Our final day at ISTE 2011 was as fulfilling as any of the previous three. My first session with Steve Hargadon and open source, open content and Web 2.0 was like taking a warm bath. I love open source and Steve is a great spokesman. I took notes and came away with some new information and some ideas for teaching students the LAMP stack. That is Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP. Steve suggested that those skill can get a high school grad a job and later in the day a billboard on I-95 indicated just that. I also learned more about Open Educational Resources and specifically Flexbooks. I also heard a really good discussion of Creative Commons and lots of encouragement to continue teaching about that and encouraging teachers and students to use share and share alike licensing with CC.
My second session was at ISTE Unplugged and the presenter was Lisa Nielsen, (@innovativeedu) whose blog I read regularly. She gave some good tips on using cellphones for teaching, learning and assessment.
In all I got a lot out of ISTE 2011 and I’m grateful to all the presenters, sponsors and ultimately taxpayers who made our trip possible. Thank you all! I got a lot of great ideas and leads to use in my classroom and to share with students and members of my personal learning network.