As we're wrapping up ISTE, I keep thinking about my first one.

It was 2017, in San Antonio. I was six months into my time at Whiteboard and the only one there from the firm. This week in Orlando, we had eleven colleagues on the ground, moderating panels and running a media room that hosted dozens of reporters, bloggers, and content creators from around the world. For the third year, we co-hosted the Solutions Summit with ISTE.

What stays with me, though, isn't the schedule. It's the people. Conferences are exhausting, but they're one of the few times this community gathers in one place. Several readers stopped to say hello this week, and hearing that this newsletter has become part of their routine was about the best feedback I could ask for.

The conference has changed as much as our team has. In 2017, the talk was about Chromebooks, 1:1 rollouts, and closing the homework gap — the divide that mattered was who had a device. This year, it was about using the tools wisely, and the divide leaders worried about was who knows how to question what those tools produce.

Kate Meyer, an English teacher and instructional coach in Maine's Mount Desert Island district, put it well when she told Education Week: "I don't necessarily love AI or hate AI. It's really about helping [students and teachers] question this technology and evaluate the output." Her worry is less that students will use AI and more that they'll use it without learning to think critically about what it produces. Maine's response has been to develop guidance with teachers who don't always agree about the technology.

That same mindset showed up across the conference. District leaders talked about bringing curriculum experts back into procurement conversations, insisting that new AI features ship "default off" so districts, not vendors, decide when students see them, and leaning on research rather than marketing to determine what belongs in classrooms. One presenter suggested using AI to pressure-test teacher retention strategies, then explicitly told it not to offer solutions, only better questions.

That shift isn't confined to Orlando. Five Los Angeles English teachers described scaling back technology and returning to pen and paper as they rethink what belongs in the classroom, with one saying her biggest goal is helping students think critically for themselves again. KQED spoke with three recent Bay Area graduates who went through college as ChatGPT arrived and are entering the workforce optimistic about its potential, realistic about its limits, and thoughtful about where it belongs.

Maybe that's the biggest change since my first ISTE. Back then the question was how to get the tools into schools. Now it's about who decides how they're used, what evidence counts, and whether they strengthen human judgment rather than replace it.

See you in Boston next year!

— Thomas

Programming note: we're taking a few days off for the Fourth of July. What We're Reading will be back in your inbox Tuesday, July 7.

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