Art plays a central role in ISTElive’s experiential sessions.

ISTE, which stands for the International Society for Technology in Education, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping its members — educators, school leaders, and industry experts — transform the learning experience for students. At its annual conference, ISTElive, art plays a prominent role in shaping and amplifying the participants’ experience, from taking photos to spark conversations to exhibiting their artwork to show the connection between creativity and critical thinking skills.

At ISTElive — which is now co-located with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Annual Conference, after the two organizations merged in 2023 — more than 17,000 attendees come together for five days of professional development, spanning 1,700-plus learning opportunities and 2,000-plus presenters. Topics frequently revolve around technology in the classroom — ISTE+ASCD is the largest provider of AI professional development for educators — but that’s just one piece of the puzzle.

One of ISTE+ASCD’s key initiatives is promoting STEAM — which adds art to the standard STEM acronym (science, technology, engineering, and math) — as an integrative education approach that helps students problem-solve using a more diverse set of skills. Frequently, educational sessions at ISTElive explore using art as an instrument in teaching digital- or technology-related concepts in the classroom. For instance, at the upcoming edition in Orlando, June 28 – July 1, the “Art and Self-Knowledge: Reflections on Myself Through Art and AI” session shares a project educators can use to help students “reflect on identity, connect with artworks, reimagine them using AI, and present their creations in a virtual gallery” as a self-reflection exercise. In another, “From Sketch to Tech: Visual Thinking Meets Digital Creation,” an illustrator guides attendees through their own sketching activity and demonstrates how that exercise can be translated to the digital space to accommodate different learning styles.

Art also takes a central role in ISTElive’s experiential sessions. “Capturing the Magic: Picture the Possibilities” will take participants on a photowalk of host venue Orange County Convention Center (OCCC), inviting them to capture the facility’s architecture and indoor aeroponic garden through photos. It’s an exercise designed to share ideas and perspectives, demonstrating why “photography is a powerful tool that transcends cultures, ages, and backgrounds,” according to ISTElive’s site.

The photowalk is an offering ISTElive has often reprised due to its popularity — it’s a type of activity, according to Jennifer Ragan-Fore, ISTE+ASCD’s chief experience officer, that “just sort of switches the brain into a … mode of looking at things differently” and creates “joy and delight.” That kind of response is something “that’s really important to us organizationally,” Ragan-Fore said, because “joy in learning really does open the learner up to … consider new ideas, to build their imagination.”

Which is why the ISTElive team is also intentional about the kind of atmosphere they create at the event in addition to the sessions they offer. Activations and the décor, for example, are designed to make attendees “feel happy and delighted and surprised,” she said, encouraging that deeper learning and connection.

At the 2024 edition of ISTElive, organizers chose an outdoor theme for its pop-up art studio and showcase as a nod to the host destination, Denver. Camp Creativity offered an art gallery of attendee-made artwork and opportunities to create art in the Creative Constructor Studio.

That is evident in the popularity of ISTElive’s pop-up art studio and showcase, which gets a refreshed name and theme every year, inspired by the host destination. Called The Creators Fiesta at the 2025 event in San Antonio, Orlando’s 2026 edition will go by Creativity Crossroads and offer The Creators Collective, an exhibit of student works from the ISTE+ASCD community, and The Sunshine Studio, where event participants can make their own artwork or collaborate on community projects with local artists on site.

Feedback on that experience, part of ISTElive for several years now, has been overwhelmingly positive, with organizers tweaking it to provide more opportunities for attendees to make their own art, per their request. “In the context of a really busy conference, having this moment where you could do something that’s very tangible and hands-on … was creating this really lovely oasis in the midst of all of this learning and all of this networking and all the other things that were going on,” Ragan-Fore said.

“The inherent joy that you get … from creating something … in a safe environment where it’s not graded — that opens up a lot of neural pathways that allow people to absorb the rest of the content they’re getting throughout the rest of the conference. I think sometimes event organizers underestimate how much the environment,” she said, has “an impact on the mood and how people receive the rest of the content that they’re getting.”

Jennifer N. Dienst is senior editor at Convene