I’m extremely excited to offi­cially announce that the 3rd Annual Iowa 1:1 Insti­tute will be held on April 11 at the Events Cen­ter in Des Moines. The con­fer­ence was launched two years ago, and it was made pos­si­ble through the help of the one-to-one schools in Iowa. Iowa’s one-to-one schools con­tributed to the con­fer­ence by pro­vid­ing pre­sen­ters who had suc­cess­fully imple­mented one-to-one. Those pre­sen­ters along with the excite­ment around one-to-one have helped the con­fer­ence grow from approx­i­mately 600 atten­dees in year one to 1300 last year. Although the con­fer­ence con­sists of pre­dom­i­nantly Iowa edu­ca­tors, we have had atten­dees from all of the sur­round­ing states and even the east coast.

With CASTLE’s move to the Uni­ver­sity of Ken­tucky, we did make some changes to the con­fer­ence. How­ever, our pur­poses have remained the same.

• Help Iowa’s 1:1 dis­tricts learn from each other about inno­v­a­tive teach­ing, learn­ing, and admin­is­tra­tive prac­tices that are occur­ring in their districts;
• Build excite­ment and ‘buzz’ around 1:1 lap­top com­put­ing ini­tia­tives in the state; and
• Help oth­ers who are inter­ested in 1:1 com­put­ing learn more about how to get started and be successful.

On Tues­day of last week Iowa one-to-one schools were invited to sign up for the con­fer­ence. That prelaunch has already led to nearly 300 reg­is­trants. If you are inter­ested in learn­ing more or par­tic­i­pat­ing, click on one of the links below: (Click here for link to 2013 con­fer­ence)

• Gen­eral details
• Reg­is­ter
• Present
• Be a vendor

We hope you will be part of what has become the biggest, and we hope best, one-to-one con­fer­ence in the world!

Nick Sauers