This year’s conference focused on innovative learning that can transform the future for students and educators, and with sessions on technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality, the show didn’t disappoint.

We’re sharing our favorite TCEA sessions here, with a few from past TCEAs thrown in for nostalgia’s sake. Let us know your favorite memory from this year’s show by leaving a comment below.

1. 20 lessons that incorporate the 4Cs
By now, the 4Cs–communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity–are part of most educators’ vocabulary. But it isn’t always easy to put these concepts into practice, especially when the 4Cs can look vary depending on students’ age and ability. At TCEA 2017, Donna Lusby, the K-6 instructional technology coordinator in the Lovejoy ISD shared how her district moved from what she characterized as “hesitant technology integration” to teachers embracing the 4Cs in their lessons.

2. This is what Google Expeditions can do in a classroom
Virtual reality is one of the latest tools to hit education, and educators across the country are excited to engage students with dynamic, immersive visuals and virtual field trips. But getting started can be overwhelming, especially with different platforms and devices on the market. During a virtual reality session at TCEA 2017, three educators shared their experience using Google Expeditions with students.

3. If you give a kindergartner a Chromebook…
Although even the youngest children are considered tech-savvy today, there exists a difference between a child who knows how to use a tablet to watch videos and a child who knows how to navigate a device for active learning. The thought of giving 30 kindergarten students their own Chromebooks might be daunting. But for one classroom, the move yielded some surprising results for student engagement, learning progress, and for students with special needs.

4. 8 tips to help create and sustain a makerspace
Though makerspaces are becoming more mainstream, creating and maintaining one could overwhelm educators who are starting from scratch. Aside from the technology tools and other resources that make up the space, it’s wise to have a plan in terms of when students will use the space, how it will be shared, where funding will come from, and how students will demonstrate what they are learning.

5. 15 tools and apps real educators actually use
Some of the best things about an ed-tech conference are the sessions, where attendees learn about new tools and resources, trends, and teaching strategies. But you can’t make it to every session, and sometimes it’s hard to choose when each session is compelling and relevant to your educational needs.

6. Use these strategies to incorporate drones in STEAM education
Drones are often the subject of controversy, especially when it comes to debates around security and privacy. But do they have a place in education? One team of educators thinks so. Though the word “drone” tends to have a negative connotation, drones have tremendous potential to help students learn science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) concepts.

7. 12 augmented reality apps students can use today
Augmented reality–a technology that uses a trigger image to superimpose digital content over a user’s view of the real world–is growing in popularity and accessibility, and it holds a wealth of potential for education. Often described as “QR codes on steroids,” the technology offers new and exciting ways for students to interact with lessons, said Jeff Peterson, an instructional technologist in the Lamar Consolidated ISD in Texas. Peterson presented a TCEA 2017 session on augmented reality’s application in classrooms.

Blast from the past:

8. TCEA: Do your libraries need a change?
Seeking to ensure school librarians’ roles reflect the changing nature of education, one Texas school district changed its librarians’ positions to better support digital learning. Library and IT specialists in the Willis Independent School District knew they needed to transform school librarians into vital educational leaders who instruct and engage students with innovative resources and opportunities, and who are actively involved in helping students learn about and evaluate digital resources and information.

9. Tips for using Pinterest in the classroom
Many aspiring crafters and cooking fanatics are familiar with Pinterest, a social media site set up like a virtual bulletin board in which users “pin” favorite home décor, cooking, and craft ideas. But now education is hopping on the Pinterest bandwagon, as teachers and administrators are quickly discovering that the site is replete with resources for students of all ages and abilities.

10. How I turned my classroom into a ‘living video game’—and saw achievement soar
The notion that struggling and failing is important to learning runs counter to traditional approaches to U.S. education. In fact, failure and its accompanying “F” grade stigmatizes a student as unprepared or “challenged” and is usually seen as a predictor of failure in future grades.

