THE BEST ISTE EVER: Day 3 Reflections

Where are we? Monday? Yes, Monday, June 24, 2013. My Day 3 of ISTE13.

Up early and down to the Westin Riverwalk's fitness room to get fit. Or at least fitter. And maybe a little less fatter.

My schedule this day looked like this:

Monday, June 24
	8:00am-6:00pm	Presenter's World Hours Location: Registration West
	8:00am-9:30am	MSIGOL   SIGOL Forum: Connect, Collaborate, and Create with a MOOC! Location: SACC 103A
	8:30am-9:30am	An Integrated Model for Teacher Evaluation and Professional Learning Location: SACC 001B
	11:00am-12:00pm	SIGOL (Online Learning) Annual Meeting Location: SACC 102
	11:30am-1:30pm	Volunteer Leadership Lunch Location: San Antonio Conference Center, Lonesome Dove Room
	12:30pm-4:00pm	Innovation in Teacher Education Playground Location: SACC Park View Lobby
	2:00pm-4:00pm	Maintain Academic Integrity in the Cybersphere Location: SACC Tower View Lobby, Table 28
	5:00pm-7:00pm	Happy Hour at AWE Location: Esquire Tavern Hello, Thank your for RSVPing for the Happy Hour at ISTE in San Antonio!
	5:30pm-6:45pm	SIGVE Machinima Fest Location: SACC Lila Cockrell Theater
	7:30pm-8:30pm	FlipSwitch Dinner Location: Barriba Cantina with 1 guest

It should be clear as mud by now that I populate my schedule at ISTEs with conflicting events, so that in some cases, where my attendance is not required, I can choose from events of interest without resorting to the online Conference Planner or the app, which was a much hyped new feature of this year's conference. I couldn't miss the events highlighted above because I was committed as a co-presenter in some way. It's an interesting aside that I missed everything I was not committed to in that way.

So. SIGOL Forum: Connect, Collaborate, and Create with a MOOC was a hoot. Korean television was there, y'all. Really.  I was a bit late so I missed our Kae Novak's introduction, but I heard my friend Jan Zanetis's and Scott Garrigan's. These three shared perspectives on MOOCs, Massively Open Online Courses, from three very different perspectives.

Kae Novak, an Instructional Designer at Front Range Community College in Colorado, created and oversees, with Lucas Gillespie, the GamesMOOC. The details she provided to her breakout session were invaluable--everything from badges, to levels of engagement to her own philosophic take on churn rates. She comes from the higher ed plane but hobnobs with a whole bunch of K12 educators and her work there will certainly be of value as we shift focus from standardized testing to authentic games-driven assessment.

Jan Zanetis is Education Advocate at Cisco, Inc. in Australia. I've been a friend of Jan's since working together in the mid 90's at the Vanderbilt (University) Office of Science Outreach. Her share session and breakout table both consisted of informative overviews from the perspective of a highly placed corporate education resource person (she is National Education Advocate for Cisco Corporation in Australia).

Scott Garrigan, from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, has worked with MOOCs at a university level almost since their inception. He shared some predictions about where all this is going and I can tell you it's disruptive. That's a good thing.

The camera crew from South Korean television, gathering material for a 60 minute documentary on MOOCs, gave our Scott Garrigan beaucoup attention, as he is likely the one of the three panelists with the most experience creating and leading them. His breakout table also gathered the most attendees for both sessions, including me for the 2nd one.

SIGOL Annual Meeting 2013

As the SIGOL Annual Meeting got going, outgoing President/Chair Anita Harris welcomed the good-sized group and quickly passed the torch to incoming President/Chair Mike Gormans, who after a few words introduced moi, incoming Vice-President/Vice-Chair, and we got straight on into our breakout sessions, and I was on-the-fly assigned to host the Professional Development breakout. I briefly described the bi-monthly series I had put together for 2012-13, "Priceless Professional Development in Less Than 59 Minutes." I think the assembled were underwhelmed, but that could be a good thing. On my lonesome, I threw all that together on the fly and it worked, sort of. Input from the table attendees told me:

• A survey of PD needs is in order. We should be delivering Professional Development opportunities "just in time" instead of "just in case."
• We could look at offering 3 or so strands or themes and alternating them. Perhaps the offerings should be monthly instead of bi-monthly.
• Data. We need data. 
• Promotion is important. We had light turnout almost uniformly last year. Promotional announcements went out over the SIGVE ISTE listserv and Twitter and Facebook, but a systematic approach should be instituted and followed.

