Tread Lightly at ISTE

In preparation for another exciting year of Tread Lightly, the team at TakingITGlobal was proud to represent Tread Lightly at the recent conference of the the International Society for Technology in Education. There were plenty of opportunities at the conference to engage with educators (and even some students!) about Tread Lightly and all its exciting components. TakingITGlobal hosted a partner booth for people to learn about Tread Lightly and other TakingITGlobal initiatives, and a poster session that highlighted Tread Lightly. Check out some of our photos below that show what a great week we had!

Tread Lightly is a climate change education initiative, developed by TakingITGlobal, that provides free online tools and resources to inspire educators and youth to reduce their ecological footprints.  These include a teacher toolkit with lesson plans for the secondary school level, a virtual classroom platform, video conferences, an eco-art contest, and an ecological footprint challenge. Teachers can access climate change lesson plans and create their own Tread Lightly virtual classroom preloaded with resources, to connect their classroom with other classrooms around the world.  Youth can submit to the Imprints eco-art contest and compete with their peers in the ecological footprint challenge.  Tread Lightly is available in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Visit www.treadlightly.me to access the free tools and resources, and for more information.

What a whirlwind of a week! From June 25^th-29^th, members of the TakingITGlobal for Educators (TIGed) all-star team attended the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) annual conference in Philadelphia. Kate, Sara, Kat, and Mike represented TIG and TIGed at this event that attracted nearly 20, 000 educators, administrators, and leaders in the field of technology and education. Keep reading for some of the team’s highlights.

Partner Booth

The team engaged with many ISTE-goers at their booth, where they provided people with information and material on various projects and initiatives in which TIG and TIGed is involved. Among other projects, TIGed’s professional development e-courses were highlighted, and the team was pleased to have professional development instructor and global education expert, Jennifer Klein, with them to engage educators in speaking about her work. It is always gives our team a boost of energy and a feeling of affirmation to witness the excitement that our work elicits among those who are new to TIG. TIG is grateful to ISTE for sponsoring this booth as a partner and supporter of the work that we do in the field of technology in education. Thanks also to all who stopped by to make our experience at the booth such a positive one.

Poster Sessions

TIG was lucky to have the opportunity to showcase our work in four poster sessions at ISTE. These 90-120 minute sessions were centred on Shout, DeforestACTION, Tread Lightly, and TIG’s educational games. Special thanks to Josh Falk from the Smithsonian Institution who spoke to people about tree banding, a citizen science project that is part of the Shout project TIG supports.

Adobe Youth Voices

One of our TIGed team members, Kate, is fortunate to be involved in Adobe Youth Voices as a course facilitator. Along with representing Adobe Youth Voices at the TIG partner booth, Kate sat on a panel at the Adobe Youth Voices corporate spotlight session, in which she shared her experiences with the program that connects educators from around the world in an online course for training in Adobe Youth Voices youth-generated media programming.

Events

The “I” in ISTE stands for international! As members of the international community at ISTE, the TIG team attended the international reception on the third evening of the conference. A diverse group of ISTE members were present with many interesting cultural exchanges taking place, and many international connections being made.

As proud members of the Canadian ISTE community, the TIG team attended the Canadian reception at ISTE, put on by MindShare Learning. It was great to connect with fellow Canadians and to discuss exciting future projects. Special thanks to Robert Martellacci and Aislinn Malszecki for organizing this event.