Category Archives: conference

conference, digifest14, jisc

Down at the Festival

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JISC Digital Festival

After a brief absence, the JISC, sorry Jisc Conference, sorry Jisc Digital Festival is back. The last JISC Conference was a couple of years ago and it has evolved in the Jisc Digital Festival.

It was a two day event in Birmingham looking at many different aspects of technology enhanced learning. There was stuff for learning technologists, library people and IT managers. For someone in my role there was a lot of choice.

In some ways it was reminiscent of past JISC Conferences and in others it was very different and new. There was a lot happening and it can be challenging to find the stuff you want to see and listen to.

I did like the festival theme, which really gave the event a very different feel. Two days also made a difference to the rushed single day there use to be.

With such a packed programme it was inevitable that there would be some clashes. I was torn for example about going to the digital storytelling session or the one on visitors and residents.

I was pleased with the vast majority of the sessions I attended, they were stimulating, interesting, informative and made me think. There was a lot of stuff to take away. With recordings and resources online, there’s a substantial amount of stuff to refect on and take away.

One of the key benefits for me of attending a conference such as this is making contacts, talking and networking. There wasn’t a huge number of people from FE, but I certainly spoke to many of them. Finding out what they were doing, the issues they faced and what they were planning. Finding out what others are doing is a critical factor when implementing change, for benchmarking and aiding discovery.

It was also useful to speak to contacts at Jisc, Janet, TechDis, as well as some of the exhibitors. I have a bundle of business cards, flyers, web links and even the odd QR Code.

JISC Digital Festival

I got a lot out of the conference, I took a lot away and it has made me think. I am glad to see the return of the conference and in many ways I think it was much better than previous Jisc conferences. Now that’s back, I hope that Jisc will also bring back the online conference, as I really missed it this year.

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Loose Change

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This is the presentation I delivered at the RSC Wales Encouraging Innovation Conference.

Change is all around us and the modern teacher needs to be adaptable, innovative and willing to take a risk. Flipped classrooms, MOOCs, wearable technology, cloud computing, mobile, tablets, 4G, internet TVs, social learning, learning analytics, game based learning, augmented reality and e-books are all been used now or are just on the horizon. Change is all around us and the modern teacher needs to be adaptable, innovative and willing to take risks. The rate of technological change appears to be getting faster. Can our existing cultures allow us to take advantage of the potential of emerging technologies? Or do we need to change the way we change?

The focus of my presentation was that change is constant, we’ve always had change and that dealing with change is more of a cultural issue than a technical one. Change can be an opportunity and can be exciting, as well as being challenging and daunting for some.

Read more about the conference on the RSC Wales Blog.

Our keynote speaker James Clay, ILT and Learning Resources Manager at Gloucestershire College, began with an inspirational keynote to set the scene for the day. In his presentation James discussed how the worry about change is nothing new and yes technology is changing but it has great potential to change the way we teach and learn for the better and not something to be feared.

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Maharing It

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Mahara Logo

If I was doing one thing this week, the one thing I would be doing is attending the Mahara UK Conference. Alas I can’t go, but I have sent a member of my team.

One of the success stories this year at Gloucestershire College has been Mahara. Learners have been using it in a variety of ways for learning and assessment.

Teams really like how it can be used for many different purposes and one of the things I hope we can get from the Mahara conference is how other institutions and organisations are using Mahara with their learners.

So how are your learners using Mahara?

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Would you like fries with that?

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I spoke at the UKSG e-Resources for FE event in London today.

Research from the University of Huddersfield shows that the number of visits to the library has an insignificant impact on learner achievement. However in the same study it was shown that students who took out more books, or used more e-resources achieved higher grades.

How can a library service engage learners who visit the library to utilise more of the resources available to them?

What strategies can be used to increase the use of e-resources and the lending of books?

Can we learn from major retailers, high street chains and other companies and implement their ideas into the library?

James Clay from Gloucestershire College discusses the strategies they have been using to increase the use of books and learning resources by learners.

conference, jisc, jiscel12

Valuing CPD

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Victoria Street, London

I’ve recently (been) signed up for a one day event in that London town.

The event cost is £325 and the train ticket is over a hundred pounds.

That isn’t cheap!

I think it will be an useful event and (probably) value for money.

However when you consider the costs of the JISC Innovating e-Learning Online Conference at just £50 and what you get for that, you might want to consider attending.

As one delegate from last year said:

“I think it is a brilliant return for the investment and consider this to be a major part of my CPD each year.”

There is a packed programme and in addition to the usual week of presentations and discussions, there is the activity week, a chance to have a go at stuff.

