ISTE 2012 in San Diego

     At the end of June, from the 24th to 26th, I had been in San Diego for a great opportunity.    Myself, along with other members of the CA 4-H Technology Leadership Team, attended the International Society of Technology of Education (ISTE) Convention at the San Diego Convention Center.  We went down to ISTE to showcase different technologies that youth in California 4-H are learning.  Our responsibilities at ISTE would take place on Monday the 25th and Tuesday the 26th, so we all had traveled down the day before.


     Since I know San Diego quite well, I had volunteered to pick those arriving at the airport Sunday night.   Everyone was flying in around 7:30-8:00.  With a two hour drive to San Diego, I figured I would have to leave no later than 5:30 pm to make it to the airport on time.  Knowing me, I really wanted to travel down a few hours before I had to pick people up from the airport to enjoy San Diego.  I kept fighting with myself if I should leave early or not.  The biggest question for me would be what can I do with no money?  I got sick and tired of staying in the house, so I said I will just hang out at the beach before they arrive!  I packed up the car, and headed down.  This time, the drive was nicer than usual, because I was driving my mom's Pacifica down.  I figured I would need the extra room for everyone's luggage.  I love driving my mom's car mainly for the awesome stereo system it has.  Many might say that it is just a standard stereo, but it was awesome for me because it was way better than what my car has.  I arrived in San Diego around 4:30 pm, and I had decided to just go over to Ocean Beach to kill the time.  Why Ocean Beach? Because it wouldn't be that far from the airport.

     I was amazing by how crowded Ocean Beach was.  Normally I can find parking no problem by the dog beach, but it took a few loops around the parking lot before I finally found a spot.  From there I walked down towards the water, then walked south towards the pier.  While walking, I knew this was a great idea!  The nice, sunny and 70 degree weather with a light breeze felt amazing.  Way better than the high 90's that was at home.  As I got closer to the pier, many more homeless and/or real poor people were hanging around.  Also big groups of people my age and younger were just hanging out.  As I climbed up the stairs of the pier, I thought if I should really walk out to the end of the pier.  Nothing was out there.  Just one small cafe and many fishermen.  I looked at my phone, and realized I still had an hour to kill before I should head off to the airport.  As I was walking out on the pier, I noticed the many surfers that were in the water catching waves.  I stopped and watched them for awhile.  At the same time, I really wanted to kick myself for not having my camera with me.  My camera with my telephoto lens would do wonders here.  Also realized how beautiful the beach looked from the pier, and though how much nicer it would be if no one else was on the beach.  I walked out to the end of the pier.  I chilled out for a little while, looking out to the horizon and then turning around to look back at the shore.  I begin to get bored.  At this time, thoughts started to go through my head.  I miss my friends, from those who live close to me, and those who live all over the country.  I also began to wish I had someone special to share this wonderful day with.  While these thoughts had been spinning in my head, the shore just south of the pier caught my attention.  There was no beach, but rocks that waves had been crashing against them.  Also noticed the people exploring the area.  I wanted to adventure off over there!  I want to head over in hopes of some tidepools.  

I walk on back to the shore, and down the stairs to the pathway.  I headed towards the rocks.  In route to the rocks, I got stopped by two african americans.  They both stood tall and fully blocked my path.  They had asked me something, but I couldn't understand them.  After a few tries, I finally realized they were trying to sell me a cigarette in order to get some money.  Since I don't smoke, I said I wasn't interested, then they asked if I wanted to buy their drink, which I believed was alcohol.  I said I had no cash on me, and they finally moved aside to let me pass.  I got out to the rocks, and they were flooded with people too.  I found tidepools!  Most of them only had small snails, and a large amounts of crabs, but to me, it was awesome.  Every once in a while I would find a tidepool with anemone or two.  Due to the amount of people around, I wasn't able to fully explore the area like I would have hoped.  Time was also against me.  I had realized I needed to get back to the car, and head off to the airport.  


     When I get to the airport, I decide to park and wait for everyone inside.  I had found a starbucks, and got an ice tea.  I had learned that one of the flights was delayed by an hour.  I met up with Spencer, who was flying in from Sacramento.  Her flight was on time.  To kill time, we took her stuff to my car, then walked right on back to the baggage claim.  Finally, the three other 4-Her's, Matthew, Tanner, and Jessica, who were flying in from San Jose, arrived.  We all got in the car, and headed over to the Double Tree Hotel located in Hotel Circle.  When we got there, we went inside, and in the lobby waited our adviser, Steven Worker.  We all got checked into our hotel rooms, then took our stuff to our rooms.  Checking in was awesome, because we got a warm chocolate chip cookie!  I have never been to a hotel that gives you warm awesomeness when you check it!  It was amazing!  I will be back at this hotel in October for Matthews and Kristans wedding, and I so approve!  All our rooms are next to each other.  I had my own room, then the two girls got a room and the two guys got a room.  We had planned to meet up in ten mins to go to have dinner.  First thing I do when I get into my room was look around.  I noticed I had a small balcony outside.  I just had to check it out.  As I get out on the balcony, everyone else was on theirs.  We chilled for awhile, then decided it was time to head down to the lobby.  At the lobby, we were asking about dinner, and everyone seemed to want to have mexican food.  Because I know San Diego real well, they asked me where we should get food.  I took everyone to my families favorite mexican food place, Casa Guadalajara's, in Old Town.  Lucky for us, it was just around the corner.  We got to the restaurant around 9:00 ish. The biggest worry I had was finding parking and having a long wait with a big group.  The parking lot was half empty, which was great!  Once we go in to put in a name, it only took 15 mins before we were seated.  Normally it would have taken at least an hour.  We had dinner, which everyone approved.  After dinner, we drove over to Ralph's grocery store near Sports Arena to grab some food for breakfast.  Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.  The next day was going to be a long one.

