Please vote for the ISTE 2010 conference keynote!

The next phase of ISTE’s 2010 conference keynote crowdsourcing project is now live. Go vote!

The top 5 topics were as follows (in order):

Effective school leadership for the digital, global era

Trends, tools, and tactics for 21st century learning

Personal learning with 21st century tools

Universal design for learning

Why has technology affected so little change on teaching and learning?

This image shows how many votes each topic received:

ISTE has asked us not to campaign for speakers (see highlighted section below):

I understand what ISTE is trying to do, but I think that there’s an awfully fine line between campaigning and explaining. For example, if I say on this blog that I think Chris Lehmann would be a phenomenal speaker for the leadership topic – and that I hope voters give him all 3 of their votes – is that campaigning or explaining? If I say on Twitter that the voting for ISTE keynote speakers is now live and that I voted for Chris, is that campaigning or explaining?

If I elucidate further in the comments area why Chris would be a great keynote presenter, is that campaigning or explaining?

The bottom line is that we all can have a voice now. It seems to me that ISTE is trying to make this voting area a closed space – separate from all of the other conversation spaces that we have available to us – and I just don’t think that’s either logical or feasible. Nonetheless, in deference to ISTE’s wishes, I’ll put away all of the cool electronic campaign buttons for Chris that CASTLE’s technology director, Laura Bestler, made over the past two weeks [sigh] (if you’d like to see them, drop me an e-mail). I am happy that ISTE’s trying this experiment; it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

So please go vote for your choice(s) for ISTE 2010 conference keynote speaker. If you don’t see the name you want, make sure you’re in the right forum and then add him or her to the list. Happy voting!