For £50 you aren’t probably going to find something of similar value anywhere else in the UK.

Of course also as it’s online there are no travel costs either.

conference, e-book, keynote, twitter

Standards and Formats

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Not quite the venue, but quite close....

Today I delivered a presentation at The 12th Annual Ebooks Conference in Edinburgh in Scotland. Flying up from Bristol, just for the day, I gave a 40 minute talk (with questions) on a layman’s guide to ebook standards and formats.

One thing I wanted to get across, was that many of the problems that causes users to have problems with their devices is because of wider issues. These wider issues impact on format problems.

EPUB, Mobi, PDF, iBooks – what does it all mean for readers of digital content? This session takes a layman’s look at proprietary formats and standards in ebooks helping us to make sense of it all.

Obviously in 40 minutes it was challenging to cover everything in detail, but one thing I did do (which I hadn’t done for a while) was live tweet references, URLs and pictures as I was presenting.

I used Keynote Tweet 2 which is a little Applescript that tweets the text from the notes field from a Keynote presentation. I used it for the first time when I delivered the Ascilite 2009 Keynote.

When Twitter moved from basic authentication to OAuth this broke Keynote Tweet.

Using this guide, I installed Ruby, used twurl instead of curl and today it worked.

What I like about Keynote Tweet is that it is perfectly timed with the presentation timings, no need to set up or automate tweets in advance.

Overall I was pleased with my presentation and the rest of the day was interesting and there was a fair bit to think about as a result.

conference, e-book

eBooks go Mobile at TurboTEL

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Sony eBook Reader

At the recent JISC RSC SW TurboTEL 2012 conference I delivered a presentation based on one I delivered at a CILIP Excecutive Briefing on e-Books.

Through the use of a number of mobile devices James will give an overview of how the FE sector is promoting their e-book collections through mobile technologies and how this can enhance the learning experience and extend the access and use of e-books.

You can hear a recording of the CILIP presentation as part of the e-Learning Stuff podcast that covers much of what I covered at the TurboTEL event, but in a lot more detail!

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Rates of Change

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JISC RSC SW TurboTEL 2012

At the recent JISC RSC SW TurboTEL 2012 conference I delivered a rapid speed presentation, containing 120 slides in just ten minutes…

This presentation is one that is based on various others I have done this year, and though I now know better, I did include the “historical” slides about resistance to change. I did indeed mention that though they were “made up” there was a message behind them that often teachers are resistant to change, especially changes in technology. I made the connection that we use models to show how change is effected within organisations, but in reality we need to be aware of the importance of the culture of an organisation when introducing change.

I went back to why we use technology, and how technology is often a solution to the many problems we face. I also covered how teachers need to understand the potential of technology and the contexts in which it works best. The example I used was that the traditional printed book is great for many learners, but completely inaccessible when the library is closed, hence the importance of an e-library and an ebook collection.

I wanted to show that technological change is not as rapid as we think it is, mentioning that the first mobile phone call was in 1946, the first handheld mobile phone call was in 1973, the first tablet capable of reading ebooks was demonstrated in 1971. Often it takes a long amount of time before a technology becomes widely adopted.

I also warned about listening to people and asking them what they want. Often people will want what they have already, but faster or cheaper. It takes real vision to produce new things that people didn’t even consider, but suddenly find essential. Be informed by listening to your learners, but not led by them. Most popular technologies are usually invented by a different person to the person who made them popular. Henry Ford with cars and Steve Jobs with mp3 players.

I quickly went over the new technologies that may become popular over the next five years and to watch out for.

I then reminded the audience that not everything is perfect and there are problems. There are cultural challenges, difficulties in been innovative, e-safety, costs, inclusion and connectivity.

My final thoughts were remembering that it is never about time, but priorities and that the reason we should be looking at using technology to support learning is because of the value it gives to our learners.

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A few of my favourite things…

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Over the last two years of owning the iPad, I have downloaded lots of different apps, some of which were free and a fair few that cost hard cash!

At the recent JISC RSC SW TurboTEL event in Taunton I delivered a ten minute presentation on my favourite iPad apps.

Here are the links to all the apps in the iTunes App Store as well as a brief description of what the app is about and why I like it. Continue reading A few of my favourite things… →

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Mobile Technologies in the Library

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These are the slides from the keynote presentation I gave at the Mobile Technologies Information Sharing Event in Birmingham.

The aim of the keynote was to remind those attending where we had come from, where we are and where we might be going. It was important to ask the question with all the mobile technologies that are currently available, why aren’t they already embedded into the provision of library services?