The ISTE Connection

Welcome to Educast three thousand. It's the most transformative time in the history of education.


So join us as we break down the fourth wall and reflect on what's happening, the good, the bad, and even the chaotic. Here's your hosts, Melissa Lobel and Ryan Lufkin.


Hello, and welcome to another episode of Educast three thousand. I am your solo host today, Ryan Lufkin. And the reason for that is because my usual co host, Melissa Lowell, is playing the role of guest this week along with Tracy Weeks from our academic strategy team. Welcome to both of you.


Thank you.


Thank you very much.


So So the purpose of this episode is, to do a recap of ISTE. You were both at ISTE this past week. Melissa, maybe start give us an overview of what you saw.


Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you that are listening that aren't familiar with ISTE, ISTE is a kind of the big k twelve US educational technology conference and I would also argue fairly global as well. So you do see quite a lot of attendance coming from particularly countries close to the US but actually all over the world.


It's usually a three day affair and it's full of not only sessions but also lots of opportunities to collaborate, build on new ideas. It's really an interactive experience with a massive exhibit hall. So that gives you a little bit of context. Kinda like edge cause.


Right? Like, maybe you're even a little bit more educator focused. Right?


Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually a really good point, Ryan. It is a lot like edge cause for our higher education listeners, but you get a lot of teachers that come and they walk the exhibit floor.


They go to sessions particularly to take back really good ideas that they can be using in their classroom as well as, like, educator administrators and things like that. So I'll tell you the vibe was energetic. It was in San Antonio so it was hot but the vibe was energetic and the thing I think that struck me the most and then I'll pass this to Tracy maybe she can say what what struck her the most was despite all of the challenges education is facing right now, it was an incredibly positive conversation. Like, every meeting session, it wasn't dwelling on, you know, how are we gonna survive, but it was more focused on what's the innovation that we can be driving?


How can we be thinking differently about the work that we do? And just really inspiring from a positive perspective.


That's great to hear.


Would you Yeah. Hundred percent, Melissa. I I definitely felt the energy and the passion. People were there to share.


They were there to learn. They were there to network. And networking is one of my favorite parts of ISTE. Always.


You build friends over time across the country that are in this field, and it's it's sometimes like a big reunion when you go to these things.


I always say that about educause. It's like old home week. Yes.


That's right. But yeah. And I think, you know, one of the big things too is everybody is just trying to learn, whether they're teachers, whether they're solution providers like we are, whether they're consultants out in the field, everybody is there to try to see, like, what's the conversation? What's the next new thing?


Yeah. Well, I can imagine right now, especially with AI having such an impact on education, there's there's so much innovation and so much change. Even with the headwinds and the challenges we're facing, there really isn't time to to sit back on our laurels and worry about that. Right? So what were some of the interesting things that people were focused on?


Yeah. I would say so AI is certainly still, you know, definitely out there. Although, I will say it feels like a shift rather than just being I feel like last year, AI was just the buzzword that you saw in every solution provider's booth. You it was the highlight of every session and everything.


And we're moving past that sort of what is it and I'm scared of it phase now to okay. Well, of course, we're gonna be talking about AI. I think it's moving from a question to an expectation. Yeah.


What do you think, Melissa?


Yeah. I agree. And in fact, I found it really interesting. So the ISTE team and and putting their their conference, they had a booth in their exhibit hall and it was how do I navigate ISTE was the focus of that.


And they talked a lot with people around what do you ask about AI? How do you dig in to get meaningful insights as opposed to just be either concerned about AI or looking at the flash? I think we've had a guest on before, Ryan, you and I have that called it AI candy. Yes.


And it was less AI candy, and it was more, you know, AI meaning. And I love that Isti was trying to help people sort of parse through that as well so that it just wasn't exciting and flashy or scary, but it was meaningful at the end of the day.


And I love to hear that because I think we've talked a lot about AI literacy and how driving AI literacy across both educators and students is incredibly important. But beyond AI, because, you know, it does suck the air out of every room, you know, in education right now. But but what else? I mean, I know there's a lot of talk about accessibility has been a hot topic. Right, Melissa?


Yeah. Accessibility was definitely a hot topic. Although, I would say it was a consistent thread across all topics as opposed to being a topic in and of itself.


Yeah. Which is great. Yeah.


You know, as you're talking about AI, it's how do we ensure these tools are accessible, not the lead conversation.


