In just two weeks over 15,000 excited educators will head to San Antonio for the ISTE 2017 conference. Are you ready to immerse yourself in everything ed tech?
Expand your knowledge with sessions, lectures, keynote speakers, interactive playground sessions, and workshops. As always, ISTE will provide a wide range of opportunities to create a personalized PD experience.
Determine Your Conference Goal
All of these opportunities are great, but it can be a bit overwhelming. Before heading to ISTE, making a must-see list, is well, a must. First, decide what your goal is while at the conference. Maybe you are aiming to learn more about a specific type of program you will be launching during the next school year. Others may want to focus on a few different areas to get ideas for future programs. Once you know your conference goal, it will make it easier to pick out the sessions, workshops, and lectures to add to your list.
Planning, launching, or expanding a1:1 program at your school? Here are a few sessions that might be worth adding to your schedule:
Closing the Digital Gap: How to Get Every Student Access, Everywhere, Anytime: A panel of experts from districts all across the country will discuss the importance of digital equity in today’s educational space, and tackle ways to provide access to all students.
Join the Digital Equity Action Agenda and Narrow the Homework Gap: Daryl Adams leads this session on digital equity and how to involve community members to narrow the homework gap in your district.
Equity and Access in the Digital Classroom: Learn how technology can facilitate both equity and personalized learning. Make time for this interactive session on technology in the classroom.
Chesterbrook Tech Ninjas: Looking to involve your students more in your 1:1 program? This poster session takes you through everything you need to know to create a successful student tech team.
Create a Schedule
Once you have your session list, create an easy-to-read schedule. Make sure your schedule is readily available during ISTE so that you don’t miss out on anything. If you want to go digital, download the ISTE 2017 mobile app to save your favorite sessions, presenters, and exhibitors.
Along with staying organized, this schedule allows you to see where you have some free time each day. You can use this extra time to network with fellow ed tech leaders, visit the exhibit hall, and of course fuel up with some local Tex-Mex to keep you energized.
Visit the Exhibit Hall
This year the exhibit hall will have over 550 vendors, showcasing the latest and greatest products and services for your tech program. Don’t forget to bring a large tote or snag one from a vendor so that you can collect informational collateral and free swag in one place. ISTE has put together a list of all the exhibiting companies where you can search by name or product category. Along with you PD schedule, make a list of must-see vendors along with their booth numbers.
Do you have students without Internet at home? Add Kajeet (booth #1340) to your list to learn more about our Education Broadband™ solution, which provides students with filtered Internet outside the classroom. Kajeet works with districts all across the country to close the Homework Gap.
While at the Kajeet booth you can discover your Homework Gap Hero with a fun quiz. As an added bonus, you’ll get a free t-shirt and button with your hero on it, plus a chance to win a tablet from us.
We can’t wait to see everyone in Texas on June 25th through the 28th.
Not attending ISTE this year? Follow along on Twitter with #ISTE2017 and travel with the Homework Gap Heroes via @Kajeet4Edu.