T&L Advisor Guest post — Carl Hooker, Director of Instructional Technology, Eanes I.S.D., and author of the Mobile Mindset series: This week in Chicago, the largest U.S. gathering of CTOs and tech directors is happening with the annual CoSN conference. It’s been a few years since I’ve attended one of these events and I can honestly say, it’s not the same as an ISTE-type conference that is geared more towards teachers and educational technology. As I’m not there this year, I am trying to attend virtually to keep my finger on the pulse of what is being discussed. Tech & Learning’s live stream helps as well as following the #CoSN17 hashtag on twitter. The theme for this year’s event is "Invent the Future" and it looks like there are many sessions geared around that very theme as well as others that I would call "Remember the Past" sessions. Some "Invent the Future" topics include moving into the Virtual Reality space in the classroom, including a VR Pavilion (the Twitter feed is littered with pics of people wearing VR goggles) and the growing shift towards more OER content (ironic considering HMH and Pearson are sponsors). In terms of "Remember the Past," one area that we need to focus more of our time at events like these discussing the successful "marriage" of IT and curriculum and less about how different we are in those two fields. Maybe my next book should be "IT Staff are from Mars and Curriculum is from Venus?"