The other one that I really appreciated and so also for context, there's the main ISTE conference and then the day before the main ISTE conference, they do what's called the solution summit. It was the second year the solution summit ran. And this is a room about two hundred and fifty representatives from EdTech vendors or products or developers. And so they're coming into the room talking about how do we best serve, who we're about to talk to over the next couple of days.


Anyway, the conversation in that focused a lot around co design, and I loved that. Okay? And so in that room, it was how do we co design solutions with educators, teachers, districts, states, countries. It was also it actually started with, believe it or not, a keynote from Colin Kaepernick who talked a lot about co designing classroom experiences and how do you bring students closer to building their own learning experiences.


So it kind of started there and then I watched this thread play through ISTE as well around how are we together designing the future as opposed to how are we leaning on vendors to innovate or how are we leaning on districts to innovate or schools to innovate. So that co design theme really struck me, and it was unique this year. I I hadn't seen that as much in past years.


And I'll add to that because I think we also need to note that this is the first year since ISTE and ASCD Oh, that's right.


Merged and combined. In fact, all of the branding was ISTE plus ASCD.


And while it still very much looked, smelled, felt like ISTE. Right? I think that instructional design piece, while that definitely could be an ISTE piece, I really do feel that could be a palpable piece of ASCD leaning in there some. So I really did feel that sort of design and really kind of trying to help educators really think of themselves more as instructional designers.


I mean, let's remember, you know, in the history of things with teachers, you know, we used to have textbooks in our classrooms. We'd make our agendas, but we didn't design the textbooks. You might grab some worksheets and ancillary materials. But now that we've merged into, you know, a much more digital platform, teachers really are designing what the look and feel of their presence looks like. And so really helping teachers build that capacity, refine it some, and really imagine themselves as designers and how they can co design even with their students. I really do feel like that was a strong threat.


And I think AI is changing that too. Right? I mean, AI is making everyone a designer.


Yeah. You don't have to be you don't necessarily, you know it'll turn your lesson plan into a song or into it. Like, it it just creates this level of creativity that hasn't been there before.


Oh, yeah. I mean, even before, you know, we started this podcast today, I was asking Ryan, what's your favorite tool to do this or that? I mean, we're all creators now in such a unique way, which is really powerful.


Yeah. In all politics aside, I love Colin Kaepernick. He was a great presentation at ASU GSV this year as well. So great presenter, great message. But what are some of those other standout moments? Like, what what else was, kind of those highlights?


So Tracy and I had an opportunity. This is a smaller standout moment, so not everybody got to see this at ISTE. But we had a an opportunity to have an intimate conversation with some journalists and two just really special women from Troop County in Georgia.


And and it okay. So this was cool. And we didn't even know this. They both started new jobs on July first.


And we got to sit down and talk and learn about what they're doing in their schools on July first. So so the one woman, you know, is a more senior role, in the district. And the other woman, it was her first day as the principal of her school. And it was so cool just to talk to them and hear them talk about their future vision especially since it's day one.


It's like here's where I wanna go. And what I found really interesting was the balance of the conversation talked about not only ensuring skills forward education or learning. So they do a lot around industry alignment, local industry programs, but then also aligning to the social and, you know, durable or soft skills as well. And how they blend those two together was really, really powerful.


Don't you think so, Tracy?


I do. And, you know, we talk with the impactful eight a lot about education and industry partnerships.


This was a great example of a k twelve version of this. The Kia has a plant in their county, and so they have become major partners, but they're not the only one. They partner with lots of different companies and industries and are really sort of growing through the how does one support the other. And they said, you know, we've had to remind Kia a few times that we're not there just to create their next workforce. Right? We're trying to create people who can work everywhere, but, also, we will be creating folks for you and whether they're gonna be line workers or engineers and what have you. But then there's lots of other industries that they're working with and the school principal, her school is specifically a CTE focused school.


And so really is looking at all of those different sort of workforce alignment. So I really felt like it serendipitously, we didn't plan it this way, but they really kind of did a great job illustrating a lot of the things that we talk about with the future of learning through our impactful eight conversations.


I'll also add the reporter who was helping us with this conversation.


Anne Flynn.


Anne Flynn. Anne Flynn. Thank you. She was wonderful. So she also asked, like, how you managing the chaos?


I know you mentioned this at the beginning, Ryan, about there's a lot of Yeah.


