Pushing the buttons

The 5th Plymouth e-Learning Conference has drawn to a close, and it's time to reflect on what I think has been another great conference success. So many new friends have been made and so much discussed over the two days it is difficult to know where to start. I have been following the very busy Twitter stream of the event, and have been impressed by the amount of traffic, and the varied commentaries flowing out of, and back into the conference venue. This conference really was participatory I think, not only because of Twitter and the blog posts that have resulted, but also because of other technology support such as the streaming video we used to cover both keynotes, and several of the breakout sessions and discussions. BECTA even picked up on #pelc10 and called it the hashtag of the day.




Dave White's keynote this morning pressed so many buttons, it's hard to summarise what was said and discussed. I will leave it to the video capture (we will post both Dave's and Josie Fraser's keynotes as soon as we can to the conference website and link to them via this blog). There have been some great images posted from the event too, which will help us all to recall a memorable gathering of learning technologists, teachers and academics in the months to come. I will ensure that the official photographs from our two photographers will also be posted up and shared through the conference website soon.


We enjoyed an excellent and hard-fought debate today in the Jill Craigie Cinema (yes, a real Cinema on campus) where Tara Alexander, Dave White and I argued the toss over Prensky's Digital Natives/Immigrants theory, against Dave's Residents and Visitors model. Many of the audience engaged with us in a very useful exploration of the ideas, and we all went away with more questions than answers, which was exactly the required outcome. I was also very proude of all my own students who presented their research in four separate papers at the conference. They were met with glowing praise, great questions, and useful feedback from delegates.


Next year we are doing it all again, and the publicity is already there, on the back of the abstract book. The date for the 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference is 7-8 April, 2011. We hope you will be able to join us as we continue this increasingly popular and exciting conference series. I'm off now to put my feet up for a few days... Thanks to everyone who took part!


Image source (courtesy of Daniel Kennedy)



'Pushing the buttons' Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.