Great places, awesome people

I was fortunate this year to be invited to speak at major events in some of the most beautiful cities in the world. Although I hate the travel, I have to admit that when I am in such places, and while I am meeting such brilliant and inspirational people, I am in my element. Here is the first part of my end of year retrospective on the top ten (actually eleven) places I visited in 2011, and the great people I met. Today's post goes from 10 down to 6. (Continues tomorrow).

10 =. Newcastle, England. I had an absolute blast in the North East in June. Newcastle is a city I'm quite familiar with from many day excursions with my wife and family over the years (Her parents live in Washington, Tyne and Wear). On this occasion, I was delighted to be invited to keynote the Northern Grid for Learning Annual Conference, and what an event it was! For a start, I flew up in the company of Mr Chickenman himself, Dan Roberts, and when the two of us invaded the executive lounge in the hotel, they quickly ran out of pretzels (Dan's doing, not mine I hasten to add). The speaker list read like a who's who of innovative educators from across the UK. It was wonderful to meet face to face some of the people whom I have followed on Twitter for some time, including Bill Lord, Ian Usher, Steve Bunce, Martin Waller, Ian Addison, Lisa Stevens, Joe Dale, Bev Evans and Jan Webb. Conference organiser Simon Finch and his team did an excellent job putting together what turned out to be a memorable, inspirational day, and the evening social post event at a Spanish tapas bar on the banks of the Tyne was the icing on the cake. Full story here: It's grins up north.

10 =. Liverpool, England. In March I attended the JISC annual conference in Liverpool, for once purely as a delegate rather than as a speaker. It was a nice change for me, not having to worry about preparing a talk or trying desperately to find my speaking venue. I stayed in a hotel just across the road from the Liverpool Echo Arena where the conference took place, within the beautifully rebuilt and repurposed Albert Dock quayside. In the distance I could see the iconic (new) Liverpool Cathedral on the skyline. I was delighted to discover that I was staying no more than 100 yards from the famous Beatles museum, so I spent a very enjoyable afternoon wandering around looking at all the exhibits, and reliving some of my younger days listening to the Fab Four. Full story here: The next ten years.

9. Auckland, New Zealand. I was in New Zealand in November/December on my lecture tour. While in Auckland I keynoted the International Conference on e-Learning Futures at Unitec. This was my second visit to the City of Sails, but I will never tire of Skycity and the waterfronts of this great city, and in such a stunningly beautiful country. Probably my peak experience of my entire four week tour of the Antipodes was my welcome by the New Zealanders and my invitation to speak in the carved wood meeting hall of the Maori people - the Marae. It was also great to meet up again at the conference with several old friends such as Thomas Cochrane, Noeline Wright, Nigel Robertson, Derek Wenmoth and Richard Elliot, and also to make some new friends including Mandy Williams, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Vasi Doncheva and of course ICELF organiser Linda Keesing Styles. Full story here: Barefoot keynote.

8. Karlsruhe, Germany. I arrived on a snowy February evening in Frankfurt and took the train across the Karlsruhe - a town I had first heard of when the invitation to keynote at LearnTEC came through. I admit I had to go to Google Maps to find it. LearnTEC is one of those German Mega-conferences and expos, regularly attracting in excess of 8000 delegates each year. Karlsruhe is a sleepy little town, and in the grey overcast light of a German winter wasn't that impressive. At night however, with all the blue, yellow and red shop and hotel lights glowing and reflecting off the snow, it was magical. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending some time with Conrad Wolfram (also keynoting the event) in the huge Karlsruhe Messe Expo Hall, and also got to spent an enjoyable hour in conversation with him on the journey back from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt International airport. We talked a lot about the future of the Internet and his own research into the development of Answer Engines. He gave me some great insights into the Silicon Valley set and his friendships with the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Theodore Gray. Full story here: Interview with a Wolfram.

7. Lisbon, Portugal. It was a pleasant surprise to be invited to keynote not one, but two conferences in Portugal this year. What was even better, was that they were back to back and in the same area of beautiful Oeiras, near Lisbon (this is a picture I took of the Palace of the Marquis de Pombal, the venue we met in). I first visited Lisbon in 2008 when I attended the EDEN Annual Conference and picked up a Fellowship award. It is a beautiful city - the kind that glistens in the sun, captivating your senses wherever you go within in. I spoke at the Concede Conference and then keynoted the final day of the EFQUEL Innovation forum. Many of the great and the good from the world of European e-Learning were present, including Grainne Conole, Chahira Nouira, Deborah Arnold, Alastair Creelman, EDEN President Morten Paulsen and Ulf Daniel Ehlers. I also had the distinct pleasure of meeting up with prolific Twitter activist Paulo Simoes for the first time, and also spent some time with charismatic OER guru Wayne Mackintosh. Full story here: Grand Residence and Wayne's World.