You know, stuff going on. And so she asked that and then she specifically asked around equity and inclusion and how quickly in a good way these two ladies are like, oh, we're still doing the same work. We're just calling it different things. And that's okay.


We've done that all our lives. One woman she shared, you know, she has somebody on her team that came to her and is like, I think I need to change my title so that I can get sort of a different response. And she's like, yeah. That's no big deal.


Let's do that because we still wanna do this same meaningful work. We just may need to look at it or call it or frame it a little differently and that was actually relieving.


Yeah. Don't get hung up on those labels like DEI and social emotional learning.


And SEL.


Don't let the rhetoric get in the way of good teaching.


The teaching and I do and the good that those programs are doing, the the inclusion, the accessibility, the, you know, just positive nature of a lot of those programs.


You get lost in the political debate around them. So Yes. That's amazing. What else? Where are some of the other I don't know who else was, you know, noting or or any great takeaways there.


Honestly, Melissa and I didn't get to go to some of those big sessions because we were spending so much time talking with partners, talking with the media. We had a lot of media engagements going on there and meeting with a lot of the different associations that all show up. We were also excited.


At the same time, Instructure launched the tech top forty was released on Monday, and so that was something that we got to talk about.


Audience what the attack top forty is.


Yeah. So we take a look at and this is part of our work after acquiring Learn Platform, and they did this even before they became a part of Instructure. But they look across all of the districts that we're looking at and supporting and what are the top tools that are being used in our schools across the country. And we look at a number of things like what's being used by students, what's being used by teachers, how many of them are using AI, which ones have some level of ESSA verification, you know, for of evidence behind them.


And so they look at a little and we look for those trends. Right? And so the new magic number this year so I think that a lot of us thought that with the ESSER funds cliff having hit, that we might see either a flattening or a decrease in the number of tools. Nope.


It's up nine percent this year. So we've now got, in the past year, two thousand nine hundred eighty two products used on average over the last year in k twelve schools. So that number is up. Every number is up even if it's a tiny bit, you know, the number of unique tools that students use, the way the teachers use.


We do see some stability. There are a few new companies that have made it into the top forty. And, of course, we can put the link to the report Yeah. We'll let you let you let you know.


So that people can see and get all the nitty gritty. But it's just really interesting to see that, you know, it's continuing to go up. Now, I have my theories on why I think that's happening. Would you like to know what that is?


I would love those. Yeah.


Let's let's hear it. Let's hear it. Alright.


So here's my theory.


And this is I talked about this a lot this week while I was at ISTE. You know, before COVID, the number one complaint I heard from parents and grandparents and policymakers, many of whom are grandparents, was how heavy student backpacks were from carrying around all those.


And we had reports coming out on I'm not gonna say that's the reason I have scoliosis or that back. But But but, I mean, there were articles after articles being written on how much damage we were doing against.


Okay. So then the pandemic hits. Everyone shifts over to digital learning. You know, we hand off these laptops all over the place.


Teachers create their ecosystems in learning management systems and bring in all of these different apps to kind of so we're not bringing in worksheets anymore. We're finding apps to supplement, you know, our work, right, and really make it right for our students. And even though we've fully gone back to face to face learning, we have stayed in this sort of you know, the curriculum is still primarily delivered through digital means. Students are submitting their work through digital means.


Even though they're face to face talking with teachers, having all the normal activities in class, they still get their resources and deliver their work and their evidences of learning through digital means. And so one of the things I've talked about is, you know, states are gonna have to find ways to replenish the hardware because if they don't, then we're gonna have to go back to buying textbooks or use the really old ones at this point. Yeah.


Which just makes a lot of sense. I mean, when you look at how we spend our times every day. Right? I mean, we are on the digital platform right now having this conversation.


Right? We send emails exclusively, you know. I know lots of people who, if it's not on Slack, they don't respond. Right?


Like, we find our ways, but the, like, the digital nature of the world is not doing away. And so focusing on a on an analog experience for students does make a lot of sense in preparing for the future. Right?


Right. And so, you know, I think and also the other thing that we cannot discount is how much time teachers have built over the last few years building sort of their courses and their and what they're doing in this space. And, man, if I were a teacher and you suddenly said, you've gotta throw all that out and go back to doing it this other way, whoo, I would be upset. And we're trying to retain teachers.


