ISTE Live 2024 just wrapped up, and it was an event full of timely conversations, innovative ideas, and emerging technologies. The Discovery Education Team enjoyed connecting with educators, listening to sessions, and learning about the latest technology coming to classrooms! Read on to find five memorable mantras we gleaned from ISTE 2024 and plan to keep in mind for the 2024-2025 school year.
1. Creativity is calling—in classrooms, lessons, and emerging technology.
A highlight of ISTE Live 2024 was Camp Creativity, where educators could attend workshops on inspiring creative thinking and view artifacts that reflected personal expression and learning. Creativity is a great way to increase student engagement, and many sessions shared project ideas and new approaches for inspiring students as creators rather than simply passive learners. Strategies like offering a makerspace, providing multiple options for representing learning, and leveraging technology to empower students to think outside the box and motivate creative thinking across the classroom!
2. Immersive Learning is expanding, and so are its practical uses!
The Innovation Arcade was another hot spot at ISTE Live 2024! Educators got to immerse themselves in the worlds of AI, AR, VR, and learn about how all these exciting new technologies can fit together for student learning. Immersive Learning has continued to grow and evolve as new devices and platforms have emerged, and sessions emphasized the practical ways to bring Immersive Learning to the classroom.
Attendees learned about how AI can be a powerful tool to save teachers’ planning time. Sessions discussed how educators can leverage generative AI to create questions about reading passages, scaffold activities and instructions, or generate necessary background information to help students understand new content. Many sessions about AI, AR, and VR also focused on ways to infuse these technologies into different content areas of STEAM.
3. Technology is not just for delivering information, it’s also for information output!
While many EdTech products and platforms make it easier to share information with students, ISTE’s sessions flipped the script, and explored how technology can help students share their learning. Sessions focused on unique, technology-forward ways to assess learning for various age groups, such as video and digital media production. Technology is meant to be a vehicle to help the learning process move along, and sessions on pedagogies like problem-based learning helped highlight ways that mindful infusion of technology can simultaneously build academic skills and digital skills!
4. Personalized learning is proving to be a dynamic tool for promoting individual thinking, introducing career paths, and differentiation.
Many sessions this year emphasized the versatility of personalized learning, and it isn’t just for remediation or acceleration anymore! ISTE presenters pointed to personalized learning as a great way for responding to student affect and capitalizing on student interests to increase their ownership over the learning process. With the help of technology, educators can better differentiate instruction and provide students with more choice that aligns to each student’s interests. For example, teachers can build various modules for students to select lessons or offer open-ended research opportunities. Student agency can lead to increased autonomy and inspire personal inquiry about academic and career-focused topics.
5. Games are great vehicles for building teamwork, digital skills, and student engagement.
Learning felt like play time at ISTE this year! Gamification and Academic Esports were popular session topics at the 2024 conference, and these concepts can improve student engagement and create a new buzz about learning.! From digital board games and breakout rooms to virtual quiz shows, students can explore new topics or explain what they’ve learned with gamified lessons.
ISTE Live 2024 may be finished, but the learning has just begun! As the 2024-2025 school year approaches, there are many new ideas, techniques, and strategies to try in the classroom. ISTE spotlighted just some of the great work taking place in classrooms across the nation, and DE is excited to see how education continues to evolve from here!
