2021 ISTE Creative Constructor Lab Conference

 
This weekend I attended the 2021 ISTE Creative Constructor Lab Conference and presented 5 workshops on topics ranging from augmented reality to animation. The event is always a great experience because it's focused on creativity and innovation allowing many hands-on learning sessions and design challenges. 

I helped close out the mainstage session on Friday evening with a design challenge using Adobe Creative Cloud Express (formerly known as Adobe Spark) to create a short visual story focused on social-emotional learning and mindfulness tools. Here's a look at the Padlet with a few examples of educator stories.

Thanks to everyone who attended my #ISTECCL session on #animation this morning, I'll be sharing more resources but I'd love to see what you created too! Here's an animation created in @BinaryMoon's #BrushNinja to celebrate @iste's conference weekend ! pic.twitter.com/5MBXLy1E3V

— Tim Needles (@timneedles) October 16, 2021

The next session was focused on animation and we explored a varied of tools and approaches from simple free digital 2D animation tools like Brush Ninja to experimental tools like Google's 3D Monster Mash. That session was followed my a Creativity Salon in which attendees could chat and ask questions so we discussed some fun and engaging gamification tools and new emerging media. 

On Sunday, I had the opportunity to present with my pals Jen Williams, author of Teach Boldy, and Matt Dombrowski and we shared how to create GIFs and different ways to use them in class. As mems and GIFs are always popular with kids it was an interesting session and fun sharing our work out on social media.

The final session of the weekend was on augmented reality and I showed off a new AR tool that I've been using called EyeJack which allowed me to combine the social-emotional story from the 1st session along with the animation from the 2nd session together into an augmented reality work. The image above shows how easy the process was and below you can see it in action! 

My #ISTECCL session on #AugmentedReality video poems at the AR/VR Playground starts in 30 minutes-learn tools & techniques like how to pair #AR & Animation together with the @eyejackapp to make a video poem! pic.twitter.com/7UKsbdXCuT

— Tim Needles (@timneedles) October 17, 2021

It was a fast and furious conference but always enjoyable and in addition to sharing I was able to attend some great sessions and take away some new tools and tricks. My book STEAM Power is currently on sale in the ISTE book store as part of the event along with Jen's book which is fantastic so check them out!