Day 2 of the Drexel University REThink program was spent as ISTE 2015, which was in Philadelphia at the Convention Center. This was a great opportunity, as I had always wanted to attend this conference, and I was glad to have it paid for by Drexel.
I arrived earlier than usual, so that I could take full advantage of everything. The convention center was packed with things to do and see. I started out by wandering around the posters, which changed every few hours. I was interested in the morning, as many of the posters were about gamification. I had seen how powerful gamification was in my classroom in Massachusetts, when I had started to award microscope tokens for different class tasks.
I also attended a session about the power of a hackathon. I hadn’t thought about this before, but a hackathon (especially with what I want to do- environmental based sensors) could definitely have students focus intensely on this project. I was wondering if I could even run it as an in-school fieldtrip for those students interested.
I then wandered around the Playgrounds. There was a great playground that dealt with arduinos and raspberry pi’s. Another playground had a large focus on robotics. And the Google Apps Playground was pretty neat- I’m hoping I can get Google Classroom for my classroom (New school from before, so I had to revert to using Edmodo)
I went with Steve (who teaches in Delran) to Reading Terminal Market. It was my first experience, and was truly delicious with a ton of options.
I spent time in the expo hall, seeing as much as I could see. One of the most interesting booths I saw was “Storyboard That.” I also entered the “Microsoft Passport Adventure,” and ended up winning a Microsoft Surface 3, which is neat. Hopefully, I’ll be hearing soon about how to claim that.
I went to the “Debate” about coding with Hadi Partovi- which wasn’t much of a debate at all. Some good ideas were shared, but the stakeholders clearly wanted to code. The takehome message that I had was:
1. Where do we get money for computers in schools?
2. How do we train teachers who do not know how to code to learn code themselves to be able to teach it?
3. Does computer coding replacing the arts? Or can coding enhance the arts?
Another great day with lots to process.