6. Cologne, Germany. I first visited Cologne on a school trip when I was 15 years old, and don't remember too much about the city. This time, I was in town in September to keynote the Zukunft Personal HR Expo, another mega-sized German conference. Cologne is a wonderful place to spend a few days, with its soaring gothic Cathedral, many  bridges crossing the river Rhine, picturesque cosmopolitan streets and marvellous bierkellers and wateringholes. Several of the medieval city gates still stand, despite the pounding Cologne took during the Second World War, and I stayed very close to one of the most spectacular - Rudolfplatz. It is a city that oozes art and culture, and it is not difficult to see why it has become one of the premier German convention centres. The convention hall itself is massive, and it took me some time to navigate around it, before I eventually found the conference hall I was looking for (they host many events simultaneously). It was a pleasant surprise to bump into fellow speaker Laura Overton in the street outside the hotel, and later to meet up again with old friends such as Armin Hopp and Wilfred Rubens at the conference. The tram rides and practicing my German in conversation with the locals were also great fun. Full story here: Business games and Sharp practice.

More great places and awesome people next time.


Great places, awesome people by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Aotearoa ... kei te aroha au ki a koe

New Zealand is simply amazing. What can I say about the many sights I have seen, people I have met and things I have experienced? Time and space are not enough, but I will try: Perhaps the crowning highlight of my three week tour was the traditional Maori Powhiri and honour that was bestowed upon me during the ICELF Conference in Auckland. I was invited to present my keynote speech in the Maori sacred meeting house - the marae. This was a barefoot keynote, because no-one should enter the marae with their shoes on. Afterwards I was presented with a greenstone gem with inlaid paua shell as a symbol of everlasting friendship with the people of New Zealand. I will treasure it always. Many photographs of the conference can be found here on the ICELF website.

The sights of New Zealand are absolutely stunning. The lakes and hillsides and the majestic mountains and volcanic outcrops are awe inspiring, as are the natural phenomena of this great island. The geothermal activity down in Rotorua can be spectacular, provided you don't mind the constant smell of sulphur in the air. Hamilton, Palmerston North and Wellington all have great places to visit. In Hamilton, the statue of Richard O'Brien as Riff-Raff is bizarre, and is streamed live on the internet through a web cam, 24/7. Palmerston North's Massey University campus is one of the most serene, arboreal places I have had the pleasure to visit. Wellington's Te Papa museum on the beautiful waterfront is a place to lose yourself for many hours, as you explore and discover the history and culture of this great country. The Lord of the Rings tours (there are several) are a must for all Tolkien fans. The guides are knowledgeable with inside gossip from the film industry (Wellywood) and the visits to iconic location shoots are exciting for film fans. A visit to the Weta Cave in Miramar is also good value. Meeting an ex Plymouth University graduate in a shop across the road from where I'm staying was strange. Bumping into Dermot Donnelly on the Lord of the Rings Movie tour bus in Wellington and finding out that we had similar research interests in online learning and wikis for education was even stranger.

I discovered that innovation is alive and well in some very rich seams of education in New Zealand. My visit to Albany Senior High School impressed me for its bold break away from the tired old silo mentality of traditional schooling. In their fabulous learning spaces they exclusively use open source software and encourage BYOD as well as integrated curriculum practices. AUT's soon to be constructed learning precinct also breaks the mould of traditional university campuses, and by the look of it as I drove past today, it is on target for completion next year. The smart shed project I visited at Unitec will provide richer situated learning experiences for construction students and will no doubt be copied by other training colleges in the future.

But it is the people of New Zealand who have left the most indellible impression on me. Kiwis are some of the most friendly, helpful and accommodating people in the world. Perhaps it is their relative isolation from the rest of the world that makes them so affable. Perhaps their location in the South Pacific and its long tradition of hospitality makes them so welcoming. It was great to catch up with Jedd Bartlett and Derek Wenmoth (Core Education) again, and to meet up once more with old friends including Nigel Robertson (Waikato University), Niki Davis (Canterbury University), Thom Cochrane (AUT) and Michael Fawcett and to meet in real life some new (but strangely familiar) Twitter friends such as Vasi Doncheva, Jonathon Hagger and Karen Melhuish. My grateful thanks go to all those who have organised my travel and accommodation here this year, and especially to Mark Brown (Massey University), Linda Keesing-Styles (Unitec), Mandy Williams (Waiariki Institute), Noeline Wright (Waikato), Mark Osborne (Albany Senior High School) and their colleagues for making my stay here so delightful.  And finally, my special thanks to my cousins Linda and Alistair Robinson (AUT), for welcoming me into their home in Auckland during my stay here. To all of you I say - Kei te aroha au ki a koe!


