As I’m sure many of you are, too, the staff here at Digital Directions magazine is gearing up for four of some of the busiest, exhausting, and inspiring days in the ed-tech world: the upcoming ISTE—formerly known as NECC—2010 conference in Denver starting June 27. We’ve booked our tickets, planned some meetings, and now we’re hashing out the final details of what we’ll be attending and checking out. Between the workshops, the sessions, the keynotes, and all of the other events going on, there’s quite a bit we’re excited about.
The conference will kick off with a keynote speech from Jean-François Rischard, the former vice-president of the World Bank, who will talk about the role of educators and technology in global problem solving. Throughout the conference, we’ll also hear from Karen Cator, the director of the Office of Education Technology for the U.S. Department of Education, and of course, Don Knezek, the chief executive officer of ISTE, or the International Society for Technology in Education. The conference will close with remarks from Jeff Piontek, the head of school at the Hawaii Technology Academy, a state-sponsored virtual charter school.
The theme this year is Exploring Excellence, which is what I hope many of the panelists, lecturers, and speakers address. Plexi-storyboards will be set up around the conference and in the lounges for folks to share their personal definitions of excellence. Also, if you’re around on Sunday, perhaps you’d like to partake in the exploring excellence cafe, where groups can collaborate to define excellence and explore what that means in education. In addition, authors such as Liz Kolb, who we’ve talked a lot about on the blog and in the magazine, will be doing meet and greets at the conference.
As we finalize our schedules and decide what to cover out of the hundreds of options available, we’d like to hear from you. Is there anything you’d like us to focus on? What interests you most about this conference?
We hope to see you at the conference, but for those of you who won’t be able to make it, and for those of you who do, check back frequently June 27-30 for our live coverage of the event here on the Digital Education blog.