"ADAPT or DIE"

ISTE 2013 Conference (International Society for Technology in Education 2013 Conference)

The ISTE's 34th Annual Conference and Exposition was held in San Antonio, Texas from June 23-26. As an SBISD ETrainer I had the opportunity to attend to this important event thanks to the support of the Educational Technology Director (Sheri Alford) and Shadow Oaks Elementary Principal (Julie Baggerly).

The ISTE Conference was an eye opener! Teachers, authorities, vendors, students, and almost everyone involved either in the educational or technology fields attended to the conference. There was a multi-format interchange of ideas and people connections, using posters, keynotes speakers, vendors presentations, exhibitors demonstrations and hands-on sessions. Twitter, iPhones, tablets, netbooks, robotics, electronic technology, Bloom's taxonomy, multiple intelligencies, project based learning, "flipping the classroom", and more touching the most diverse areas of education and technology. Amazingly, all of them having in mind the achievement of our students' meaningful learning.

In this brief presentation I just want to mention some of my most important reflections after the conference, which follow: The Spring Branch T-2-4 needs a high quality education supported by the appropriate technologies. SBISD is in the right track of using technology to support education at different educational levels. There are still many areas of opportunity to increase the use of existing technology resources to improve students' education. We, teachers, have to think about the relevance of the old saying "adapt or die" and take action for the benefit of our students and ourselves.

In the near future I will continue posting more info about the ISTE 2013 Conference. However if you want to go ahead directly and take a look at their website, follow the link http://www.isteconference.org/2013/ .

STUPEFLIX training at SOE

Dear ETrainers, last Friday the 22th of March, I had the opportunity to train several SOE teachers on STUPEFLIX. They found this application very easy and straightforward to use. I agree because the conceptual structure of the menus is very logical and makes the program user friendly. Most of the attendants to the training created a complete video with different themes, pictures and sound. The only cumbersome part of the application seems to be the creation of your class because each one of the students should log in with their Google Apps accounts and then you as a teacher can identify them and include them in your class. However, this is not finally a big obstacle and is worth the work because you can check your students' videos. I think this is a great product that should be promoted as much as possible. Of course if you or your students are top level designers, most possibly you will need a Professional version of the product to create your applications but this is out of the scope of the current Teacher license we have. By the way, I created a STUPEFLIX presentation flipchart to share with all of you.