Category Archives: conference

conference

Packing my bag, actually my bags

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This week I am off to the Plymouth e-Learning Conference and I am packing my bag (or bags). It’s a couple of days and I will be away a couple of nights.

These are a few things that will be useful or make life easier.

6 way gang – instead of fighting people for the power sockets, you can immediately make five friends! Also useful when you are back in your hotel room and need to charge the laptop, the phone, the iPod, use the hairdryer, etc…

Coffee – I can’t stand instant coffee and that’s what you generally find in hotel rooms. So I take some of those Coffee Bags you can buy or Rombout Coffee filters. Of course if you drink that tea stuff then you can bring your own bags of what you like and are use to. I always pop out and buy fresh milk too!

If you believe everything you see on the BBC then you might also want to take your own cup, actually I have a mug, because I like a large cup of coffee and not a piddly little cup of tea!

Snacks – room service can be very expensive, so a few snacks or fruit now and again to meet those hunger pangs. Having said that, I know that Sainsburys is next to my hotel, so I can always pop in there for extra supplies, saves having to carry them down, but with other conferences this isn’t always possible.

Chargers – don’t forget your chargers, easy to forget and a nightmare when your phone or laptop runs out of juice. Or you can’t use it for the conference. I find that conference activity can be power heavy on my mobile devices.

Velcro fixings – For your poster and bring enough because someone you know will have forgotten to bring theirs.

Camera – to take the odd photo or two, I use mine to take photographs of really good posters so I can review them later at my leisure. Amazing how much detail a 7.2MP image can capture of a poster. I also use it to capture slides in presentations (ie URLS and e-mail addresses), I even use it to photograph flyers so I can carry less.

MiFi or 3G Dongle – I am sure that the WiFi at the conference venue will be fine, however what about at the hotel, the dinner, the train… I will be bringing my new MiFi which allows me to connect to the internet over 3G, wirelessly through a wifi connection. The MiFi acts as a wireless access point for up to five clients – will probably make four new friends as a result of bringing it to the conference.

Business Cards – always useful to swap, play cards with, pass ones you have received to others who you don’t want to contact you…

USB Cables – you never know when you are going to need one.
Spare batteries – for your MP3 recorder, etc… Due to the differing sizes of USB, normal, micro and mini, I now carry three of them!

Spare SD card – in case you lose yours.

Spare USB Stick – for moving files around, taking copies of presentations, etc…

Paracetamol – some of those presentations do give you headaches…

What are you going to pack?

alt, conference, jisc

Rewiring Inclusion

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Rewiring Inclusion: Strategies, tools and techniques to promote barrier-free learning

A national one day conference in Nottingham at the National College on Tuesday 9 February 2010, with an optional evening session on 8 February. Organised jointly by the Association for Learning Technology and JISC TechDis.

With an outstanding range of workshop sessions, and plenary contributions from:

· Google’s Julian Harty – “Wave, Chrome OS, Online Docs, and Android.
What impact will they have on the environment for learning?”;

· Jane Seale from the University of Southampton;

· Yahoo! Europe’s Artur Ortega – “The Yahoo! approach to accessibility”;

· Dónal Fitzpatrick from the School of Computing at Dublin City University – “The contribution that computer science is making on inclusion”;
· Peter Hartley from Bradford University;

· Alison Mills from The Manchester College – “How a large urban college has taken inclusion to the heart of its operations”;

· James Clay from Gloucestershire College.

Full programme for the event [1 MB PDF]

A large print version is available.

The conference will focus in particular on browser technologies, Web2.0, e-learning, and mobile learning, and on the benefits these can offer to
all users, including those with disabilities or learning difficulties.

All sectors were represented in the workshop proposals and we are delighted that Independent Specialist Colleges were successful in being
selected to present alongside Universities, FE colleges, Project Consultants, and JISC Regional Support Centres.

Costs to attend:
£120 members of ALT
£160 non members of ALT
£100 dinner, bed and breakfast at the National College

Booking deadline:
Tuesday, 2 February 2010 – http://www.alt.ac.uk/conferences.php

conference

I’m not going to BETT

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This week is BETT 2010 and I will not be going.