A month later Stanley's daughter went with her sister to the local park. They were back within minutes, and the younger one was crying. Stanley asked them what happened and, between sobs and hiccuping, his younger daughter blurted out she had been picked on for riding a boy's bike. The culprit was other neighborhood kids, particularly girls. Stanley's daughter rolled her Transformer's bike into the garage, laid it down, and ran inside sobbing. That was the last time she ever rode that bike again. Stanley tried to see if she would ride it again a month later, but no luck. The bike ended up going to charity.

Every day at work people face decisions that they must then put in front of others, their peers. Like Stanley's daughter, they will meet people who will criticize and oppose actions or directions chosen. Sometimes it's for technical reasons and sometimes they do it just to be a pain. However, those peer pressure decisions can be immense depending where one is in their career. If starting out, and the opinion comes from more experienced peers, the pressure can have a huge effect on how people try to fit in, even causing anxiety in some folks. Everybody at some point wants to be accepted, and at work, it can be a fundamental requirement to gel with the "team."

How one deals with peer pressure and compensates for it will dictate how capable of a decision-maker he or she can be. While it would be easy to assume things are top-down, dictatorial, in reality, our decision-making is often an interactive, communal function, so influence matters tremendously. Realizing this and learning how to control the pressure separates good decision-makers from those who can only operate in a vacuum. Controlling it versus being controlled means one rides their "bike" instead of losing it under pressure.

People are fundamentally social creatures, so those who want to be decision-makers need to understand how to use social influence to their advantage, not disadvantage. The last place a decision-maker wants to be is being second guessed or shamed in public when pushing a proposal. Part of effective leadership is knowing how to influence ahead of time and build decision support before the decision actually has to be made. Some call it being "political," but realistically, effective leadership involves performance with a team, not against it.

A new report emphasizes the importance of faculty and student interaction, noting its critical influence on student success, but also warns of a number of trends decreasing the potential for this interaction.

The report, Back to School in Higher Ed: Who Needs Faculty?, comes from the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education.

As noted in an array of research studies cited in the report, interaction with faculty increases students’ completion rates and grades, boosts leadership and critical thinking skills, increases aspirations, and promotes engagement.

But four trends are having a negative impact on students and faculty in higher education institutions across the nation. The trends are a result of new hiring policies, and their impact is far-reaching, some say.

Those trends, as identified by faculty across the nation, are:

1. Temporary teaching forces and the elimination of full-time faculty positions

“In part to cut costs, administrators for decades have been replacing full-time, permanent (tenure-track) faculty with part-time faculty on temporary contracts,” according to the report.

2. Undermining the effectiveness of student-faculty interaction in the classroom

“Current salary and hiring practices in our nation’s colleges and universities simply do not foster the stable faculty workforce students need,” the authors write.

3. Greater spending on management and less spending on students and faculty

“As a study by the Delta Cost Project shows, the relative weight of investments in colleges and universities has shifted with instruction and related spending actually declining in recent years,” the authors note.

“What has risen as a priority is spending on administration and related activities. This priority is reflected in increases in the numbers of administrative positions, increases in those salaries, and increases in the percentage of college budgets going to these functions.”

“Less money is spent on instruction and more is spent supporting administrative expenses. What we’re also seeing is growth of administrators, and we’re seeing faster salary growth for administrative pay. We’ve seen a real shift in priorities,” said Rudy H. Fichtenbaum, a just-retired professor of economics at Wright State University in Ohio and current national president of the American Association of University Professors, during a call to discuss the report with media. “As the report points out, this has dramatic consequences on the quality of students’ educational experiences.”

4. Steep decline in teaching salaries in spite of teachers going into debt to get their degrees

“Because of low salaries and the common practice of hiring faculty on part-time contracts, even a modicum of economic security has become shaky for many, and for others, impossible. This change in economic status has had major ramifications…,” according to the report.

“The remarkable irony is that as students and families pay more and more for college and are accruing greater and grater debt, less money is being spent on instruction,” said Gary D. Rhoades, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education. “It’s a decades-long trend. This is an industry-wide trend of disinvestment in the people who matter most to students–the faculty.”

Environmentalists have decried them as "dead tree" mediums, while average readers often complain they can be weighty, cumbersome and don't travel well. Some have argued it's time to retire the 15th century technology and embrace Kindles and other electronic reading devices. 

