Another ISTE Day!

Adobe Education Leaders Booth

Monday was a very busy day.  It started with a "booth meeting" at 8:30 a.m.  This is where they go over all of the details of working in the booth.  After this I had some time to walk around the different exhibits.  This exhibit hall is so large, there was no way I was going to see everything.  I did have a change to stop by the Gaggle booth and the Moodlerooms booth.  I looked for Schoolwires, but didn't see it.  Talked to the Gaggle guys about Google Apps and student e-mail.  Talked with the Moodlerooms guys about cost of their services as an option for our Moodle situation. I had a session on Google/Moodle.  It was awful.  The speaker really didn't teach anything.  He just talked a lot.  I left early and spent some time in the Adobe booth.  Learned about a new extension for Photoshop called LevelUp. I had some time to play around with this and it looks great for students.

PETCO Center

Had a chance to go back to the hotel before meeting everyone at the booth at 5:30 p.m. to walk to the Marriott Gasslamp Altitude Sky Lounge. It is located on top of the Marriott Hotel.  Here is a picture I took looking out at PETCO Center where I watched the Padres play the Mariners Saturday night.

 It was a beautiful view of the water, too.

Denny Washington's Yacht, Attessa

Tuesday morning we had breakfast at the Marriott Bayfront.  This hotel was right across from the San Diego Marina.  Very close to where Denny Washington's boat, Attessa was docked.

After breakfast, I volunteered to help out at the poster session for the Flat Classroom group.  It was fun to meet Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsey and some of my classmates from the Flat Classroom Certified Teacher class that I took.

 

Once that was done, I stopped by to see Joe Dockery who was teaching a Flash Animation class.  His daughter was helping him and I got to meet her.  Spent some more time in the Adobe booth, with some great people and then headed out to have dinner with Diane Woodard and Dustin Herbert.

Diane, Dustin and I took a ferry over to Coronado Island and sat outside overlooking San Diego bay and had dinner at Peohe's restaurant. We didn't have much time there.  I would have liked to have a few more hours to explore the island.

 
Wednesday morning I had a workshop to attend.  This was an InDesign workshop taught by a fellow AEL, Linda Dickeson.  What a great lady.  She has written books about the software I teach called, ClickStep.  It was really nice to have met her before, while in the booth, and help her out during class.  It was a pretty basic InDesign class, but I picked a few things up that I think I knew before but forgot about.



 
After the workshop, I headed to the Adobe booth to say goodbye to everyone.  Diane and I went to lunch at, of all places, Dick's.

We shopped a little and then headed to the airport.  I have to say the days went very fast.  I love San Diego.  The weather was beautiful.  It was sunny and in the 70's with no humidity, which made it very nice. I have to get back here again some day and spend some vacation time.



Here is a link to all of the sessions.  If you click on a session, you will have access to the presenter's materials.  There are some great resources here!  ISTE 2012 

 

Arrived San Diego Friday afternoon.  Wow, I love San Diego - water, sail boats, no humidity, no clouds, beautiful, sunny - just love it.  Staying at the Hilton Bayfront which is right next to the convention center.  Immediately upon checking into my hotel, I had to go outside and look around.  I was only going to go for a short walk, but ended up walking all the way past the convention center (which I must add is quite long)  past the Marriott hotel, down to the Seaport Village which had a lot of little shops. I was wishing I had my camera, but wasn't planning on being gone that long.  

Went back to my hotel and rested a little and then decided to go to the Gaslamp area for dinner. Went to the Ocean Room, where I sat out side and ate seafood, of course. Sat outside overlooking the Gaslamp area.  Quite a nice restaurant and very relaxing atmosphere.  

Saturday morning I got up and worked on my Montana Digital Academy class and my WM-CSPD Moodle online class. I had to make sure all of my grading was up-to-date and my next week's curriculum was ready to roll out.  Got all of that taken care of and started studying for my co-presentation the next day - Shooting & Editing DSLR Video. 

Diane Woodard came in around 1 p.m. and we went to the convention center to pick up our registration packets and grab a quick lunch.  After lunch we went to the pool at the Hilton, which is right on the water. Went through our ISTE booklet to determine what sessions we might want to go to. 

That night we went to a Padre's game at PETCO Center which was right near the hotel.  We had great seats - 20 rows up from home plate.  Thanks to Scott Edge's sister, who got us the tickets!  It was fun to be at a professional baseball game.  I think the last time I was at a professional game was in high school.  I remember going to a Yankee's game.

 Monday got up early to meet Joe Dockery (the presenter) at 8 a.m. to get everything ready for the class that he was presenting and I was helping him with.  It was a great day, although, on my feet a long time.  This was a six hour presentation; three hours in the morning and three in the afternoon.  During the morning students learned about the DSLR camera settings and the afternoon students learned how to edit video using Adobe Premiere Pro.  This was a nice sized class with only eight people in it. 

After class we stopped by the Adobe booth.  This was actually quite a treat for me because for years I had been going to these types of conferences and would see all the exhibitors setting up their booths.  As attendee's we were never allowed to to go in to the exhibitor area until a certain day/time.  So this was just kind of a treat.

In the evening I caught a cab to the Island Prime restaurant for dinner. I have to say, it was a little taste of heaven for me - a restaurant right on the water!

Met a lot of great people, that speak my same language. Sat with a very nice gentleman, Johann Zimmerman from Adobe.  He is from Germany.  I spent quite a bit of time talking with him.  He told me he used to run the conferences, but doesn't anymore.  Little did I know he was going to be giving a speech and introducing the new "head guy" at Adobe.  I didn't expect that - he just seemed like a really nice guy.  I also sat next to Linda Dickerson, which was also a treat.  Joe Dockery introduced me to her books year ago, but I had never met her. Very nice lady.  I think I am really going to like this Adobe Education Leader program - lots of great people that speak my language.  I also like the way Adobe really seems to listen to the AEL's and make changes to their programs based on the feed back they get from their educators.

 ISTE Coming Up!

Wow, a lot has happened since the last time I posted.  School is over for the summer.  Lots of changes in our district.  I am teaching two online classes this summer.  I am teaching a Web Design class for the Montana Digital Academy and a Moodle class for teachers for WM-CSPD. I am creating the Moodle class from scratch so that has been taking a lot of time.

Went to a meeting this morning about the future of CTE (Career & Technical Education).  We discussed many directions that CTE might take.  Talked about tightening up our Career Pathways, Dual Credit/Articulations and Internships. More research will be done and we will meet again.

Getting excited about going to ISTE and co-presenting.  Spoke with Joe Dockery this afternoon about the presentation and other Adobe events, such as dinners, receptions and serving in the Adobe booth.  I am very excited about being able to serve in the Adobe booth.  In fact, I was going to call my Adobe contact to see if they needed any help in the booth.  I started to realize that I really need to get my ISTE schedule under control.  I have also signed up for many workshops.

I also received e-mails from the Flat Classroom creators, Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsey.  The would like the Flat Classroom Certified teachers to help out a poster sessions they are doing.  Therefore, I put together my schedule between the workshops I signed up for, the Adobe/AEL activites, co-presenting to see if I had time to help out with the Flat Classroom poster sessions.  Found a window of time to be able to do this.

It is going to be a very busy week, but it is all stuff that I love, so I am really excited.

I am going to Schoolwires training on Wednesday and Thursday of this week in a kind of train the trainer model.  I fly to San Diego to where ISTE is this year on Friday.  Going to spend most of tomorrow staying on top of my online courses, studying for my co-presentation on DSLR Video and starting to get all of my gear organized to pack for ISTE.