     We woke up quite early, and headed down to the San Diego Convention Center, around 7:30 am.  Once we got to the convention center, we headed to one of the large meeting rooms upstairs for a forum style event.  At this forum, there were 6 (i believe) youth organizations at tables around the room.  Those two attended the forum were split into groups, and those groups rotated to a new group every 12 minutes.  At the 4-H table, we did a well timed out presentation that lasted 11 minutes, and gave one minute in the end for questions.  We first talked about what 4-H was, how 4-H is involved in the Science, Engineering, and Technology (SET), then presented different projects and curriculum 4-H youth in California have been working on.  The topics we had covered were: Junk Drawer Robotics, Cardboard Automatons, Computer Programming & Mobile Technology, and GIS/GPS.  Some of the covered topics where prepared by script, so we would not run over time.  I was one of them who had a script prepared (Was up till 1:30am the night before preparing).  I first explained what GIS and GPS was, then how 4-H was using the technology to help change their community.  Had a few examples to show the crowds.  Two different makes of hiking trails in south Redlands my ex 4-H club had helped GPS and build and the 2004 Forest Park Map.  Time flew by with the forum.  After giving the same presentation 12 times, things got a little old, but we met a lot of people, and it was fun.  After the forum, we were able to just hang out the rest of the day.  Most of us explored the Expo.  Two of us had a mission to get as much swag as possible.  I mostly walked slowly through to just look at everything.  I didn't want to take home much things that I really don't need.  One thing I came home with is a google water bottle which is awesome!  I also got free ice cream.  Most of the expo was filled with technology for teachers.  I did find the ESRI booth, and I got to say hi to the main person we worked with back in 2006 when I gave that massive 13,000 people speech at the ESRI Users Conference.  We talked for a little while, then I continued on.  We did all meet as a big group to have lunch.  We walked over to The Broken Yoke.  Two reasons why we went there.  One because I love the place, and second it is off to the side of the Gaslamp District, and figured there would be a less waiting time.  I was right.  We were able to be seated right away!  The day ended for us around 6:00pm.  We got into more comfortable clothing, and went out to have dinner at California Pizza Kitchen.  We explored the mall while we waited for our food.  We found the lego store and spent most the time in there.  My god legos have become way more expensive since I was a kid.  I so wanted to buy a star wars lego thing to take home and build, but I had no money :(.  After dinner, some of us went back to the hotel while the rest of us chilled.  I wanted to go to the beach, but no one seemed real interested.  The hotel had closed so we headed back to the hotel.  Some of us went down to the pool to go swimming.  I didn't have a swim suit but I was going to go down to hang anyway.  Tanner and Spencer met two people from Europe at the expo and had invited them over to our hotel to swim.  While at the pool, the water looked amazing, so I said screw it, and jumped in with my clothes on.  The Europe people joined us, and we ended the night chilling at the fire pit the hotel had.  OUr night ended when the hotel closed down the pool at 11 pm. 

The next day, things seemed to move more slowly.  We got packed up and check out of the hotel in the morning.  We went back to the convention center.  Today was playground day.  All the youth groups who were at the forum yesterday had an area in the Sails Pavillion of the convention center to set up a interactive display of our projects we presented on.  The most popular for 4-H was the Junk Drawer Robotics.  For my GIS stuff, I had my chromebook out with one of the maps of the hiking trails in Redlands open on ArcGIS online.  I also had all the maps on display, a GPS unit, and my contact information.  Most of the time, I had to explain what GIS was and different project ideas youth have done mapping with.  I also did live demos of ArcGIS online.  Many who had stopped to ask about the mapping had never heard of ArcGIS online before, and they were very happy that I had shown them what that free service can do.  The playground went from 9 to 5.  Since we were not on the main expo floor, we had a lot of slow time,  but when we did have people stopping by, it was great.  We took shifts breaking for lunch.  Each group wanted down to the food court at Seaport Village to have an hour lunch break, then would go back.  After we packed up, it was time to get everyone to the airport.  Once I dropped everyone from the airport, I took the two hour drive home, for I was going to have a very long 48 hours to come starting at 4 am.  That is covered in the next blog post.