.. And now a word from our sponsors

It's bitterly cold here in Berlin, but the snow has gone from the ground and the skies here today are a clear pale blue. I'm sat in the Marlene Bar of the Hotel Intercontinental just before the start of day one of the Online Educa Berlin conference. After wading my way through a couple of dozen German policemen, I made my way into the main reception of the conference...

The first thing you notice about Educa, is that it is shamelessly commercial. Most of the space of this huge event is taken up with exhibition and vendor stands, more than 120, and everyone, it seems is trying to flog you something. I have just opened my delegate pack and out popped no fewer than 19 flyers and brochures from sponsors, around an inch thick. They are discarded on the side without me reading any of them - oh woe to the rain forests! Oh, and this wireless link is brought to you courtesy of Adobe....

Last night I spent a very enjoyable hour or so with some of the more notorious Edubloggers including Josie Fraser, David White, Dirk Steiglitz, Graham Attwell and George Roberts. We chewed the fat over the future (or not) of VLEs, residents and visitors, social software and German caberet. Yep, we aren't completely boring.

I will report back on some of the sessions here today and tomorrow as they take place and try to bring you some interesting images from the event. There is also at least one Twemes site hosting images, tweets and blog postings for the event. For now, I'm off to try and avoid the vendor stands and find the sessions.

Bazaar sounds again

Noises off... and now it's live. Just in case you forgot, Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar, recorded live during ALT-C last week, was a great event. More good news - it's now available for download on the Pontydysgu site. Hosted by Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser, and featuring interviews with Scott Wilson, George Siemens (pictured with Josie) and a host of others, the programme is fast paced, full of pithiness and humour, and features great contemporary music. There are even some poetry performances by George Roberts and me, so it has a little of everything, for everyone. Thanks to Joe, Graham, Cristina, Dirk and the rest of the Bazaar crowd for putting this together.

For me, it is simply a case of listening to it all over again, so that I can relive the very entertaining and thought provoking hour over a hundred of us spent beside the JISC stand at the conference in Leeds last week.

We blog like mad

It has been an interesting and varied day here at ALT-C 2008. We culminated the day with a live radio broadcast for Sounds of the Bazaar, hosted by Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser. Mark van Harmelen and George Roberts were interviewed, as was George Siemens. I presented my Hooked poem and George also added one for the cultural corner section of the programme. We had a live in-world Second Life screen on the go as well, and there were around 100 people watching, chatting, and enjoying the wine and snacks on offer.

Several dozen of us are now assembled downstairs in the bowels of the Leeds University Student Union building for the Edubloggers meeting which is due to start imminently. There is much talk about all things social software, and the noise is drowning out the music on the speakers... and we are all blogging, Flickring and Twittering like mad things.

Second Life in Education

A really useful wiki has just been brought to my attention (thanks to George Roberts and Stephen Downes - who are as ever vigilant). It's called Second Life in Education, is managed by Jo Kay (avatar pictured) and Sean Fitzgerald and does exactly what it says on the tin - it provides a fairly comprehensive list of projects that have an education or training focus in Second Life. I say 'fairly comprehensive', because it's not exhaustive of course - the University of Plymouth Sexual Health SIM isn't featured yet, but I hope it soon will be. I have just posted a message to the wiki discussion board attaching the URL for the project blog.