Category Archives: conference

conference, web 2.0

JISC Conference 2009

1 Comment

On Tuesday the good and the great (and me) will be descending on Edinburgh for the JISC Conference.

JISC Conference 2009

Usually the JISC Conference is in Birmingham, this year for a change it’s North of the border.

I am flying up on Monday from Bristol, as the early flight on Tuesday is way too early for going up for one day; and there are pre-conference events on Monday too. There is a good programme and I am looking forward to it.

I am attending the session on student retention.

The need for improving retention is identified in the National Audit Office report on Student Retention (Feb 2008). The funding councils already provide additional funding to support institutions in meeting retention and widening participation targets. JISC projects have shown that technology has an important role in providing the administrative processes and support facilities that make learners feel better supported when starting a course in higher education. Several projects have demonstrated that the costs of small investments in technical infrastructure and processes can be covered by reducing student loss by just a few learners. This session will explore several examples of universities using technology to support students and, in doing so, helping to improve retention. We will hear feedback from the learners and discuss the potential of these approaches to make greater impact across the sector.

In the afternoon I am going to the Web 2.0 legal session.

Cultural perceptions about the relevance of legal issues in a Web 2.0 environment, and practical obstacles in locating authoritative resources about these issues, can present some of the biggest challenges in engagement with next generation technologies to support teaching, learning and research.

How do we encourage engagement by staff with these issues?

How can we engender a culture of mutual respect for creative works, as well as one recognising the need for pragmatism and a managed approached to risk?

Where can we go to find authoritative and appropriate resources and, once found, what tools should be used, when and how?

To address these issues the Web2Rights project, with support from JISC Legal, has taken an innovative approach by harnessing next generation technologies to develop an advisory toolkit and associated resources. Come along to find out more.

As per usual I hope to be blogging a few blog entries there, I will probably take a few photographs too, certainly will be Twittering and I may make a video or two…

conference, m-learning

Starting mLearn 2008

3 Comments

So the conference proper has started after the disappointing pickled cauliflower reception.

Alas there is no free wireless, so though I can use my 3G phone, I can’t use my laptop or iPod touch. Though I can enter text on my phone, I am terrible at writing on a 1-9 keypad so I am writing this using a word processor.

So far we have had a (very long) five minutes introduction to the conference and now John Traxler is going through the housekeeping and is now introducing Diane Laurillard.

Diane Laurillard presenting her keynote, “towards a pedagogy-driven account of mobile learning”.

Digital technologies are not typically optimised for learning or teaching… but are optimised for business and leisure.

Now presenting a common framework of representation.

Diane now presenting her conversational framework.

Question, can you describe informal learning?

Diane says her conversational framework challenges the learning design.

What are mobile technologies good for?

Personally I think she misses the point.

A lot of arguments against digital tools can be equally applied to non-digital tools such as books, journals and blackboards.

Tools are tools regardless of whether they are physical or digital.

She seems to be applying traditional learning design to designs which use mobile devices.

She seems to have missed that mobile learning is (or should be) about the mobility of the learner.

I wonder if she has heard of Web 2.0?

Her example misses the fact that learners who are not even at the art gallery can contribute and join in the learning activity.

Digital technologies for not typically optimised for learning. Nor are most physical technologies and environments.

Her model seems to miss the point of the real advantages of mobile learning.

conference, m-learning

MoLeNET Dissemination Conference – 18th September

1 Comment

If you check my tag cloud on the right you will see the tag MoLeNET and you may have wondered what that was about.

Well MoLeNET (which is short for Mobile Learning NETwork) is, to quote the LSN:

A unique collaborative approach to the implementation of mobile learning via supported shared cost mobile learning projects within a wider community of practitioners and experts.

Gloucestershire College has had a MoLeNET Project, the Glossy Project which has been looking at mobile learning.

MoLeNET Dissemination Conference - 18th September

Well on the 18th September there is a MoLeNET Dissemination Conference in London (see attached PDF).

The aims of the conference are:

  • To disseminate nationally the good practice, lessons learned, research and evaluation findings, tips, tools and advice arising out of the MoLeNET programme in 2007/08
  • To demonstrate technologies, systems, learning materials and techniques
  • To provide a platform for practitioners to share and an opportunity for networking and building of future partnerships

I do expect to be there in one form or another, so if you are coming do come and say hello.

MoLeNET Dissemination Conference (PDF)

altc2008, conference, web 2.0

Web 2.0 Workshop at ALT-C 2008

Leave a comment

I have received the following e-mail in my inbox.

I am pleased to inform you that your proposal Hood 2.0 – it’s a Web 2.0 World out there, has been accepted for presentation at ALT-C 2008.