I have been to BETT twice in my life and that was two times too many!

So what is BETT for those that don’t know.

BETT is the world’s largest educational technology event. Use this site to find products and suppliers, and discover the latest ways to use technology for teaching and learning.

I went in 2000 and then again in 2007. So why am I not going in 2010? Well it’s not down to the weather, that doesn’t always stop me from travelling.

The reason why I won’t be going is that the focus of BETT is too much on the technology rather than what people do with it. It is much more an event based on educational technology suppliers than educators using technology. It is this reason that I won’t be going.

Surprising to some will be that I am not interested in technology, I am interested in how people are using technology to enhance and enrich learning.

Other events and conferences I go to (such as ALT-C) are very much about learning and not about technology.

I’m not going to BETT 2010, are you? Why are you going?

conference

ASCILITE 2009 Day -2

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Well after what feels like a week of travelling I have arrived in New Zealand ahead of ASCILITE 2009.

I am jointly presenting a workshop on mobile learning on Sunday 6th December. I am also delivering the final keynote on the 9th December.

I am hoping to take away lots of stuff and ideas from the conference. Hats the thing about conferences is that there are ideas and thoughts that you can take back and implement at your own institution. I also see this conference as an opportunity to see what happens here on the other side if the world. We have many things in common but also differences in climate, calenders, seasons and culture.

I will be blogging and also using video to capture my thoughts as the conference progresses. I will link to these blog entries from both the conference hub (which uses Moodle) and from Cloudworks.

More later…

conference

Learning Innovation, Embracing Technology

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It’s a busy week this week, though in the main because I am getting asked to do lots of things.

Today I was giving a keynote (and running an exhibition stand) at the joint Becta and LSIS Conference on Learning Innovation, Embracing Technology. My presentation was on mobile learning, though (as you might guess) I covered a fair bit more than just “what is mobile learning”.

I was on just before lunch, prior to my bit we had had LSIS and Becta give their views on embracing technology and a workshop.

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Alas (or luckily) I only had ten minutes to do my presentation and using the digital clock on my iPhone I did keep to time.

I would loved to have more time and engaged the conference delegates in conversation and discussion. Well to be honest I did over lunch, where for an hour I chatted and engaged with the delegates on my stand.

As well as showing off a lot of mobile kit (from my bag of crap) I also had bundles of LSN publications about MoLeNET which were taken in their droves.

Went very well, so much so, I never got a chance to eat my lunch!

After lunch I went to Becky Barrington’s workshop on tools that she uses with her staff. Though I know practitioners love to create content, and the tools Becky showed demonstrate how much easier that it is to now, I do question the sustainability of a that model across the FE sector. How can we share all that wonderful content that is being created in various colleges across the country? How can we ensure that the shared content is being utilised effectively and for the benefit of learnings.

We can’t be the only institution who once more will create a series of slides or quizzes on customer service?

I enjoyed Stuart Edwards’ presentation and nice use of this video to prove how social media is having a huge impact on the way we communicate. Glad I didn’t show my video in my presentation as we used the same audio track!

Overall it was a very interesting conference.

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Handheld Learning Day Three

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After two excellent days, we were on day three of the Handheld Learning conference.

I was presenting again (in the afternoon) in the MoLeNET session on how MoLeNET had an impact on Gloucestershire College.

Again way too much choice and some excellent speakers out there. In the end I chose the inclusion session in the main conference hall. Inclusion is something I keep getting confused about and decided that this would be a good way of updating and getting myself back up to speed.

I enjoyed the session and particularly Sal Cooke’s presentation.

In the afternoon I was presenting in the MoLeNET strand about the impact of MoLeNET no Gloucestershire College.

I found Ray Kurzweil’s final keynote stimulating and though quite a few stats and graphs, it was interesting to see how his predictions have come true and what he is now predicting.

I didn’t win any prizes in the final draw.

I really enjoyed Handheld Learning and even if you are not into mobile learning, there is more than enough in the conference to justify going. The conference is much more about learning and unlike many other conferences brings people from a range of sectors together.