So all these notes I pass to our new Chair of Professional Development. Mike, our Chair, and moi, our Vice-Chair, are here for you. I do have to mention that when I tossed out the ask, "Okay, so who's going to drive the survey of PD needs?," there was sustained silence. I followed that up after applying admirable teacher wait-time with "Boy, I sure know how to silence a room, don't I?"

Never mind, we'll get it done!

After the meeting, Andy and I headed straight down to the Riverwalk Level to the lovely Lonesome Dove room, where tasty boxed lunches, foot massage machinesISTE Core Volunteers. I took advantage of all of them. Wow. Thanks, ISTE!
, a real live back massage, and a goody bag awaited invited

I then headed down to the Innovation in Teacher Education Playground, which SIGOL was nominally co-hosting, and enjoyed a long talk with Jay Heap from Georgia Virtual School. I discovered that his team has been working on an online teaching certification program, a 30 hour online course, completion of which they are going to require before even looking at a teacher application. I'm fascinated and will watch this development closely, because I know we need to develop a more extensive teacher training program and this may well be it. I also admire his institution's Open Source commitment.

I set up around 2:00 to share MNPS Virtual School's teacher education work but by then things had slowed down so much in the Playground that I had little attendance. Still, duty done. I believe that SIGTE's Chair, Randy Hansen, from National Louis University, did a great job of lining up his learning stations and putting on his first Playground and that this one deserves space next year in Atlanta.

I made my way then to the ISTE SIGVE EduMachinima Festival at the 2500 seat Lila Cockrill Theatre to help get things started there. Yes there were a few seats left over (attendance counted right livestreamed audio and they watched the same things we were watching via youtube links.
at 20 of the stalwart) but we had another 20 or so in Second Life, into which I

We had an absolute blast. One day we hope to fill a theatre like this one with people who actually want to partake of the entries for this, the third year of the young film festival's life. You can view the judge's awards right off this page, seriously and solidly worth your time!

ISTE SIGVE EduMachinima 2013 Winners*

People’s Choice

A Real-Time Interactive 3D Virtual Retail World by Konstantin Lakic, Dragan Lakic -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLvpZuW7558 Length: 3:34

Judge’s Awards

Best Overall
Invitation to Dance by Kae Novak- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMQ3QvWZKfQ Length: 0:51
Best Special Effects
rgMOOC Trailer by Kate Guthrie Caruso, Sherry Jones, and Stephen Getter - http://youtu.be/XORjygrnzk8 Length: 2:38
Best Editing
It's never to late to start something new by Christel Schneider - http://youtu.be/iQfA7AyQDvA Length: 1:41
Best Sound
Red Barn Door - By Tanya Martin, Original Muisc and Lyrics by Woodsong Zapatero in Second Life set design by Bluebarker and Gridjumper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn2KSHityks&list=UUUT1UrqlEV79TraMafVfX5Q
Best Machinmatography
Annabell and the crocodile by Christel Schneider http://youtu.be/WQO9TLdBTVM

*from http://sigve.iste.wikispaces.net/EduMachinima+Fest+2013

Following the EduMachinima Fest I headed "home" to the hotel and changed into casual wear and took out with Michael to Pat O'Brien's for the Gaggle Party. I can share the invite now the party's over:

It was fun, and I found my MNPS Virtual School crew, or at least James and Adrienne, perched up high at bar tables overlooking the wild open courtyard below. I was tired though, and after one local beer I made my exit, or attempted to.

Kecia Ray and moi

The aforementioned (yesterday) trio of young teachers from our district stopped me and bade me stay a bit. I'm glad I did because Kecia stopped in and I got a great pic with her (or at least I think so):
 

 

 

And here's us with the Antioch Gang of 3 and colleague Doug Renfroe:

After that one more brew, I did head "home," getting an early to bed for the big next day. Here it comes, Day 4, and soon.