New technology and the future of learning

It has been a interesting day. I spent most of it at the Learning Skills Group Conference in Olympia, London. Although I had to leave early to catch my train, I still managed to see the keynote by Chris Bones and the session on assessment by Donald Clark, and my impression overall was that it was a very well received event. There were around 450 delegates for this free event, and Don Taylor and his team are to be congratulated on putting together such a great line up of speakers, that also included Craig Taylor, Cathy Moore, Laura Overton, Nic Laycock, Alicia Sanchez and Charles Jennings. My own session, entitled 'New Technology and the Future of Learning' attempted to gaze (tentatively) into the near future, and to ask questions such as 'what will be the new roles of trainers and developers in the next few years?' and 'what new literacies will learners need to capitalise on new technologies?' I started with a personal journey of over 35 years working in learning technology, and made the point that as each new technology is introduced, there always seems to be opposition and objections. I counselled however, that technology for technology sake is often a mistake. New tech should only be introduced if there is a good reason - for enrichment, extension or enhancement of learning, when it can't be achieved using existing methods. It's very dangerous to try to predict anything, because we are often wide of the mark. But we can trace the trends and see the strong possibilities. I therefore made several broad brushstroke predictions that the future of learning will be: open, personal; social; mobile; augmented; and visual. I spoke about some of the new and emerging technologies such as augmented reality, magic symbol technology and infographics, as well as some of the already established technologies such as gestural interfaces, social media and smart mobile devices. There was an excellent discussion around the questions posed, and I daresay discussion will continue. Below is the slide show (with some additional annotations), to prompt you to join in with the discussion if you weren't able to personally attend the event.

New Technologies and the Future of Learning

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