Living in the future

Berlin in December, with all that snow? It was quite magical. And a little scary, perhaps. Spare a thought for all those who attended the Online Educa Conference this year, and then found themselves stranded in Berlin because the snow had closed aiports across sub-zero Europe. I was one of the lucky ones. I made it back from Berlin to Bristol airport with only an hour or so of delays. I arrived back home at around 2 am this morning. Others are still in Berlin, waiting for their flights to be rescheduled, and the weather doesn't look as though it is going to let up....

But travelling to OEB10 (for that was the official hashtag) was worth the risk. It was worth it because Berlin is a great city, and the location for the conference - the Hotel Intercontinental - is an excellent venue. The company was great too. I met up with many, many old friends, and made some great new ones too. Some, such as Clark Quinn and Chahira Nouira have been familiar Twitter buddies for some time, but to meet them in person was, as always, a very great pleasure. I was also the man responsible for connecting together two of the luminaries of the learning world during the Educa speaker's reception. Here's the picture of the first meeting of the guru of informal learning, Jay Cross, and the prime mover behind the Horizon Report, Larry Johnson. It's an honour to know and have conversations with such wonderfully intelligent, influential and passionate people. One of the keynote speakers on Day 1 asked us if we were disappointed in the future. Shouldn't we by now be living on the Moon, and travelling around using personal jetpacks? Well, the keynote speakers on Day 2 brought us back down to earth with a pragmatic look at how technology is being used to support and enhance learning.

Larry Johnson's opening keynote had many of the OEB delegates smiling and murmering their praise - his photographic images were breathtaking, evocative, emotional and engaging, and were fitting embellishments to his narrative. Larry talked eloquently and movingly about his own family - from his grandparents to his granchildren (pictured left with an image of his mother and grandson) as he traced the history of technology down through the years. Our perceptions of technology, he told his audience, are not the same as those of our children. Many used to gather around the television to share events as they happened as broadcast by the news networks. Now, says Larry, we are the network. We are the ones who create and distribute the breaking events from around the world. His optimistic perspective on the future sees young people and older ones too, populating shared digital spaces, learning from each other as a living network.

Josie Fraser's keynote followed, focusing on the needs of young people in a digital age. Josie, who in 2008 was awarded the UK's Learning Technologist of the Year award, is these days discovered as the e-Learning Strategist for Leicester City Council. She concentrated on digital literacies, and argued that they are vital because they extend beyond the functional into the socio-cultural in their influence. Josie also dealt with issues of e-safety and digital identity, applying danah boyd's categorisations of digital affordances, including scalability, persistency and searchabillity to illustrate how images, text and sounds can work for good or for bad. These features, she argued, brought many challenges to schools in the digital age. Josie also sees an optimistic future despite the challenges we are facing. Larry Johnson has a favourite phrase: 'I love living in the future'. OEB showed us many glimpses into this future. I don't think we will be too disappointed.

Living in the future by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.