Each of these is a big question that I will need to reflect on as I return to Hong Kong and immerse myself in the business of this city.

Let me reflect for a while on the sort of elements that the conference had about it that made it memorable for me and for many of the other educators present.
1.    It was clear that all of those behind the conference supported the concept and wanted to make it a great success. This was true of the organizers, Julie and Vicky, who clearly had a clear shared vision, the school who supplied the support personnel and allowed the students to take time off to be involved and the sponsoring agencies who gave generously to ensure it was well resourced.
2.    The basics were taken care of well. The hotel accommodation worked, the bus pick ups were timely, the instructions were clear, the meals and snacks were generous, the rooms held the right number of people, there was a schedule that participants and presenters stuck to.
3.    The mission and purpose of getting students to work on a project of their own choosing that they believed could make a difference in the world was always front and center. Even the teachers who were not working with the students but were attending the ISTE sessions and focusing more on leadership could not help but be affected by the student mission in all of the sessions.
4.    The element of internationalism gave a genuine feeling to what was being put forward. There was little doubt that students were working on a global project when they were sitting across a table from other students who had flown in from many corners of the globe. The way that the Arabic students dressed added another element of authenticity.
5.    It was clear that there was “buy in” from all present early. Teachers and students became aware of the “global challenge” aspect of the conference via things like the build up of the Thomas Friedman link up and the clear international flavor of the facilitators. The Don Tapscott link up turned out to be an added bonus but all were well and truly hooked by then.

It was interesting for me to note that there were some teachers for whom the leadership stream did not make enough sense. I had lunch on the last day with some teachers that were Jordanian and had not been part of the student conference but had merely been involved in the ISTE and teacher presentation workshops. They had come along to learn more about how to use a lot more tools in their classrooms and had felt that the morning of workshops was about the only thing that was right on the money for them.
I found this valuable feedback and wondered if other teachers who had not been immersed with the students might have felt the same way. My assumption is that they would not have as I did spend my time talking to and networking with a great many educators at the conference. Many of these had a variety of roles in Qatar Education City and almost all were “infected” with the enthusiasm of the conference and the motivation of the students. To explain the experience of the Jordanian teachers I would make two points. The first being that it is important to disseminate out as much information as possible prior to conferees signing up. This is especially so of the themes, aims or outcomes expected from conference attendance for all target audiences. The second thing is the age old adage of “you will never please 100% of the people 100% of the time no matter what you do.
I think this event came very close. Well done again to all!

Jason mentioned two tools for classroom organisation:

Termites for creating seating plans

and Monkey, for creating productive groups

Here is what he had to say about each:

Termites allows you to input ‘relationship’ scores for your students. That is, if you think that they work well together you give them a score up to +10 and if you’d rather that they didn’t sit together you’d give them a score as low as -10. The generator takes these values into account when allocating seats. If you have a student who has poor eyesight you can specify that they are placed at the front of the room. If you have a real firecracker you can even ‘glue’ them to the seat closest to you so that you can keep a wary eye on them and everyone else will be shuffled around them.

Creating the table layout is also blindingly simple. You are presented with a grid of whatever size you like. You then click on a box to make it a table and click on it again to clear it. Very easy to set up rows or pods.

And Monkey:

Monkey works on the same principle of entering relationship values but also gives you the opportunity to input an ‘ability’ score from 0 to 100. You then have the opportunity to group according to ability as well as taking into account the relationships. Group size and number is customised in the same way as for Termites and so is ‘glueing’ a student into a group.

They both sound like they are worth checking out.

Clive Dawes and I also had a conversation last week about online mindmapping software. Clive introduced me to Best for Chart, which looks great for any diagramming. The collaboration tools look really easy and powerful as well.

Clive also suggested that Awesome Highlighter may be a good way to get some of the functionality of Diigo without all of the other tools that can confuse the first-time user. I have to say that the additional commenting tools, the ability to share bookmarks to multiple lists, including delicious and the numerous other social networking features make Diigo a clear winner for me.