Image source and ICELF


Aotearoa ... kei te aroha au ki a koe by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Fabulous learning spaces

I have been keenly interested in the design of learning spaces for some time. I guess my background as a designer (I attended Hereford College of Art and Design in the 70s) and my professional life as an educator draw me back to this again and again. It was with great pleasure then, that I was able to visit Albany Senior High School in North Auckland yesterday to talk to a group of educators from across the city. The vision statement of the school is simple but powerful: We nurture each other, we inspire each other, we empower each other.

The first thing that strikes you about ASHS when you arrive is the pristine condition of this new build. With an under-building car park, and serene woodland surroundings, it is in an ideal position to provide high class education for young minds. Entering the reception area via the lift, I encountered a cafeteria area similar to any found in the corporate world. Mark Osborne, the deputy principal told me: "We offer the students an environment where they are treated like adults. When they are dealt with in this way, they take on adult responsibilities and behaviour." Moving through from reception into the main school, it was evident to see that open plan, flexible spaces were the key design feature, and personalised learning the norm. Students sit in areas where they can interact with each other and the teachers, and there can be up to three separate classes taking place in the same space, with student able to move around the room, and across the curricular topics seamlessly. Gone is the silo mentality of 'Now you are in a science class'. A central tenet of the school's curriculum delivery is that students know why they are learning something, and can then connect it to real life contexts.

It was refreshing to see that the school is also fully open source in its software use.  Mark Osborne told me this is because the school also practices a Bring Your Own Device option for all its students. He argued that the most equitable way to manage this to avoid any digital divides is to provide Open Source Software to all students. If they have no device of their own, there are computers available in all the spaces. I was impressed with the fully equipped dance studio and next door, another studio for audio and video projects, complete with a green screen room. ASHS even has its own YouTube channel.

Barbara Kavanagh is the principal of the school, and she is a visionary, seeing the school as one of many that will emerge in the next few years across the region. She told me that the 800 or so students have over 50 teaching staff to support them. That by any estimation is a great student to teacher ratio. The free, open, flexible spaces and the policy of BYOD ensure that the school is both an attractive and sustainable place to learn. Furthermore, all the resources the teachers create for teaching and assessment are licensed under Creative Commons for free use by other educators. My hope it that we will still other schools using this model in the future, both in New Zealand, and farther afield.

Image courtesy of Albany Senior High School


Fabulous learning spaces by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

On my last leg

Bless me father for I have sinned. It's been one long week since my last blogpost. I've been busy, is my excuse. I'm having a wonderful time here in New Zealand. It's an awesome, heartbreakingly beautiful country, rich in culture and with plenty to see and do. I have been pretty busy touring around the North island speaking at various events, but over the last two days I have had some down-time to spend with my family in Auckland (City Centre pictured left). I have seen some breath taking sights and some spectacular views of the city from atop Mount Eden. I also took a short trip across by ferry to see the namesake of my own birthplace - Devonport - and I was impressed by how similar the two towns are. I have now arrived in Christchurch, on the South island, on the last leg of my tour, and I have to admit that I am a little weary of travel. I'm staying just across the road from the Convention Centre where Ulearn 2010 will kick off on Tuesday.

We are expecting quite a crowd of tech-savvy teachers for Ulearn - around 1800 have registered according to one of the organisers I spoke to. Stephen Heppell is flying in tonight to join us, and we also have Lee Crockett and Lane Clark to make up the foursome of keynotes for the event. All of the keynote abstracts and the entire programme can be found on the conference website. I'm going to be speaking on transformational change in education, and will touch on social media, new teacher roles and a host of other related topics in my own keynote on Wednesday afternoon. It seems, from talking to teachers here in New Zealand, that their local education problems are just the same as anywhere else the world over. Whilst this is reassuring in one way, it is also distrurbing to think that governments across the globe all treat education the same way. They throw some money at it (usually in the wrong places) and then expect the issues to go away. Teachers are hard pressed enough to do their jobs, without having to worry about issues of behaviour management, standardised assessment processes, and all the attendant paperwork that comes with the job. It's often a thankless task, and when it all goes wrong, guess who gets the blame - the teacher, of course.

Look, I don't want to start on a rant, but I am increasingly frustrated about the lack of resources most schools suffer from. Schools with technology that is dated so much, children would rather use the kit they have at home - which is often more up to date. There are practitioner issues too of course. Why the majority of teachers in schools I visit across the world use interactive whiteboards as presentational tools is beyond me. Let's get the kids up and using them too shall we? And when it comes to new and emerging technologies, there are still many barriers up against using social software - YouTube is filtered out, yet contains some incredible learning opportunities for language, music, history, science and sport. And Mobile phones are still banned by most schools and limited to a few isolated activities under strict supervision. All of these issues will be touched upon in my keynote on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to engaging with the audience and hope we can have some useful dialogue.

More pictures like the one above are online.... here's a link to all the photos people have taken of the events during my New Zealand tour.

On my last leg by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.