Science, however, offers another view. According to numerous studies and expert opinion, reading physical books can improve memory, concentration and may even make you physically more attractive.

Memory: 

According to at least one study, conducted by researchers at Stavanger University in Norway, people who read actual books are significantly better at remembering what they read as opposed to people who read books on a Kindle and other e-readers.

Concentration:

Others have argued e-reading has reduced our ability to understand and concentrate on the text in front of us. The hypothesis was backed up by a survey conducted by Naomi Baron, author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World and executive director for American University's Center for Teaching, Research and Learning. Baron told Mic, after speaking with 400 students between the ages of 18 and 26 in the United States, Germany, Japan, India and Slovakia, the results were irrefutable.

Reading is sexy and makes you a more empathetic person. 

There are few things as sexy as reading an old fashioned book. Other studies meanwhile have shown people who read physical books were more empathetic, and those who read an unpleasant story on an iPad were less moved than those who read it on an old fashioned paper book. 

So don't burn the books just yet. The good news is that despite the alluring convenience and cost of electronic reading devices, books have held their ground. Since a highpoint in 2012, e-reader sales fell off sharply. In 2014, publishers Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster bled 8.8% of total profits largely due to disappointing sales in readers. Sales for Barnes and Noble's Nook reader also slumped that same year.

"It's a more personal connection when I read a book over the electronic," Angela Groth, the director of the Ardsley, New York Public Library, told Mic, adding grim predictions of shuttered libraries were completely off mark. "Physical books are more popular than electronics.

As teens begin to head back to high school, many will see changes.

Like Connecticut teens, for example, who will be required to take the SAT college admissions exam this year, The New York Times reported earlier this month. Connecticut joins several other states that require high schoolers take a college admissions test.

Then there are teens at one California high school who can take a new LGBT studies course, according to a report on SFGate.com.

And students at a Virginia high school will soon find out that their lockers were replaced with benches and laptop charging stations, according to a local news report. The school is jumping on the no-locker trend.

But as teens witness the changes around them, there are a few things they could do to better themselves this year. Parents can encourage their teens to try the following.

1. Clean up their online presence:

Many high schoolers don't realize what they post online could come back to haunt them later, in terms of their college and career plans, says Franciene Sabens, a school counselor at Chester High School in Illinois.

It's time for students to leave the middle school drama behind and think more deeply about their digital footprint and what it is going to do for them later, she says. "Is it going to hurt them? Or is it going to harm them?"

Now is the time for teens to purge less-than-favorable information and display a more mature image, she says.

[Find out how to talk to teens about being responsible on social media.&91;

2. Take a new class or extracurricular activity:

If a student even has an inkling they are interested in something, they should try it through an activity or class, says Julia Richardson, a school counselor at Campbell High School in Smyrna, Georgia.

It's important because high school is the time for students to figure out who they are, she says. Plus, they don't want to have any regrets.

Trying a new class or activity can help students build their confidence and self-efficacy, or their belief in their own abilities, she says. And it's good for students to challenge themselves with something new.

3. Plan for college and career:

A new activity or class could also influence a student's post-secondary plans, says Richardson, which is something both counselors think students should start planning for this year.

Students can create a four-year learning plan, says Sabens. And if students already have an idea of what their postsecondary goals are, they should take classes that relate, she says.

Those unsure of their after high school plans can explore online college and career planning websites like ACT Profile and Big Future, from the makers of the ACT and SAT college admissions tests, she says.

And Sabens recommends students meet with the in-house expert: the school counselor. Even a few minutes could be beneficial.

If the student can let the counselor know, "You know what, I have no idea what I am going to do with my life," says Sabens, that lets the counselor know to check in on that student and help get the process started.

[Discover how to lay the groundwork for college from freshman year of high school.&91;

Parents can help guide their students through these activities, but they shouldn't do it all for them, Sabens says.

Sometimes parents of high schoolers have a hard time letting go and letting students figure things out, she says.

"When we do that as parents, we actually make it more difficult for them later in life," she says. "In a way, they have to show them, these are the resources, these are the things that are there for you and you have to decide whether you want to do them or not for yourself."