Day 1 at ISTE 2019

Standing in line, waiting to order my first genuine Philly cheesesteak from Steve’s Prince of Steaks on 16th street, I anxiously read a long, vertical sign explaining how to order properly. But that momentary anxiety was quickly replaced with excitement as I realized that I am on the eve of experiencing another thrilling ISTE conference for the second year in a row. Here’s a recap of the first day.

Armed with my experience from last year, I carefully packed my snacks (Smokehouse Almonds) and water before heading out to the conference early enough to find my first session on Sunday morning of day one. When picking sessions, I made sure to have back-up sessions in case my first pick was full, but I also paid close attention to the description, presenter(s), and resources available for the session to make sure it fit my goals for this ISTE conference. My goals are essentially to gain more insight into developing lessons that are creative, authentic, and empowering for students. How can digital tools support or enhance these lessons? How can I convince teachers that these lessons are worth their time and are best for students? How can I clear away obstacles that I know they will introduce? The truth is that a lot of digital tools are still used for students to memorize facts rather than create or collaborate with the community, or engage in authentic learning experiences. I would like to change that this next school year.

Creativity is NOT something you are born with.

My first session, Practical Creativity, was presented by Rebecca Hare (@RLH_DesignED). She had a fantastic presentation that showed off her background in design and engineering. It had fun graphics and animations that enhanced her message. She showed how measurements of student creativity start to dip around middle school and continue through high school. She had us do several drawing activities on a napkin similar to exercises on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking to show how creativity can be not only gauged, but also practiced. There are different types of creativity; and one might be strong in one area but not another. In any event, deliberately practicing creative tasks and learning from others can improve ones creativity in these areas. Here are some areas of creativity and activities to practice/test yourself:

1. Fluency – Number of ideas produced – How many ideas can you come up with in 2 minutes to the question, “How can you transport an egg?”  Over 10 unique ideas means you have a higher level of fluency than average.
2. Originality – Unusualness of responses – How original and abstract are the ideas you produce in 3 minutes to this exercise? “Draw 6 circles and create something that no one else would come up with.” Connecting two or more circles indicates high originality.
3. Elaboration – Imagination and detail – What imaginative idea and level of detail do you produce in 2 minutes from a basic starting point? Try this activity. “Draw a large ‘V’ and make up a character.”
4. Abstractness of Titles – Can you come up with a deep, rich, and beyond the obvious title based on an image in 30 seconds? First, you must find a picture or image for students to consider. Then, ask students to “come up with a creative title for the following image.” Our session had a child on a tube in the ocean at sunset. Note: This is the only creativity indicator that shows growth not only throughout K-12 schooling but into adulthood.
5. Resistance to Premature Closure – Can you make mental leaps? Did you close the ‘V’ to create your character in the Elaboration activity? Those who score well in this area take the less obvious, traditional pathway to constructing their character. For example, making the ‘V’ into a v-kneck t-shirt.

Here are 3 ways you can improve your creativity:

1. Create False Boundaries – For example, “You only have the color red” or “Your drawing must fit in a shoebox.”
2. Ignore Perceived Boundaries – Break out of the “It’s the way we have always done it” mentality. For example, “What if beds weren’t rectangular?”
3. Reverse Assumptions then make Reversals Meaningful – An initial AirBnB pitch to investors went as follows – “People you don’t know are going to rent a space in your house.” This sounded too creepy to fund, so they changed it to – “You are making a new friend in the city.  And, you’re serving as an ambassador to your city,” This reversed the assumption that a stranger in your house would be awkward and creepy to a sense that it was more like being a good host.

The session was engaging, thought-provoking, active, and fun. I really got a lot of ideas to take back to my school. Definitely a win!

Because you have never heard a teacher say, “I’m really looking forward to our professional development session next week!”

My second session was Voice, Choice & Multiple Learning Pathways: Professional Learning for the Modern Educator presented by Michael Reichert (@ReichertMC)and Amanda Matarese (@amandamatarese) Reinventing PD to be more engaging, actionable, and reflective of pedagogical practices that we want our teachers to use with our students is a huge goal of mine. It still blows my mind every time leaders conduct PD in a way that would get low scores on any teacher evaluation instrument out there.

I got some great ideas from how to structure a book study to how the 1-5-15 Challenge can be used to spark teacher growth throughout the school year. For the book study, they created a Google site with modules that had different themes based on the book “Hacking Project Based Learning“. For each module, they had excellent questions, embedded videos and other resources to engage the teachers in the content.

Each module also asked teachers to reflect on their learning and produce a post or recording to explain their takeaways.

The 1-5-15 Challenge included a gift card incentive! Each month had a theme (eg. “Lively Learning” covered active learning and engagement) and the teachers had a choice between three challenges that took 1, 5, or 15 minutes to complete. Tasks could be simple, such as “Greet your students at the door.” (1 minute) or more involved like “write an email to one student in each of your classes who has been working really hard and has been on target since school started.” (15 minutes)

Draw 6 squiggly lines

My third session, Meeting Students Where They Are With Visualized Thinking and Sketchnoting, presented by Manuel Herrera (@manuelherrera33) and Kimberly Zajac (@zajacSLP) was all about the power of drawing in the learning process. I have been reading a lot about the learning strategy of dual coding and drawing in general as a way for students to remember more facts and concepts . . . in fact twice as much information compared to text alone. This session really showed that concept in action. We drew birds out of our 6 squiggly lines by adding beaks, eyes, and feet.

We also created 6 icons to represent ourselves and our interests drawn around our own avatar. We explored brainstorming through visual images rather than words. A truly fantastic experience that gave me great ideas for icebreaker activities, PD sessions, and alternative notetaking activities. “We often confuse drawing with art,” Manuel said. Students don’t have to be artists to learn from visual representations of information. They can start with a simple icon library to begin to reconnect a natural urge to draw that perhaps 6th-12th grade student loses over time as schooling gets more rigid and text based. Read more about it in Michael Herrera’s four-part blog post entitled “Visual Thinking to Manage Learning“.

“They want to learn about experiences and concepts.  We have to teach them topics.” – Steven Anderson

My final session of the day was “The Digitally-Authentic Learning Classroom” by Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) and Shaelynn Farnsworth (@shfarnsworth). They talked about sifting through the noise of flashy new tech tools and devices in order to focus on the pedagogy. Focus on the thinking and the process of learning rather than just creating a pretty product.

They also discussed “The 10 Truths of Authentic Classrooms “

1. Real-World Learning and Tasks
2. Content Is Student Selected
3. Interdisciplinary Learning
4. Open-Ended Inquiry
5. Creation is Valued Over Consumption
6. Frequent Reflection
7. Authentic Audience
8. Assessment Focuses on Mastery of Concepts
9. The Knowledge of Others is Valued
10. Evolving Learning Spaces

I think it’s fantastic when students can solve a problem that matters to them and present their solution to an authentic audience. Student ingenuity should be leveraged when addressing school issues or events such as dances, pep rallies, and student orientations. Of course, this takes the dedicated work of student leaders and teacher advisors to guide them. I’m also a big believer in student input regarding the learning space as well as the impacts of color, light, and flexible seating. My school is being painted this summer. Unfortunately, all the walls will be WHITE! Research shows that students respond better to environments with colorful walls.

Overall, this was a solid first day at ISTE. I was a little lost getting around such a labyrinthine convention center, but there were no lines and good wifi. That’s all I can ask for.