Handheld awards sparkle

We enjoyed an excellent opening day here at Handheld Learning 2008 tonight. The sparkling handheld education practitioner and innovation awards were hosted by TV legend and education champion Johnny Ball, (he joked that the reason he was here and not his daughter Zoe, was that she charges more than him) and several well deserved prizes walked away from the superb venue here at the Brewery, East London.

The award for Primary innovation went to Dean Bank Primary School, Durham (head teacher Chris Young, with colleagues Lynda English and Fiona Brown pictured). They set up a 24/7 access systems using PDAs so that pupils could gain support for whenever they required it. Since the start of the initiative, all parents have bought into the scheme, promising to purchase Q1 systems for the children as they transition into Secondary School. An excellent scheme and a worthy winner. Other awards were given to Manchester University and the Open University for further, higher and adult education and special needs provision.

The evening has been topped off with a great performance by a 10 piece band who have been playing samba, reggae, jazz and blues amongst other styles, and regaling the caberet style seated audience of delegates with their virtuoso performances. Have been seated all evening with a variety of the great and the good including Kath and John Trinder, Andy and Julia Pulman (they all seem to be in couples tonight!), Jill Attewell, Mark Kramer and James Clay to name a few. More form the conference tomorrow as the events unfold...

At the bleeding edge

Came across an interesting blog on mobile technologies today, called Learn on-the-go. Whilst the title of the blog might be a little twee - (I had disturbing visions of someone reading a book on the toilet) - the content is pretty good, with a review of Marc Prensky's keynote address at the recent Handheld Learning 2007 conference held in London. Whilst not entirely glowing about Prensky's 'Keeping up with change' speech, even labelling him as 'obselete' at one point, this blog writer has some interesting things to say about mobile learning, change management and technology in general...

Here's a top quote from the blog:

'While slower, less progressive educators may still be comfortably exploring e-learning on learning management systems or off CD-ROMs (or, indeed, still doing chalk-and-talk), educators investigating mobile learning are very much at the cutting edge of educational innovation, along with other educators investigating other areas such as the use of social web tools for education, and the use of virtual worlds as learning environments.'

Well, yes, I agree - change is always with us, and shift happens. And I have to nod in agreement that the bleeding edge of learning technology is found in the study of ambient forms of learning, along with 3-D virtual worlds and social networking tools. I'll be bookmarking this blog and paying a return visit or two.