Thanks for the memories

There is an old saying that you shouldn't look back when you are ploughing a field. Hmmm.... It's a good job that I'm not ploughing a field then, isn't it...? So at the top end of the year I can look back on 2007 with some fondness and think, wow, how good a year was that? So here are just a few of my highlights:

Best conference of the year: Without doubt it would have to be Online Educa Berlin, where I learnt so much, heard so many good papers and keynotes, and met so many great people. Second prize is shared by ALT-C (Nottingham) and Bazaar (Utrecht).

Best keynote of the year: Had to be that of Teemu Arina, the Finnish wunderkind, who regaled us with his clear thinking and prescience at EDEN in Naples.

Best device of the year: The iPhone of course - a gadget that I am not getting tired of.... and I've had it for almost a week now!

Best new buddy for the year: Well, I have made several new friends, all of whom I met this year, and all of whom I am now working with/collaborating with in some way. So let's see ... Marco Kalz (met him at ICL in Austria), Helen Keegan (on a bus going to the Eden conference, Italy), Gorg Mallia (ICICTE Heraklion and cartoonist extraordinaire), David Guralnick (ICL Austria), Graham Attwell (ALT-C Nottingham and all over the place ever since!), Josie Fraser (ALT-C Nottingham), Piers MacLean (ICICTE) and Cristina Costa (ALT-C Nottingham) all spring to my mind as people who have enhanced my year and given me much food for thought and a lot of laughter.

Flop of the year: Had to be ICODL in Athens, which proved to be a bit of a disappointment in many ways.

City of the year: Stockholm was great (for one night only) in April, Utrecht was great to wander around in the dark, and Frankfurt was ace (in October), but the prize for this year has to go to..... Bella Napoli!

Best food: Again, sorry all you other cities - you did your best, but it's Napoli that has the best food and restaurants.

Best experience of the year: Speaking to almost 300 people on the topic of Second Life at Online Educa in November. Large screen technology and safety in numbers comes to mind (there were 6 of us on the panel). Second prize goes to the visit I made with my mate Palitha Edirisingha to Pompeii in June, just prior to the opening reception at the EDEN conference.

Funniest event of the year: The ALT-C social event at Jongluers Comedy Club in Nottingham. We laughed until we got thrown out. Second prize goes to the farce of a speech by Andrew Keen at Online Educa. Never heard such crap.

Best group of the year: The prize goes to the Bazaar bunch who are the most intellectually stimulating group of people I have come across. That's us pictured above. Glad to know you all guys! (And Freefolio is a cool idea! - Thanks)

A greek tragedy

I'm afraid for me ICODL has been a bit of a damp squib. Greece brought the world the marathon, tragedy and democracy. This conference has all three.

Let's start with the venue - an interesting one. The 'Multicenter Appollon' does just what it says on the tin. It's an old refurbished factory deep in the heart of an industrial suburb of Pireaus. The taxi driver was confused - didn't know where it was, and circled around endless narrow backstreets hanging with washing and riddled with alley cats, navigating hair-raisingly around double parked cars, and narrowly avoiding pedestrians. Eventually he drew us up outside a large square two storey building. 'Here!' he gabbled in fluent English (better than my Greek... 'afta!'). We paid him and walked straight into a Post Office. Hmmm ... more confusion. 'Round the back' we were told, we would find the exhibition and conference centre. We walked into an area of controlled chaos and found ourselves at the registration desk for the conference venue, in amongst about 300 ancient sculptures on plinths, and dozens of paintings hanging from the walls.

The conference eventually started. Its title: 'Forms of Democracy in Education: Open Access and Distance Education' was promising, but that's where it ended. The first 2 keynotes and most of the welcomes were delivered in speed Greek. Then Alan Tait (UK Open University), followed by Michael Moore (Penn State University), gave a couple of retrospectives on distance education. Michael also talked about his new museum of the history of distance education which he has established in Second Life. 'There's not a lot there at the moment' he declared, but more would be added he promised. Presumably when distance education gets some more history in.... Call me cynical, but although I think retrospectives are OK in small doses (I have one of my own for Tim's sake), I would rather look forward to what is happening now in, dare I say it - e-learning - than gaze at the covers of old books that were published 20 years ago. I like Alan and Michael a lot, and greatly respect their vast experience and achievements, but tragically, their keynote speeches both failed to grasp the opportunity to spell out a new agenda of democracy and freedom in learning.

