Top 5 Lessons Learned from Attending ISTE 2018
Top 5 Lessons Learned from Attending ISTE 2018
- Check-in early – get your badge and bag of stuff before day 1 if possible. Also, get a general feel for the layout of the conference center to find things more quickly. Also, if you want to buy an ISTE t-shirt, get one early or you won’t get the design, color, or size that you want because they’ll be sold out!
- Bring snacks – I walked past a line about 40 yards long for Starbucks. You didn’t spend money to attend a conference so you could spend time standing in line. You are there to get valuable information and insights. If you need coffee, bring a thermal mug ( and fill it before getting to the conference (in your hotel room perhaps?) or just fill a water bottle throughout the day. Likewise, bring your own snacks so you don’t have to stop somewhere and pay exorbitantly for junk that won’t sustain you throughout the day. I suggest some Blue Diamond almonds.
- Be smart when scheduling sessions – picking sessions was one of the hardest things to do. They all sounded great and there are so many running concurrently. Here are 3 tips for picking sessions:
- Have a goal – There is simply too much out there to try and learn everything. What is your goal for the school in which you work? What do the students and teachers need? What deficits do you have as a coach/teacher that you want to learn about? Try to narrow your focus to pick sessions that will bring value to your students and teachers when you bring back the information to teach them.
- Sweat the details – clever titles and brief descriptions may fool you into attending a session that you shouldn’t. The ISTE app gave an expanded description of most sessions that really talked about the philosophy, purpose, and agenda of the session along with info about the presenters. In fact, sometimes reading about the presenters will change your mind. Are they well known? Are they teachers? Academics? Tech industry reps? I learned that picking a session because of the presenter is usually a good practice. I know Kasey Bell, Holly Clarke, Matt Miller, Eric Curts, Alice Keeler, Jeff Bradbury, and Vicki Davis are very good at what they do. They have great online presence and resources. They’ve wrote books. They will probably have an awesome session. I know that tech industry reps may try to sell you something or may not be attuned to the current environment or best practices in today’s classrooms.
- Have a back-up plan – If you’ve read this blog post, you know that some sessions that you choose will be duds. My rule is that if I haven’t gotten at least one idea or tool within the first 20-30 minutes, I’m out. Never feel like you’re being rude when you leave a session. You should have at least 2 back-up sessions in every time slot. On the ISTE app, I starred a bunch of sessions running at the same time. Now, leaving a session and trying to get to another session after it starts on day 2 may result in you being shut out due to the session being full, but it’s better to try that to sit through a worthless session. Plus, someone may leave your back-up session allowing you to take their place.
- Ask questions – After a session, if you had a thought, idea, plan for applying what you learned but you have additional questions that relate to your specific situation at your school, ask the presenter. So many people rush off to the next session or are too shy. The presenters want to know that they had an impact and they want to help you. I asked Jeff Bradbury about advice for starting a podcast from scratch. I asked Holly Clarke about tips on giving better presentations. The insights you will get from their experience are invaluable. They’ll help you sidestep a lot of pitfalls. After all, we don’t have to learn everything the hard way when someone else has already done that for us.
- Network – This one is kind of obvious, but many people still don’t bother with it. You may be sitting next to someone who teaches the same level as you and really wants to collaborate on a lesson sharing your students’ work with hers. She wants to do a Mystery Skype, or a Flipgrid, or a collaborative project with Google Slides and you would never know because you were too busy answering silly emails that you could do anytime. Get to your session early and say hi to the person next to you. “Hi, my name is Bryan. I’m a middle school teacher from Virginia Beach.” And off we go. Full disclosue, I am a recovering shy kid who is still needs a lot of work on this.
All posts in this ISTE series
Day 1 at ISTE
Day 2 at ISTE
Day 3 at ISTE
Day 4 at ISTE
Top 5 Lessons Learned from Attending ISTE 2018