Remember that? So so I'm not sure that I see it going away. What I do think we'll see, even if we see things start to to flatten out, I don't necessarily think that that necessarily means that the budget is affecting it as much as teachers are starting to get their tried and true apps that they trust Yeah. And that are making a difference.


Yeah. And maybe they pull in one or two new things each year or each quarter, but I think we may start to see it flattening out, but I don't know that it's gonna have as much to do with budgets.


And Melissa, how much do you think of that too is the new expectation around digitally native students and their we've heard about their attention spans being shorter and that, you know, they're on TikTok and Snapchat and the different tools that are, like, short bites, microlearning, if you will. But and so we've gotta create that more engaging experience. Right?


Yeah. I think so. I think it it's a good part that I also think it's a understanding that you can actually have more engaging and more learning first experiences when you really leverage technology. So so my dream and I did not see this.


I was gonna share my thoughts because I walked the exhibit floor quite a bit. My dream, and I didn't see anybody doing this yet, is really to leverage particularly AI, but digital capabilities today to build strong scenarios and simulation based learning and put that in the hands of teachers, actually, to create and build really powerful experiences. I did see something close to this. It was a a small company that's not quite in the US yet that they're looking to get into the US and and they do k through five learning and it the company is called Pick a Tail.


It was really interesting. They have this way for or they're about to release this way that teachers and students can create their own books.


And the way it was built, it's like this very engaging and student learning centered kind of experience.


That's to me a bit of a simulation kind of experience. And then if we take that even further and we think about I used to teach government in my early years as a high school teacher and I can just think of like the scenarios or even the simulations. Right? You are at a town hall. You're preparing for a town hall and you're a local congresswoman.


How are you now not only preparing for that but managing your audience? And and then the audience throws these questions at you. You can just kinda picture these interactive learning experiences.


And that's like that I didn't see. The other thing I didn't see that our friends from troop also brought this up.


Ways for learners to really easily collect and display everything that they've learned and all of the skills across formal and informal. We tend to lead more towards formal portfolio kind of experiences, but I think, you know, we're all kind of inching there, but we've gotta get away to have learners, have students be able to really represent themselves digitally. If we're gonna move into this digital world, we need to have that too. And I didn't really see that. What I did see a lot of though in the exhibit hall, a lot of talk about integration.


I think as I walked past and I was eavesdropping on demonstrations being done from big companies, little companies, Everybody talked about standards based integrations, integrations with LMSs.


This the idea of ecosystem, that was something unique that I hadn't seen in past years either at the exhibition core. It's very common at EDUCAUSE. Right? And high ride, very common. K twelve, it's becoming the de facto norm, and everybody leads with that part of the conversation as opposed to being all of these independent tools that are off. You know, you need eight logins to get into all of these different tools you're using. The ecosystem and the integration conversation, I did hear that quite a bit.


Which speaks to that student user experience. Right? Like, how do I navigate throughout my day so I don't have to remember eight passwords and I don't have to log into different systems. And I know clearly what I needed to do next.


Right? And I can follow that path. I think there's there's so much to that. That's great to hear.


Yeah. The company I was both delighted and did not expect to see at ISTE. I just would never have thought of them at ISTE. And it was right near the Instructure booth.


So Cricket, you know, the ones that make the little printers, you know, that you can make all the thing. They have Cricket for Education now, and they were showing all the different ways that it made perfect sense, you know, for teachers making their tote bags or or displays for their room or t shirts for their classes and stuff like that. I thought what a great connection because half of them are out there using it. Let's actually, like, focus on Yeah.


How this could could really be used even in the classroom and such. So that was a new one for me. I don't know if they've been there before. I've never noticed them before, but it was great to to see them there sort of feeding right into that.


Yeah. The maker culture is alive and well. Right?


For sure.


That also because I was really worried that was gonna die off during the pandemic because getting students access to these kinds of places and and with that shift then when we all went back to the classroom or or started to really lean in hybrid. And I actually Theresa, now she pointed that out to me as we're walking by. I'm like, okay. That's cool. That's different. And you Yeah.


We are no we are in no way sponsored by Cricket, so this is No.


We aren't. Yeah. That was just and I'm the least crafty of us all, but I still appreciated the fact that there are some huge Cricket fans out there, and they like that.


Well, I love that that increase in creativity both in the analog world and in digital space. And even the fact that we're able to kind of create consistency as they transition between those hybrid experience. That's pretty awesome.


