ISTE Day 3 Reflections: Part I - Exhibit Hall Review

I used the morning before my ticketed workshop to peruse the expansive Exhibit Hall.  Although I didn't have enough time to sit in on many product demonstrations, I did manage to make the rounds of the entire hall, ensuring that I checked in with our current vendors and ask any questions that I had.  One big problem we were having was with Discovery Education's MediaShare product  We couldn't consistently get View/Embed options on materials that we were uploading.  A visit to the DES booth, and I discovered (ha!) that we needed to classify the material as either audio or video in order to enable the option.  If memory serves correctly, I believe that we were coding them as activities or other classifications, so I'm excited to test this out when I return on Thursday.

Here are some other stops/observations:

• SMART (huge booth, right at the entrance - can you say Top Sponsor?)
• AverMedia (Vibrant and engaging presentations, walking doc cam mascot!, met with Dan Merryman)
• CDW (talked shop about Tablets and other hardware in the pipeline, Rafal's our guy!)
• Google (buried in the back, but still crowded all throughout - great teaching demo schedule)
• Turning Technologies (our current clickers of choice)
• Epson (I'm excited to test our seed ultra short throw)
• TechSmith (gave them compliments on Camtasia Pro)
• Microsoft (tried out Mouse Mischief, but wasn't sold on it, Office 2010 looks good, but teachers are just getting used to 2007...)
• Intel (interested in their Intel Teach program, will need to investigate more)
• Sprint (played with the EVO 4G!, inquired about teacher discounts for plans)
• AT&T (discovered I could have been saving 15% as a teacher for the past 2 years!)
• Calypso (played Sudoku, didn't win the iPod Touch...)