Testimonials

"I hope all educators get the opportunity to attend Big Ideas Fest. More importantly, I hope all ed workshops evolve to resemble the delivery model. Here's why.This is my 17th year in education. As a result, I've taken many courses and attended many more trainings, workshops and conferences. Most are constructed to mirror the traditional classroom. Their objective is to deliver content to people. Even the workshops designed to help teachers transform or reinvent education are delivered in the traditional way. Big Ideas Fest is about people learning. It opens people up and forces them out of their comfort zone. It directs their attention to the way they think and feel when they are confronted with challenges and new information. It does so within a diverse collection of amazing participants who continually model new ways to approach old challenges. As a result, the skills people strengthen at Big Ideas Fest are content agnostic; which results in an increased ability to be better at everything they do.I hope all educators get the opportunity to attend Big Ideas Fest. More importantly, I hope all ed workshops evolve to resemble the Big Ideas Fest model. That itself is a Big Idea."
Tim Farquer
“Over the past  two years, ISKME has contributed greatly toward increasing access to high quality OER through its curation services, improving the capability for individuals to create and edit OER through its OpenAuthor tool, and expanding the field of OER by sponsoring OER Fellowships and extending the reach of OER through additional languages (Arabic) and accessibility standards (via its partnership with FLOE).  They have also established important partnerships with a handful of states to curate communities that develop and amend OER to meet Common Core State Standards and local state needs.”   “…Though they're a small organization, [ISKME is] very good at implementation.  Their work on OER Commons has helped that user base expand, and their ability to develop partnerships with other organizations has led to significant developments in the OER field.  For example, by partnering with a few states, ISKME has been able to grow a set of small communities that are interested in using OER and will likely be able to continue using OER beyond the initial training period.  In addition, because of their willingness to experiment and seize opportunities as they arise, ISKME has become a key player in the expansion of OER into the Middle East, an area with nascent interest in OER.  ISKME is an excellent organization that continues to represent OER at important education/tech-ed meetings, and expand the OER movement.  As such, they are core to the field building pillar of our OER strategy.
Kathy Nicholson, Manager, Application Development and Support, IT & Program Officer, Education
Hewlett Foundation
 Being a rapid-fire presenter at the 2010 Big Ideas Fest was an unique and exhilarating professional experience, because of the creative atmosphere of the conference, which, unfortunately, is not the norm for education events.  The presenters and also participants were dynamic people, focused on new, big ideas.  Every detail of the conference, including the gorgeous location, was carefully orchestrated to encourage collaboration and divergent thinking among us.  I was inspired to present my own big idea in a creative way, in which the form mirrored the content: because I was presenting a idea from the book I co-authored, Teaching 2030: What We Must Do For Our Public Schools--Now and In the Future, I presented as myself  20 years in the future.  The challenge of that experience, along with engaging with so many forward thinking people in the Action Collabs, helped push my thinking about my own work to new levels.    
Ariel Sacks, 2010 Big Ideas Fest Rapid Fire Speaker
Teacher, Leader, Writer of Standing on the Shoulder of Giants
"I thought the part of the Action Collab where we prototyped and literally built a system from scratch was particularly meaningful and inspiring - I'd never seen myself as someone who "makes" things, and for the first time, I saw myself conceptualizing and making a solution. It was really eye-opening."
Big Ideas Fest Participant, 2010
"Hearing success stories from the trenches showed be real world failures and their successful rebounds in action. Success is built on the courage to fail."
Big Ideas Fest Participant, 2010
"This was an education conference that actually applied what we know about how people learn, offering an abundance of different learning opportunities for different types of learners."
Big Ideas Fest Participant, 2010
"It was by far the most dynamic, engaging, and action-oriented conference I have ever attended."
Big Ideas Fest Participant, 2010
"[Big Ideas Fest was useful to my work because] I have plenty of ideas for my work, but not many opportunities to make collaborative plans with people outside of my immediate organization which I need to be more effective in my field."
Big Ideas Fest Participant, 2010
"The [Action Collab] process implemented during the conference is something that could be applied in our local context to get educators thinking afresh about their problems. Engagement is difficult as educators are generally in a bit of a rut and this distinctly different and collaborative approach is likely to help shake things up enough to get them focused on a problem rather than their problems."
Big Ideas Fest Participant, 2010
"I am extremely impressed by ISKME, as it seems to have started to fill in the underlying question of what to do next. I'm feeling the urge to move forward past all of the problems and hopefully move toward some sort of solution."
Allison McGree, K-12 Formal & Informal Teaching Artist
Art Mobile of Montana & Montana Arts Council
"As a result of attending Big Ideas Fest, I changed the way I teach. I used to start class by writing "Today's Goals" on the board but after hearing Dr. Mitra speak and then talking with him at dinner, I decided to start class with "Today's Question". This is helping me to think more closely about what I want my students to get smarter about and helps me build skills in the art of asking questions."
Constance Moore, Visual Art Teacher
Civicorps Elementary
"[Big Ideas Fest] was a very interesting and awe-inspiring conference. Many of my personal limits were stretched (in a good way) regarding how I think (or thought) I work best to solve problems."
Big Ideas Fest Participant, 2010