Teaching Technology

ISTE 2014: Sunday – Tuesday of #notatiste14

Another ISTE Conference (that I didn’t attend) has come and gone.

My hope going into the ISTE 2014 conference as a #notatiste14 participant was that I would be able to learn something new. I have added 117 items to my Diigo Library that are mostly coding and/or Computer Science related. I tried to add resources (as they were shared) to a Google Doc on Computer Science (mostly coding) Sessions at ISTE 2014. This proved to be somewhat difficult as it was often impossible to tell who was in what session when they were tweeting. I really wish that some ISTE 2014 attendees had jumped in and helped to add to the document but unfortunately that didn’t happen – or hasn’t happened, yet.

I did find some new coding and Digital Citizenship resources that I plan to further investigate but here’s that I really learned:

• I learned that crowd sourcing a document is really difficult.
  Maybe it would be easier if I had actually been at the conference and could share it face-to-face as well as virtually. I don’t know because I wasn’t there.
  • Initially, I had the gDoc set so that people could view but could not comment or edit. I had instructions to tweet at or email me to gain editing access. No takers.
  • I thought that maybe having to email or tweet was preventing people from adding to the document. I then set permissions to allow for anyone to comment and tried promoting it again. Again, no takers.
  • Today, I set the permissions to allow anyone with a link to edit and promoted it again. Can you guess? Yes, still no takers.
  • I plan to try promoting it again on Friday or Saturday after ISTE attendees have had a chance to get home and settle back in. We’ll see how it goes.
• I learned I will now always set up document(s) about the topics I wish to learn when attending conferences.
  My thanks go to Sue Waters for her amazing example on Blogging at ISTE 2014. I know that even if I don’t go to all of the sessions, a document like this will help me to organize the program into the things that I want to focus on. It will also give me some information on the topic and some resources and a starting point for searching for more information. Interesting to note, looking at the document I created this year, I think I would probably have spent most of my time in Poster Sessions. There were quite a few of them related to coding this year.
• I learned that if I ever do a Poster Session, I need to bring students with me!
  Really. Check out the Twitter stream and see all the pictures shared from a Poster Session about Scratch from a school in Mexico. Really cute kids, too.
• I learned that I follow the Twitter stream much better from home than I ever do if I’m really at a conference.
  When I’m at a conference, it seems like I’m too busy to read a lot of what gets tweeted. I will tweet out what I find interesting and check any notifications I get but rarely do I spend the time to go through all the tweets.
• I learned that setting up specific columns for subjects you are interested in works so much better than trying to find information from the entire Twitter stream of a conference.
  Since I was trying to collect resources about coding, I spent a lot of time going through tweets trying to find information to add to the coding gDoc. I finally got smart and added another column to HootSuite with this search (#iste2014 OR #iste14) AND (coding OR programming OR Scratch OR robotics). I think I got most of what I was looking for and it was way easier to find things! I’m sure I missed a few things that used code instead of coding or program instead of programming but I didn’t want to add those to the search because of the other things that those terms would bring up. Yes, Scratch can add some “noise” to the results but it didn’t add too many non-related items. Check out the results of this search for yourself.
• I learned that I need to tweet more effectively at conferences I attend.
  I noticed that a lot of what gets tweeted out about sessions is that people thought it was great or some great quote from the presenter. That’s awesome, but resources and things to use would have been better for those of us #notatiste14. I have to give major props to Craig Yen who is awesome at live tweeting from events he attends and even from events he’s not attending. I need to be more like Craig.
• I learned that tweets from a conference that contain quotes are more likely to be retweeted than tweets that contain links.
  Okay, I can’t scientifically prove this one but it was true in my case this year. The tweets I sent out (or retweeted) that had links were much more likely to be favorited than retweeted. I don’t know why but it seemed to be the case.
  7/2: As I think about it more and read comments from others, I think this is happening because people use the favorite to either “like” a tweet or as a bookmarking option for things they want to get back to later. Makes sense that you would save links for later when you have time to review them.
• I learned that it is possible to build a great community and even have social “events” when you’re NOT at a conference!
  • Major thanks and kudos to Jen Wagner for creating the #notatiste14 Google+ Community, coming up with the #notatiste14 challenges, keeping the Twitter List, and so much more!
  • Oh, and speaking of the challenges, thanks so much to those members of the community that even arranged for prizes for the challenges. The community has really been amazing!
  • Thanks to Barb Gilman for the Voxer Chat. For some members of the #notatiste14 community, this has turned into something very special and has even spun off into another ongoing Voxer Chat.
  • One thing I love about conferences are Photowalks and our community had one of those, too! Okay, it wasn’t a synchronous Photowalk but it got me out to intentionally take some photos. There were some great pictures shared and I loved seeing where everyone was hanging out while #notatiste14.
  • We even had Karaoke! There was both Voxer Karaoke and a Google Hangout Karaoke.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank Dennis Grice, for helping both Jen and I with the photo challenge. You’re awesome, Dennis and thanks for playing along, Rushton Hurley, Rachel V. Small, and Peter Reynolds!

One last thing that I learned (okay I already knew this one but it was reinforced), whether at #iste2014 or #notatiste14, it really is mostly about the people and the connections you make. Thanks so much to the #notatiste14 community for such a great #iste2014!