The Pelecon flies again

We have enjoyed 6 successful e-learning conferences in Plymouth over the past decade. In recent years, the Plymouth e-Learning Conference (or PeLC) has grown from a small local one day teacher conference, into a large, international 3 day event which showcases the very best and latest in digital pedagogies. Over the years, we have welcomed a galaxy of world class keynote speakers, such as Stephen Molyneaux, Gilly Salmon, Josie Fraser, Stephen Heppell, Sherry Terrell, David White, John Davitt, Graham Attwell, Mike Blamires, Jane Seale and Mark Stiles.

Other who have presented papers and workshops at the event over the years have included James Clay, Miles Berry, Shirley Williams, Pat Parslow, Helen Keegan, Malinka Ivanova, Neil Witt, Carmen Holotescu, Mike Phillips, Doug Dickinson, Craig Taylor, Matt Lingard, Lyndsay Jordan, Bex Lewis, Andy Ramsden, Dan Roberts, Thomas Fischer, Doug Belshaw, Catherine Cronin, Richard Hall, Sharon Flynn, Mark Childs, Fiona Concannon, Thomas Kretschmer and far too many others to list here on this blog. We have also welcomed many student presenters over the years, and showcased our own Plymouth University robotic football team and vision immersion theatre. Most delegates who have attended will tell you that Pelecon is an exciting and inspiring conference at many levels.

The 2012 Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference (yes we replaced 'electronic' for 'enhanced' last year to reflect the shift in emphasis from tools to pedagogies) is number 7 in the series, and has been rebranded with a new logo and new website. This year's lineup of invited speakers is bigger than ever, as you can see from the picture above. Our four keynotes are Jane Hart, Alec Couros, Keri Facer and Simon Finch, and for the first time this year we also have 3 spotlight speakers in Leigh Graves Wolf, David Mitchell and Helen Keegan. Once again we are planning an evening Teachmeet, Student Voice Showcase and other shows that run parallel with the conference. One of our new ideas is to have a 'Failure Confessional' where we talk about what went wrong, and all learn from our mistakes. We also take over exclusive occupancy of the famous Glassblowing House restaurant on Plymouth's historic Barbican seafront for our social event on the second night of the conference. Many people have said that Pelecon is one of the friendliest conferences of its type, and this year's event will be no exception. With its idyllic setting 'twixt moorland and sea, wonderful weather (we have excellent connections) and the famous Devon cream tea (calorie free), what better place could you spend your time between 18-20 April this year? Full cost for the entire three day event is just £200. We hope to see you at Pelecon this year!

Visit the Pelecon website for further details.

Fishing boat image by Jose Luis Garcia


The Pelecon flies again by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

ALT-C 2011 retrospective

The ALT-C conference held at Leeds University this September was memorable for a number of reasons. Many of these are compiled into a very readable account in this month's ALT Online Newsletter by Julie Voce, who is also co-chair for ALT-C 2012 Manchester. Julie has done an excellent job capturing the essence and the highlights of the conference, which includes blogged summaries of all the keynote speeches, James Clay's successful ALT-C Live Beta TV streaming experiment, the Learning Technologist of the Year awards (Plymouth University's own Oliver Quinlan was one of the winners this year), and high profile paper sessions, all embellished by evocative images from the conference. It's a must read if you were a delegate and wish to revisit those few days in Yorkshire, but also take a look if you are contemplating attending next year's event.

Image by ALT


ALT-C 2011 retrospective by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Talking to camera

I seem to be doing a lot of interviews lately, many of which are on video. No-one ever warned me that I would be doing video interviews when I first became a teacher. No-one came up to me and offered me media presentation training like they do for politicians. I have never been briefed on what to do when standing (or sitting) in front of a camera. I have had to learn all about it by trial and error. Error more than trial actually. I can now tell you what a noddy is (no, it's not a Toytown character) and what a cut-away does (best not to ask, really). It has very much been informal training on the job, and I'm sure I've screwed up now and then. Yet my most recent video interviews seem to be watchable, and I appear to be reasonably coherent and not talking too much gibberish. I'm now at the point where I don't care anymore if someone comes up to me and asks for a video interview. I'll do a talk to camera at the drop of a hat. That actually helps when people suddenly walk up to me and shove a mobile phone into my face and ask for an impromptu interview. Talking to camera doesn't make me sweat or tremble like it used to when back in 1992 I did my first ever TV studio interview. Back then, I remember feeling physically sick, and spending a lot of time prior to broadcast in the toilet (yes, the TV interview was a live broadcast and there was no room for error .... scary).

