It's the biggest education tech conference in America, and pi-top was one of the hottest booths on the floor, so here's what went down when we hit ISTE2018.
Educators, businesses and professionals from all over the world descended on Chicago this month for ISTE, and pi-top was right at the heart of it. We hosted keynotes and workshops by teachers from across the USA, as well as talks by some of the most senior members of the pi-top team.
pi-top fringe event
However, the must-have ticket was to pi-top’s off-site fringe event held on the Tuesday evening. After drinks and networking, our own Graham Brown-Martin took the stage with a lively call-to-arms presentation on why the current education system is failing, and what we can do about it.
Next was Mitchel Resnick, Director of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab and founder of visual programming language, Scratch. Finally, Dr William Rankin, Director of Learning and Research at pi-top brought things to a close with a barnstorming presentation on learning by making.
Graham Brown-Martin (left), Dr William Rankin (centre) and Mitchel Resnick (right)
If you missed out on the fringe event, as well as our booth talks, don’t worry. We captured everything and will be posting it on this blog as soon as possible, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here’s some of our favourite moments from ISTE.
Brilliant booth
pi-top had one of the most stand out booths of the show, featuring cool, natural surfaces and plants that provided delegates with some much needed nature, as well as perfectly showed off the pi-top Learning System.
Team pi-top on the booth at ISTE2018
Learning by making
Split into two zones – sales bar and workshop – the pi-top booth was heavily attended throughout the show. The hands-on workshop sessions proved particularly popular with educators keen to understand learning by making and play with a pi-top.
The voice of the student
Teagan, our 16-year-old student ambassador, was on hand to explain to educators why pi-top appeals to her generation and to demonstrate just some of the amazing things it’s capable of.
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Meet your heroes
Perhaps our youngest fan was 9-year-old Try, who was visiting the show with his dad (pictured left) and his mom, who is a school superintendent from Washington state. Try is a huge fan of CEEDuniverse, where players explore alien worlds and advance their knowledge of science, technology and code. The game was designed by Marko Mizdrak (centre), who signed up Try on the spot as a beta tester for new updates of the game – cool!
Keynote content from ISTE2018
As you can see, we certainly made an impression at ISTE, and all our booth speakers' presentations will be available on this page shortly. Our fringe event meanwhile, will be available as a streamable video a little after that, so subscribe to the blog or make sure to follow us on social media, at @getpitop, our Facebook page here or our YouTube Channel.
