Top 3 Takeways and Memories from ISTE 2014

For the past week, I've had visitors from Sunday to Sunday and now I finally have time to blog about my first experience at ISTE 2014 last weekend. ISTE was nothing short of invigorating. A couple weeks ago, I went to the whole brain teaching conference and was blown away and now I'm all WBT + Tech Tools = Sweet 1st Grade Classroom!

If any of you have ever been ISTE then you can attest to how massive and overwhelming it is! ISTE was here in Atlanta this year {super convenient for me}, and it took over the entire Georgia World Congress Center. From the hundreds of sessions, playgrounds, and the ginormous EXPO hall it was nearly impossible to see and do it all! I'm going to share my top 3 takeaways from ISTE in order to commemorate and recap my experience.

Tech Centers

My favorite session, and the one in which I feel I learned the most was actually my first one with Nancye Black. She led a session on technology centers and showed how to differentiate for primary and intermediate. The centers she discussed were movie making, blogging, digital storytelling, voice recording, desktop publishing and presentations. During the session, I thought of a ton of ways I could incorporate each session since we will have 4 computers, 1 android tablet and 2 iPods in the classroom! {whoop} Nancye also led another session I attended about writing which introduced me to storyjumper.com and my story maker! Exciting stuff people!

                                                                   
The poster sessions were also great! Each day they had different presenters with posters sharing their technology infused ideas, lessons and activities. Some of my favorite posters were using ipads with guided reading and flipping a kindergarten classroom. I was also able to have some quick conversations with both the teachers and received some really great advice. The networking I was able to do at ISTE was definitely a major takeaway as well. I even set up an opportunity to video conference with another first grade class this year! Awesome!

 The expo hall was surely memorable and where I had the most fun! Visiting the different exhibitors and seeing the technology they had to offer. My favorite exhibitor had to be Class Flow becaaaaauuuuseee I was able to watch in action with students from the Ron Clark Academy and Ron Clark himself! Loved it! {Posted a video on my Instagram}

Lots of goodies and freebiess, giveaways and raffles as well! I was a winner twice! I won a free subscription to science4us.com and a mobile hotspot. If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen this pics!

Overall, ISTE 2014 was one of the most exciting professional experiences I've ever had. It made me more excited about my passion for using technology and I look forward to ISTE 2015!

Here's a flipagram of my experience!