bradshreffDespite my disappointment with the lack of actionable tools or ideas in the first round, I’m back for round 2 of Ignite at ISTE. In my defense, I looked over the list of presentations for this round and they look like they will fulfill my desires.
We opened with Sylvia Duckworth talking about the sketchnoting revolution. She talked about the power of doodling in cognition and retention, then talked about the #sketchaday and #sketch50 movements. I am interested in ways to integrate these concepts into my room, school, and my own practice, so I’ll be reaching out to her for sure.
In the vein of yesterday’s talks, Judah Mantell, a high school junior, told us about he made his first video game while a freshman on his own time, then moved on to creating his own game studio and is now in development of his third video game. He did a great job of explaining the process to a bunch of teachers who wouldn’t otherwise know what he’s talking about. He also talked about getting funding on Indiegogo (getting 125% of his goal) and wanting to get on Steam. He was definitely an impressive kid.
Connected education, using Skype methods to connect to other kids throughout the world was next. I see value here for elementary (Todd Flory is a 4th grade teacher), but I’m not sure I see the value of it for middle or high school.
Now a session on Fake News. The presentation is called “Fake News: Created by Trump?”. A little click-bait-y if you ask me. He gives facts about students not knowing how to spot fake news (we all know that) and how critical it is that they can. He also talked about his company to close out the talk. Ad? Really? Interesting given that he talked about students not being able to identify sponsored content…
Jenn Giffen presented a session called “We Can All Do Better.” She told a couple of powerful stories (including a student learning the national anthem of Canada in only 5 days, despite never learning anything on the piano in months of lessons), but one that I thought was powerful was the story of Joshua (not real name, probably not even the one she used…I don’t remember). He was “the kind of kid that would rather look lazy than dumb”, but in one particular case, he asked Jenn for help on a tough assignment for another class. She helped him, his mom helped him, his mom said it was the best thing he had done in all of school and she had never seen him so passionate. After the assignment was due, Jenn saw the teacher the project was for and found out that Joshua hadn’t turned in the project. When questioned, Josh said “I didn’t turn it in, because in my bag, it is still good.” Dang.
Well, as we close out Ignite Round 2, I feel like I got a couple of things. I even opened up OneNote and started sketching something. It’s terrible, but I tried.
Now to the expo floor, because I need a stylus.