 10am….lame but I couldn’t fall asleep until 3am. Time zones are a bear!
The ISTE kick off was fantastic. The acapella group was incredible and it was fun watching their video. It was also awesome to be with a group of my school district peers accepting the Sylvia Charp award from ISTE and THE Journal. Being in the back with other award winners helps energize you. Despite the difficult times for teachers and public education, it was inspiring to be surrounded by hard-working educators doing their best for the kids they serve.
The theme that appears appears to be emerging in my PLN is the conversation about how are we using tools to learn? In a tweet somewhere, I lost it during the day and can’t seem to find, it was mentioned that:
“We need to stop talking about how to deal with web 2.0 policy (i.e. publishing, filtering, access, etc….) and having serious talks about how doesn’t actually contribute to learning.”
In my district we have the tools GAPPS, Blogs, Moodle, etc… but we are still struggling to gain by in from leadership that it is important to use these tools to teach and learn. I hope to find others that have had success in making these things happen in their schools and districts.
We need to move from adaptive change (using technology to do the same things better/faster) to transformative change (using the options available to us with technology to create new and effective learning environments). Do you think you can plan for transformative change or is it something that can only be seen once you look back?
Look forward to three more days of listening, learning, and sharing. And more cheesesteaks…..