I think another thing about ISTE that I think is pretty cool, and they've developed this over the last several years. I mean, this isn't certainly isn't a new thing, but for those who aren't familiar with ISTE, in addition to the hundreds and hundreds of sessions that they have, and, man, you could honestly spend the entire conference in the exhibitor hall if you wanted to just going and hunting for things. But they also have what they call playgrounds in different places where they have spaces so you could actually you know, like, when Maker Labs became really popular, you know, they would always have some of those.


But, you know, so different companies can have things set up. They also had an innovation lab that you could go in and kind of poke around on some things that were a little newer and such. So it's also nice to see places where people and they also had some reflective activities where you could put, like, those little pom pom balls in a in a bin to, like, vote on what you're thinking about the most for the next year. So they really do play to the educator ness of this of it all, which I personally find refreshing.


It gives you a time to sort of get out of that space and just kind of reflect a little bit.


Well, they're implementing what they're talking about from a teaching and learning practice perspective. Right? Right. I thought that was really cool.


Well yeah. And, like, pushing the boundaries of, like, the fact that we're seeing three d printers in classrooms and things like that. I mean, that's amazing. So cool.


Yeah. And you could see those all over the exhibit hall. Lots of those. We still see lots of robots and coding that was happening, LEGO type things Oh, yeah. Makerspace type things.


I've got a soft spot for the Lego the Lego competitions in engineering.


Oh, they're cool.


So cool. So it's such a great way to get kids with shared experience and collaborating together on solving problems and building with Legos. I'm just a Lego kid. I you know, I love that. So, sadly, my my son's a sporto, so he he spent more time playing basketball than playing with Legos. But, you know, I still wanna be on the Lego team at some point.


I remember.


To to wrap up, this has been a amazing recap. What are your biggest takeaways? Coming back to work, we kind of get back to it. What are your biggest takeaways from ISTE?


I had similarly I had two. One, we have to continue as a space to find the most efficient ways to help educators do their work so they can spend more time with kids.


Absolutely.


Because every time I talk to somebody I'd stop with somebody in the hall or somebody would be introduced to me or they come to a session or I'd listen to a session. I'm like I just want to sit down and be connected to that person. And if that same feeling is expressed to their kids, wow. I mean, we have an opportunity to really shape generations to come through that humanity piece.


But there's a lot of administrative stuff we're all still doing, so we've got to find ways. You know, I challenge vendors including ourselves to get better at more efficient, quicker workflows. How are we getting the the capabilities in the hands of teachers quickly and easily? Like, I just feel like it just reiterated to me the humanity piece of it, and we've got to give teachers the space for that. The second thing I think that that really struck me and that I walked away with was we need to do more storytelling in this space.


Oh, yes. Yeah.


So, I mean, we had the one example of the two wonderful women from Troupe, but I got to see and hear some of these other stories. Part of one of the sessions that Tracy and I were both in, people were talking about pivotal moments and when they realized either their practice needed to change or the world was changing around them. We just don't do enough storytelling because we're not giving ourselves enough time as educators to sit and share those stories and to listen and take in those stories. So I just I hope that as we look at future conferences, as educators, we think about all these different mediums where we're supporting and talking to each other.


We take the time to be storytellers in those because all of the little nuggets I walked away with a couple of different things of like oh in my teaching I'm gonna do that. Oh I like that. They just through stories. So if we can do more of that I think we can really help education in a time where it's really challenged.


That's amazing.


Well, thank you both so much for giving us a recap. Hope you had a great time last week. And for our audience, we'll have a whole bunch of notes in the show notes that you can link to. So thank you so much, and we'll see you next time on the Educast three thousand podcast.


Yeah. Thank you, Ryan. And we're gonna turn the tapes on you because I know you're for sure going to Educause, and Tracy may be going with you. So for all of our listeners that wanna hear this version of the higher ed conference, I think it's in October, actually.


Over. Yeah.


Yep. October twenty twenty five. Just stay tuned because we'll be streaming the kids on Ryan.


Yeah. Can't wait. Can't wait.


Thanks for listening to this episode of Educast three thousand. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and drop us a review on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss an episode. If you have a topic you'd like us to explore more, please email us at instructure cast at instructure dot com, or you can drop us a line on any of the socials. You can find more contact info in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Educast three thousand.