Got home last night. Only delayed a couple of hours so we were much luckier than many friends who had to scramble and deal with canceled flights. It helped that we flew JetBlue, an airline not affected by the CrowdStrike issues and also because we were staying until Monday anyway so as to play tourist.

What's left to cover. Let's start with the exhibition hall with all the vendors. There were the big companies - Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, curriculum provers like CodeHS and CMU (CS Academy), and lots of robots and robotics companies. There were a few others mixed in as well.

I didn't speak to too many vendors though as I'm not particularly interested in using someone else curriculum and while some of the robotics stuff looked very cool, it's not something I'll be using since I'm no longer in a classroom and any toys I do want to play with have to fit in my Manhattan apartment.

I did spend some time with the people in the Kira booth. I thought I'd check them out since they seem to be getting a bit of buzz recently. Their home page touts Kira as "The AI platform for schools." There are courses which seem to basically be MOOCS, although they can be used (and appear to be meant to be used) as a tool by a teacher with a class. There are pre-made courses and units and teachers can also build their own content. This all looks fine but seems similar to other course platforms.

They seem to want to differentiate themselves with their AI piece. This comes as an auto-grader which I didn't get to see along with an AI tutor for the students. It looks cool but to be honest, I don't know if it's even a good idea as a classroom tool. I think I'd rather have a student talk with a neighbor first. I plan to do a deeper dive into Kira sometime soon and then will probably report back. Right now, if they keep the buzz, they'll sell well but I'm not yet sold. If I were still in the classroom, I think I'd stick to my old school ways.

To me, CSTA has always been a people conference rather than a session conference and this year was no exception. I got to see and spend time with many old friends and met a couple of new ones. For the sessions though, while I found a couple of great ones, many didn't do much for me. That's not to say they were bad sessions. I think I even noted that in my previous posts where I felt that a session would be great for a teacher at another point in their career but it didn't scratch my itch.

Of course, given that any attendee can only go to one session per slot and since descriptions don't always tell the whole story, perceptions vary. I just read Amy Ko's CSTA report and Amy lamented the lack of equity and justice focus. I felt there was good coverage there. I on the other hand felt that there should have been more coverage on actual content and pedagogy. Both of us could be right, both of us could be wrong. At the end of the day though, CSTA provided a platform with CS teachers from across the country could discuss whatever issues they desired with a diverse range of colleagues and that's a pretty special thing.

I'd be remiss if I didn't close with a few words on my tourist time. I wasn't excited to come to Las Vegas - I'm not into casinos and coming from New York I've got better and cheaper food options as well as pretty much any entertainment I want. In NY I also don't feel like then entire town is trying to scam me for my money. I don't want to come down though on residents of Las Vegas though since I do know a couple of great people who live there so I'm sure people there are just like everywhere else it's just that the tourist industry there isn't for me.

That said, we did do a number of things we enjoyed.

We did a couple of day trips with Pink Jeep tours - one to Hoover Dam and the other to Red Rock Canyon. Our Red Rock tour guide was the better of the two but both were solid and both trips 100% worthwhile.

We also visited the Atomic Testing Museum and the Mob Museum. Both were really interesting. I've always been interested in the mob thing, particularly the Jewish Mob in New York so the Mob Museum was a particular hit for me.

We walked Freemont Street, which was basically another touristy strip but got a great apple fritter at a donut shop across from one of the ends.

On our last afternoon, after our Red Rock tour we grabbed lunch at Sayulitas - a hole in the wall burrito place. I've got to say - probably our best meal in Vegas. All the strip stuff was overpriced although some was tasty but Sayulitas was dynamite. When we got in, we were concerned about the lack of seating but there was a huge crowd of locals and pretty much no English being spoken - all good signs. Hadn't had burritos that good in decades.

From there we went to the Pinball Hall of Fame. While I'm not into casinos, I love pinball. Basically a pinball parlor with machines ranging from the early days up until today. Also a bunch of novelty machines like a vertical circus game with three mini pinball games in it and a couple of two player games where each player is on opposite sides and the playfield tilts back and forth. Super cool. Price per game range from a quarter for some of the old machines to a dollar for the new ones. Devorah and I spent a couple of hours and $20 and had a super fun time.

So that's CSTA 2024. Before flying to Las Vegas, I was already not hot on the town and also not so hot on some aspects of CSTA, the national organization. I think the most positive thing I can say is that I left the conference not only energized but thinking about proposing a session or two for next year.