Yay

The workshop will examine the concept of Web 2.0 services in addressing the tensions between formal and informal learning, and empowering learners to take responsibility for their own learning.

It will explore how we need to address the pedagogical needs to drive the use of Web 2.0 services and not be blinded or awed by the technology of Web 2.0

It will demonstrate and allow participants to discuss and debate different learning scenarios and activities which utilise Web 2.0 services.

Web 2.0 services will be used to demonstrate these scenarios.

Source: Hood 2.0.

conference

ILT Champions Informal Conference

Leave a comment

Today I travelled across the country to Oaklands College for the informal ILT Champions conference which was set up by Peter Trethewey.

I was presenting on micro-blogging and we looked at Jaiku, Twitter and Flickr.

We didn’t have a huge amount of time, but I feel we had a good discussion, even if we did go down a few ratholes.

In the afternoon in an open session I led, we discussed spaces, web 2.0 and aspects of Keynote.

I attended a very good PowerPoint session led by Dave Foord in which he covered the “magic” of PowerPoint. He made the very valid point that as a lot of staff are familiar with PowerPoint using it to improve the interactivity and engagement of learner, and this is probably a better option than trying to do similar things with new or different software. I also said I would link to his interactive heart PowerPoint presentation.

Earlier in the day, Richard Everett gave an illuminating overview on how Oaklands College were moving forward the college in the utilisation of e-learning.

One thing I like about Richard’s approach is that he focuses on the pedagogy and the learning, and using technology to support that process. With him, it is never just about the technology.

I enjoyed Ellen’s session on speech to text and text to speech technologies, her demonstration really showed the value of this software for learners.

Rob Englebright’s session on VLEs led to a really good discussion on how local colleges need to interact and engage with the LEA in their area and the LEA needs to do likewise.

Overall it was a really good day and a good idea. Thanks to all that helped to organise and run the event.

Hopefully there will be another day like it at another college.

conference, jisc

JISC Conference 2008

Leave a comment

Today I am at the JISC Conference in Birmingham.

JISC Conference 2008

This is the annual JISC bash where JISC talks up what they have done over the previous year, where they have been and where they intend to go.

Unlike a lot of conferences where there are calls for papers and workshops, this doesn’t happen at the JISC conference. It is in the main JISC talking about JISC.

I can’t remember what I signed up for in terms of presentations, but I suspect that there will be a lot of talk and a lot less interaction and engagement.

The main reason I go to the JISC Conference is that it is a great opportunity to network and meet fellow e-learning people from across the country.

I am pretty sure that’s why a lot of people go there too.

blog, conference, flickr, twitter

Sony VAIO UX1XN as a conference tool

1 Comment

I have always liked the Sony VAIO UX1XN.

I have always been disappointed with the battery life. My original intention was to use the UX1XN as my main conference computer, my first attempt was at the JISC digitisation conference in Cardiff back in 2007.

Here Brian Kelly is presenting…

Sony VAIO UX1XN as a conference tool

It’s small enough to be unintrusive, unlike a laptop which can be a bit of a barrier, it has two cameras which enable me to send images to Flickr or take short video clips, and the keyboard is usable unlike the fiddly mobile phone type split keyboard of the Q1 Ultra. You can also use it without needing to put it on the table or on your lap which makes it ideal in the conference hall or break-out room environment.

However as I said at the beginning the battery life is the downer, I only really get about an hour and half from it, and this means that it won’t last the day at a conference.

So recently I ordered the extended battery for it, which should make it usable and hopefully last the day at a meeting or a conference.

I have therefore been practicing using the keyboard, which is quite thumbs orientated, and have managed to get a reasonable speed using it.

I wouldn’t want to write a long blog entry (like this one) on it, but for entering URLs or posting tweets or jaiku postings, I think it will work just fine.

Now of course what works well in the conference means that it would work equally well in the classroom or lecture theatre or workshop as a communication tool for learners.

Alas Sony no longer produce the UX1XN in the UK and though available from some suppliers still, generally you would need to get another UMPC if you were going to provide them to learners.

conference, e-book, jisc

Innovating e-Learning Conference e-Books

Leave a comment

One of the problems with being off work for a while is you do miss a few things, so catching up on the JISC website I was pleased to see that the e-Books from the 2007 Innovating e-Learning Conference had been published online.

‘Institutional transformation’ and ‘supporting lifelong learning’ were the themes of the JISC online conference held earlier this year and two conference e-books have been published today to reflect both of these themes.

You can download the books from this page (scroll down).

You can read the outcomes of the joint presentation I delivered and the discussion  that followed on Personal technologies and the future of learning in chapter five of book one.

Innovating e-Learning Conference e-Books

The books make for interesting reading if you missed (or even just missed parts of) the conference and are a useful reminder of what was discussed for those that took part.