Members of FSTE, FCITL and other Florida educators are pictured at an informal "meetup" at the convention center at 4 pm on Sunday, June 29.

FSTE president Nancy Blair Black, ISTE rep Rita Oates, and FSTE past president John Lien were there along with Region V president Leo Rabinovitch, FCITL officers, and Mike Eason and Jennifer Womble from FETC.

We gathered in a public area of the convention center to say hi, meet other Floridians, and share info of interest to all.

Susan Bearden from Melbourne shared her new app, TweechMe, launched two days earlier in the iTunes store and already having almost 300 downloads.  It's an app to help teachers learn how to use Twitter, for 99 cents. Susan leads the weekly #edtechchat on Monday nights at 8 pm Eastern.

Nancye Black shared info on the Instructional Best Practices Conference, July 31 at the Sheraton Sand Key in Clearwater, FL. This free conference from IBIS with support from FSTE has almost reached registration limit, with 28 breakout sessions on literacy and technology for teachers in gr. 6-12. Registration link: http://conta.cc/1fKqCA4

Nancye said that in the fall, IBIS and FSTE were sponsoring five Saturday events, with Florida DOE funding, and are looking for hosting locations around the state. One of the five will be in Lakeland. www.mckeelschools.com/ibis Dr. Terry Cavanaugh is trying to set up one at U of North Florida, and Dr. Leo Rabinovich is trying to set up one at Barry University. Details to follow!

Jennifer Womble and Mike Eason shared updates on FETC 2015. They said that virtually every state was represented at FETC2014 and 41 different countries. More than 1,000 came from Canada in 2014! One wealthy private school in Peru sent 13 teachers. Mike said that one of the challenges was that the international educators wanted to buy hardware and software right off the exhibit floor, which FETC does not allow. Session judging is going on now and presenters will be notified and workshops will be announced in August. Jennifer was checking out speakers for FETC at ISTE and had signed up a few speakers already.

Jeanine Gendron shared that Broward was getting an award for digital content at ISTE, in a private ceremony, from the Center for Digital Education.

Several FSTE and FCITL members attended an advocacy session focusing on Florida and ideas for impacting state funding and policies related to edtech. ISTE is also working on increasing funding at the federal level, and both FSTE and FCITL signed onto a letter of support with other ISTE affiliates and other educational organizations.

We hope to have a Florida meet-up at ISTE 2015 in Philadelphia.