Causing ripples

There is a growing swell of movement toward informal learning through social media. It is free, connected, creative and disruptive. It happens across all sectors of education - it's for everyone. Shelly Terrell's well received keynote speech at the 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference exemplified this kind of learning. Many who watched her speech, either from within the room, or via the livestreaming elsewhere in the world would have seen that Shelly passionately believes in what she preaches. And she also practices it. The previous evening she had dashed back from the conference dinner to present a live webinar from her hotel room in Plymouth.

Shelly talked about the butterfly effect - a mainstay example of chaos theory - and used it as an analogy to describe the incredible potential of social media. 'Blog or tweet a good idea, and minutes later, teachers may be using it for real, in a classroom somewhere' she said. The ripples caused by some content can extend onto the screens of many thousands or millions of people worldwide, she pointed out. Youtube videos go viral very quickly as the crowd gains awareness of the content and message. How can we harness this phenomenon in learning? she asked.

Yes, there is incredible power in Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and a host of other free tools. The key question and take away points from this keynote were - how do we harness this potential of social media, and how can we apply such tools in authentic learning contexts so that learners are engaged, challenged and inspired? Shelly Terrell's keynote was a fitting finale to this year's Plymouth e-Learning Conference. The theme - digital futures - was well and truly covered, and from many angles, perspectives, arguments.

Next year's PeLC will be different again, with good reason. We are not dropping the 'e' and nor should we. Instead, the 'e' no longer stands for electronic. Now it stands for enhanced. What kind of enhancements can we expect in the next year? What will we witness from the worlds of formal education and informal learning, games based learning, the mobile communities and social media tribes? Whatever emerges in the next few months, you can almost lay a bet on it, that it will be reflected in next year's Plymouth e-Learning Conference.
A number of other people are also blogging about pelc11. Check out their blog posts below:

Catherine Cronin
Matt Lingard
Simon Finch
Jason Truscott
Stephen Farmer
Doug Belshaw (podcast)
Doug Belshaw (blogpost)