Digital Learnscapes

It's that time of the year again where we are planning for the Pelecon - the Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference - that we hold each year in April at Plymouth University. Pelecon 2012 was probably our best conference yet. Many have said that Pelecon events inspire and energise delegates and challenge perspectives on education, learning and development, and the role of technology. Others have said that Pelecon is one of the best forums for informal debate on the learning technology conference circuit. The Pelecon conference is for teachers and learning professionals in all sectors of education and training, and attracts delegates from all over the world. Pelecon 2012 was the seventh conference, and featured invited speakers including Alec Couros (Canada), Leigh Graves Wolf (USA), Helen Keegan, Simon Finch, Keri Facer, David Mitchell and Jane Hart. Pelecon 2013 will maintain the pace and dynamism of this year's event, and already several well known keynotes have been announced. Go to this link to keep up to date as we make further keynote speaker announcements over the next two weeks. The call for papers for Pelecon 13: Digital Learnscapes is now live, and is summarised below:

We live in a period of change and uncertainty. Many are bewildered by these changes and find it difficult to keep up, particularly in the education and training sectors. The ability to anticipate and prepare for change is the mark of innovative educators, as is the skill of harnessing new and emerging tools to promote good learning.

At Pelecon 13 we want to provide learning professionals with opportunities to explore, discover and discuss new approaches, new technologies and new ideas to enhance, enrich and extend their own professional practice. There will be particular emphasis this year on simulations and games, personal learning tools, new pedagogies and practices, learner and teacher voice, and digital literacies.

The deadline for submission of workshop, paper and demonstration proposals is January 25, 2013 and you can submit your abstracts here. We invite submissions from primary, secondary and tertiary education, as well as from learning and development and other training sectors. Just to whet your appetite and pique four interest, below is a teaser video made by our very own maestro Dr Jason Truscott. We hope to see you at the Pelecon in April!




Digital Learnscapes by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Upstairs downstairs

The gulf is widening between the vendors and the practitioners. It was never more apparent this week than at Learning Technologies - one of the largest events of its type in Europe. The conference attracted over 400 delegates, the free exhibition downstairs several times that many punters. But something was seriously amiss. Several people remarked openly that the 'downstairs' learning technology and skills exhibition was the 'same old same old' and that it contrasted sharply with the practices that were being debated, disseminated and discussed 'upstairs' in the main conference venue at Olympia 2, in West London.

So I went down to see for myself. What struck me about the downstairs exhibition which took up two floors and consisted of over 240 company stands was that it really hadn't moved on from last year. It was just as busy, with plenty of potential customers wandering around. As usual there were plenty of chocolates, pens, mouse mats and squeezy toys being given away for free, and lots of colourful lights and backdrops. There were the same polished corporate presentations. The technology was just as shiny and so were the salespeople, but looking past the veneer you could see that many were offering the same tired old fayre as last year. This exhibition was very much about the technology, very little about learning. Again, these were the observations of several people.

I did no better down on the ground floor where the 'learning skills vendors' were plying their trade. In the first two conversations I had, I was asked if I wanted to know more about learning styles and if I was interested in a course in Neural Linguistic Programming. Whilst the first has absolutely no scientific basis, the second is so unsound and risky it is tantamount to dark ages shamanism. I almost started looking for the chicken bones. I didn't waste time telling the vendors what I really thought about their 'products'. I just politely but firmly told them that I wasn't the right person to be asking. I then shook the dust of my shoes, and smartly returned back up the stairs to sanity. But think about this for a minute. If training companies are still peddling such unsound, unproved and frankly dangerous concepts after all these years, what kind of a future can we expect for learning and development in the corporate sector? And who is driving change in education and training? Let's hope it's not the vendors. For some very good reasons.

Fortunately, returning to the upstairs conference venue, it was possible to hear sensible, visionary and practical stories from many of the excellent speakers at the Learning Technologies event. The likes of Jane Bozarth, James Clay, Craig Taylor and Cathy Moore regaled their audiences with inspiring and challenging talks. My own talk was packed out as I talked about Web 3.0, Web x.0 and the future of web based learning. My new best buddy Clark Quinn (pictured - who at the last minute stepped in to replace Mark Oehlert) was excellent value with his own personal take on games based learning, and Olympic Medal winning high jumper Steve Smith also shone with his motivational speaking on - motivation. I had the pleasure of meeting and spending time with Itiel Dror, and although I failed to find time to hear him speak, we did have the dubious honour of sharing the experience in the small hours of Thursday morning standing outside shivering in the sub zero temperatures, while the Novotel staff and London Fire and Rescue Service tried to discover what had triggered off the fire alarms at 3.30 in the morning.

All in all, and the interrupted sleep aside, LT11UK was a great event, well organised, and replete with great speakers, all thanks to the talents of Donald H Taylor and his excellent team. But for me there was only one floor in the building that mattered. It's clear that the practitioners, the L and D professionals, have moved on and advanced their agendas from last year. But not so the vendors. They appear to have been stuck in a time warp. I'm sorry to report that the exhibition downstairs was lagging so far behind the times it could quite easily have been located on another planet.

Upstairs downstairs by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.