Education, Tech, and a whole lot of Coffee
The ISTE bear was bummed he couldn't get in (he was too big to fit in the building).
Last week, we traveled to the great land of Colorado to join over 15,000 educators from across the globe for the International Society for Technology in Education convention at the Denver Convention Center and WOW was it a blast.
Though we didn't have an Expo hall booth, Bloxels was recognized everywhere! We were active in events and playgrounds throughout the pre-conference and ISTE schedule in Denver. Our participation in ISTE 2016 included the Mobile Megashare Pre-Conference, inclusion in the iSchool Digital Learning Revolution Tour Bus, several ISTE PLN Playgrounds, and Vicki Treadway's Digital Storytelling Poster Session. It was very rewarding to see so many educators eager to empower the students in their schools, classrooms, and Makerspaces with Bloxels!
Classroom Gaming
STEAM education (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) has been a recent focus of many educators, and Bloxels excited many as it truly epitomizes every aspect of STEAM learning!
Teachers love Bloxels!
The hands-on experience of building and designing your very own video game resonated well with the educators, and they all couldn't wait to get this amazing tool into their students hands.
Bloxels received nearly all positive feedback and excitement from educators from around the world for its accessible game creation. It was were even featured, alongside Pixel Press's other video game building app “Floors”, in the eBook "Learning STEM From Play" by Kurt Klynen, a guide to the best STEM learning tools to bring into the classroom! You can view our blog post about this amazing eBook here.
Game Based Learning...with Coffee!
Bloxels presented at the inaugural CoffeeGBL, a discussion about game-based learning at Backstage Coffee, one of Denver's local coffee shops. When it was announced that Bloxels was going to present, there were only about 50 seats available for reservation. Those 50 seats were reserved in a matter of days. With the overwhelming requests to squeeze a few more seats in, we had expanded the guest list to about 70, which filled up again in a matter of days. The CoffeeGBL attendees had a great time building and creating with bloxels. All the responses were overwhelmingly positive, and some lucky educators even got to take home a set from our raffle!
We had a great time sharing the magic of Bloxels with all the amazing teachers and educators at ISTE 2016. Congratulations to all who got to take home a set from our raffles and giveaways! Kitty Tripp (@Kitty_Tripp) was the winner of our #BloxelsEDU Team-Builder 5-Pack Contest on Twitter. Once she has gotten a chance to implement Bloxels with her students, she plans to share how our platform has impacted her students and classroom. See you all next year!!!
