What I Wish for ISTE

Over the next five days, around 13,000 educator-types will head to San Diego for the annual ISTE Conference. It’s a tremendous experience and one of the best opportunities to talk with a whole lot of incredibly smart folks.

With all these great minds in one place, I have a bit of a wish list that I hope, selfishly, will become reality.

1. Let’s try to really start figuring out what it means for education to have the level of access to information and technology that we now have.
2. Let’s remember creativity.
3. Let’s stop fighting about the device (I’ll do my part as well).
4. Let’s stop talking about new ways to do old things that weren’t really all that good when they were the new ways.
5. Let’s figure out how to give up the worksheet. The analog sort and the digital.
6. Let’s write more.
7. Let’s figure out a new narrative for education. I think starting with Godin’s piece is a good place for us to start.
8. Let’s stop letting major companies and their incredibly successful marketing teams tell us what to do. Especially with learning.
9. Let’s just sit and talk about some stuff we really love and care about.
10. Let’s make something.
11. Let’s remember what Gary Stager recently reminded me to remember. As Alan Kay so aptly stated, “The computer is an instrument whose music is ideas.”
12. Let’s be courageous enough to listen to ideas that aren’t our own.

I look forward to the talks, the thinking, and the work ahead the next five days. I hope you do as well.