Paul Clark (UK Open University) gave a speech that was more in keeping with current events in e-learning, and he opened the debate on social software and its potential to transform educational experiences. Democratic forms of learning are premised on openness and freedom of speech - wikis and blogs and other Web 2.0 software have it in spades. The rest of the conference, I'm afraid, was organised badly with sessions going on from 0900-2015 each day (a real marathon), the content was generally very poorly presented, and throughout most of the 14 papers I listened to on the first day, I was left with a single question... so what? Over two thirds of the papers were in Greek, and the rest were in broken English. I eventually lost heart. My own paper was scheduled in a session of 6 papers starting at 1830. 'It's the graveyard slot' moaned my co-presenter Mark Townsend. He was right. Needless to say, very few people were still around at this time, as most had gone off to get their souvlaki and chips.

To cap it all - and here, non-smokers will cringe - the whole place was continually filled with a fug of cigarette smoke - there was no designated smoking area in the centre, because smoking was allowed just about anywhere. Not a breath of fresh air for an asthmatic (me) but party time for all the chain smokers on the delegate list.

I will go back to Athens again one day, but it won't be for ICODL.

Greece monkey

I'd forgotton just how chaotic Athens is! It has been 19 years, 6 months and 14 days (approximately) since my last vist here, and they still haven't repaired that old building on top of the rock. There are cars everywhere, double and even triple parked, and they come at you from all angles, complete with hordes of mopeds that sound like a demented swarm of wasps. Packs of dogs (friendly mostly) roam the streets or kip out on the sidewalk, and people just step over them. There are unguarded potholes and excavations everywhere you walk, so you need to keep your wits about you, and your nostrils are continually assailed with several aromas all at one time.

I'm staying in the Port of Pireaus (pronounced 'Pirry Ass' by the locals and they should know) and the weather is clear, blue skied and about 18-20 degrees - very pleasant after 6 degrees at Gatwick yesterday. It's like a British summer (remember those?) I love the Mediterranean style of life - old boys sat out in ricketty chairs playing with their worry beads, ornate wrought iron roadside barriers, the trees heavy with oranges, greenery down every street I walk, and the laissez faire attitude of everyone - 'no problem'....

I'm here to speak at the ICODL conference (on Open and Distance Learning), which opens tomorrow in some strange part of Athens that no-one seems to know the location of. My colleague Mark Townsend from the University of Plymouth will be flying out to join me tonight, and there's safety in numbers. The hotel clerk last night was very surly, didn't crack a smile, and ignored most of my questions. There's going to be a battle! Going off now to spy out the best and most rustic tavernas... Κύριε ἐλέησον!

The old and the new

I'm flying out to Athens this afternoon in a big orange and white bird, to attend the International Conference on Open and Distance Learning (ICODL) which is being hosted by the Hellenic Open University and the University of Cyprus. Keynote speakers include Michael Moore, Alan Tait and Paul Clark, all veterans of the Distance Education model of learning. It may turn out to be a clash of the old and the new.

The conference blurb states:
'Distance education is one of the most talked-about topics today in higher education and corporate training. This conference, which will provide the latest information on distance education programs, processes, packages, and protocols, is geared to both experienced professionals and interested newcomers to distance education and online learning who hail from a variety of work sectors, including higher education, continuing education, business, government, professional associations, and nonprofit organizations'.

Well, I'm not so sure that distance education is still a viable term, with so much blurring of the boundaries between home, work and school. Is there any 'distance' worth talking about any more? Technologies are becoming ever more personal, pervasive and ubiquitous, and a great deal more transparent, and I'm wondering how long we will continue to talk about a paradigm which may have seen its day. Never the less, I'm going with an open mind, to hear what people are saying, to see if there is anything new in 'distance education'. I'm also presenting my own paper on e-learning to support nomadic forms of learning where students enjoy the same quality of provision, screen topography and equivalency of support, wherever and whenever they are. Will report from the conference when I get the chance.

Trains and planes ...

I'm off up to Birmingham tomorrow, to meet with the rest of the Programme Committee for ALT-C 2008. Next year's ALT Conference will take place between 9-11 September at the University of Leeds. It's already shaping up to be a good conference, with keynote speakers including:

• David Cavallo, Chief Learning Architect for One Laptop per Child, and Head of the Future of Learning Research Group at MIT Media Lab;
• Dr Itiel Dror, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Southampton;
• Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and Director of the Gapminder Foundation.

You can download a flyer for the conference here. Tomorrow, we will begin to choose the theme speakers for the event, and go through the protocols for reviewing papers, workshops, etc. I hope the train ride back home will be more comfortable than last year - got back to Plymouth, collapsed with chest pains and ended up in hospital! (Between you and me, I think the buffet car may have had something to do with it....).

I had to take a month off work, which I couldn't afford to do this time... I'm off to speak at ICODL in Athens on Wednesday where I will meet up again with my old friend Michael Moore, and when I'm back from that conference, I have a day off (which I will need to spend in Oxford, on the ALT-J Editorial Board meeting). The very next day I'm flying out to Berlin to speak at Online Educa. Too much flying about. I'm tired just thinking about it.