ISTE 2014 and CMK 2014

            I am just returning from ISTE 2014 and Constructing Modern Knowledge 2014 (#CMK14 for those of you who wish to see what’s in the Twitterverse about it). Although ISTE wasn’t quite as good as in years past, and I wasn’t feeling quite well at the time, it was still great to hear what’s going on with EdTech around the world these days and reconnect with some great friends and colleagues to see what they have been up to. ISTE will be in Philly next year so it might be a cheap trip for some faculty to attend…. Which I can’t encourage enough.

            On the other hand, CMK14 was AMAZING!!!!! If I could have brought the entire faculty, I would have. If I were to take away one thing from the un-conference, it would be that I shared a room with 200+ brilliant educators and we all learned something without being taught!

            I have so many things to share about it, but at the risk of this post becoming a book, I will try to sum it up quickly. We started on day one, shouting out ideas to build things or solve problems… big and small. We then signed up for who we wanted to work with and I ended up becoming a part of “The Drone Team”. 

Our project was to build a drone… and that’s what we did. We were unsuccessful in making it fly but we all learned a lot from each other along the way. Here is a short video of our experience.

            https://vimeo.com/100518652

            And here are more video’s posted by all of the participants for your viewing pleasure. http://vimeo.com/cmk14/videos

            My family and I also got a chance to meet and chat with Super Awesome Sylvia.

 If you don’t know who she is… please go to www.sylviashow.com. She is a super awesome 13 year old who started making YouTube videos when she was 9 about making stuff! She is also (at 13) the inventor of the soon to be released WaterColorBot. http://watercolorbot.com/

            We also got to meet The Treehouse Master himself, Pete Nelson! 

http://www.nelsontreehousesupply.com/ What an inspiring and creative guy.

            I also got a chance to visit the MIT Media Lab and meet (again) Mitchell Resnick, Director of The Lifelong Kindergarten Group at MIT and creator of Scratch and (soon to be released) Scratch Jr. http://scratch.mit.edu/

            And… Best of all for me at MIT was the chance to not only meet but sit and chat with Dr. Marvin Minsky…. The “Godfather” of Artificial Intelligence. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky His mind absolutely astonishes me. And at 87 years old is still sharp as a tack!!!!

            The conference was put together by Gary Stager Ph.D. (@garystager http://stager.org/ ) and a group of brilliant faculty, one of which was Jaymes Dec (@jaymesdec - http://www.jaymesdec.com ), from the Marymount School in NY, who I met at NAIS in Orlando and is the reason I went to the conference (….and is one of the most awesome dudes I know).

            Dr. Gary Stager is the Co-Author of a book called Invent To Learn. READ IT!

            I know this is a brain dump of a post but take your time clicking on the links, and thanks for reading. I have a bunch more videos and pictures to share for those that are interested. Just let me know. 

            HAPPY SUMMER!

#CMK14