At ISTE in San Antonio, the PRP Storytelling Suite was Texas-sized

By: Chris Piehler 

The PR with Panache! Storytelling Suite was bustling with activity at ISTE 2017.

Ensconced in the Stetson Room at San Antonio’s Hilton Palacio del Rio, we coordinated more than 90 meetings between 20+ media outlets and our seven innovative ed tech clients: 

• 7 Mindsets, the national leader in mindsets-based social and emotional learning;

• ABCmouse for Schools, producer of the multi-award-winning ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy; 

• Alive Studios, leading provider of augmented reality early education software;

• Game-based learning platform Kahoot!;

• Classroom audio innovator Lightspeed, A Learning Company;

• Reading Horizons, a multisensory curriculum used to rapidly increase reading skills; and

• Typing Master, a leading provider of engaging keyboarding courses.

At 8 o’clock on Monday morning, we jumped right in with live client interviews on Education Talk Radio, featuring the inimitable Larry Jacobs. Our multimedia extravaganza continued as our clients appeared in exclusive video interviews with Tatum Sandler, a savvy 9-year-old tech reporter for Nibletz.com.

Following a busy morning of media meetings, Monday’s lunch, sponsored by Defined STEM, featured a presentation from Dr. Michael Speziale, the former Assistant Superintendent of Dallas public schools and CEO of Mida Learning Technologies. Dr. Speziale and his team shared their research findings on project-based learning and problem-solving. The big takeaway? Project-based learning provides students a deep, meaningful understanding of content while engaging them in a highly motivating learning environment that ultimately helps them perform better on a wide range of assessments.

Tuesday was meetings, meetings, and more meetings, punctuated by another enlightening lunch-and-learn, this one with Texas Instructional Technology Specialist of the Year Brianna Hodges and the GreyEd team of Julie Carter and Omaha Public Schools’ Executive Director of Information Management Systems Rob Dixon. The question at hand was a big one: “Who’s actually responsible for technology integration and implementation?” The panelists delved into the “hot potato effect” between curriculum, IT, and the multiple players of implementation, and collaborated with their audience of administrators from around the country on a hands-on exercise that created an “ed tech playbook” for the upcoming school year.

 Rob Dixon and Julie Carter of GreyED led one of our enlightening lunch-and-learns.

Beyond the hot potato, what were the other hot topics at ISTE 2017? The company Smart Penguin, which creates Twitter analytics for education, used its ISTE “tweet-analyzer” to produce a breakdown of the areas that were commented on most often by educators at ISTE. The winners were:

1. Constructivist learning/maker movement;
2. Assessment/evaluation/standards;
3. Communication and collaboration; and
4. Augmented and virtual reality.

As hosts of the Storytelling Suite, we were especially pleased to see that, among teachers, “storytelling and multimedia” was the most popular topic, mentioned in nearly 500 tweets, according to Smart Penguin.

As always, ISTE was a fantastic way to connect with old friends and meet some new ones. We’re already looking forward to ISTE 2018 in Chicago!

Thanks for sharing!