#ISTE19 Reflection

This June, I was lucky enough to present not one but two sessions at the ISTE conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I could not have been more excited to attend and present at this conference as it's the largest Ed Tech conference in the nation. The experience was terrific, but a little tricky as I tore my ACL two weeks before the conference and walking around a HUGE convention center was rough. Luckily had a couple of friends who were more than happy to take it slow with me and chill in comfy chairs when I needed to rest. But let's move past that.

I presented both sessions with my EdTech brother, Josh Harris (@edtechspec). Our first session, which we presented on the first day of the conference, is titled "Building an EdTech PD Program on a Tight Budget." This session was unique for both of us as it was the first session we've built that is exclusively for administrators. We both pride ourselves on our professional development skills, so talking about budgets and supervising teachers was a little new to both of us. Since this is the second time we presented this session, I think we were both quite comfortable with the content.

​If you're an ISTE member, you can watch our session here. 

Our second session was Tech Tools & Strategies for EL & LTEL Students and Their Teachers. It was a poster session and was super fun to present to a lot of different teachers from all over the country even though it is quite noisy because there are lots of other poster sessions in the same space. I've done poster sessions at CUE and knew what to expect from the crowd. Josh was a newbie to poster sessions and didn't think he'd enjoy it, but we both had a blast. We're both passionate about supporting our English Language Learners and their families. One thing we did discover is that LTEL (Long Term English Learner) is very much limited to California. We found ourselves explaining this term quite a bit. This session has inspired us to grow the website we built for the session found here and build out this session as an interactive session for future conferences.  

Like most first time ISTE attendees, I was super overwhelmed and not being able to walk as much as normal clearly made it more difficult. But, I'm now so excited to attend ISTE next year in Anaheim 2020. I can't wait to hit more sessions, connect with more people, and collect some swag! Hope to see you there!