My time spent later working for the RATIO telematics project from 1996-1998 gave me plenty of opportunities to sit on the other side of the microphone, and I suppose was a kind of on the fly media training. I had to learn fast. I even had my own Training Hour show once each week, which went out live by satellite to the whole of Europe. It helped me to think on my feet and cope with most situations (dead air with guests clamming up and not speaking, technical problems such as failed phone-ins, mouse droppings on the carpet, etc....)



When James Clay invited me at the recent ALT-C event in Leeds to sit in as an interviewer, and converse with guests for the live webstreaming ALT-C Live Beta TV programme, it all came back to me. I would have no more than a minute or two to find out a little about them and formulate a few questions and then it was straight in with the live streaming interview. It felt quite natural to do the intro direct to camera, and then turn to the guest and try to get some interesting snippets of insight from them. John Traxler was probably the best to interview because I only had to ask him one or two questions and then he was off, talking twenty to the dozen until we eventually hauled him out of the studio kicking and screaming (OK, I exaggerate, but John did most of the work for me). Above is a brief, unscripted one minute elevator pitch interview I did for my own university, about some of the research I'm currently engaged in. And below is an on the spot interview I did while over in Dublin at the EDEN Conference in June. There are several more in the pipeline that will appear on the web in the next week or so that were recorded in Lisbon and Cologne recently. I'm getting to be an old pro at this video lark now. I even managed to video myself smashing a can of baked beans down onto my finger to make a point for a student group. Look, don't ask - just click on the video link and watch it for yourself. That's the kind of stuff I get up to in the classroom when there's a camera to perform in front of.




Talking to camera by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Turning up the volume

We have enjoyed an interesting, intense and invigorating few days at the ALT-C event in Leeds this week. It was wonderful to encounter face to face so many people who I have previously got to know on Twitter. The days were filled with papers and demonstrations, symposia and workshops, some excellent, some thought provoking, and a few that could perhaps do with a little more development.... 


There were some interesting new features at ALT-C this year too. A fair amount of my time was taken up working with James Clay and Darren Moon (LSE) on the live streaming TV channel ALT-C Live Beta, which I helped to present. Throughout the conference, a small studio was used to interview delegates, speakers and guests, and James occasionally foraged among the crowd during the breaks to capture some of the vox pop ambience of the conference. The results of these hours of live video will be available on demand very soon on YouTube for all to revisit. For now you can view some of the interviews on this site. ALT-C Live Beta was an experiment that I feel worked extremely well and one that I hope can be a feature at future events. The content from the interviews in particular is rich and varied, and worth a revisit, and I am sure it has already been instrumental in amplifying the conference. Congratulations to James and Darren for adding an extra new dimension to the conference, and thank you both for involving me.

On the final day of ALT-C, in the first session I was pleasantly surprised to see a room full of delegates attending my own future pedagogy session. On the morning after the Conference Gala Dinner - commonly referred to as 'the graveyard slot', you are lucky to have half a dozen resilient punters present. On this occasion, surprisingly, every chair was taken. Three papers were presented, and a lively discussion ensued. Below is my own slide presentation on group blogging, entitled Learning Together Online.

Learning together online

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler

Turning up the volume 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.

...and my nominations are...

Here are my nominations for the 2009 Edublogger Awards:

For best individual blog I would like to nominate Martin Weller, who on his blog The Ed Techie, has been consistent in his posting and always manages to provide some food for thought. He is @mweller on Twitter.

For me, the most influential blog post of the year contained the video (Movie) of the ALT-C debate on the death of the VLE. Recorded and posted by James Clay onto his blog e-Learning Stuff, the video has been downloaded countless times, and copied/embedded into dozens of other websites and blogs around worldwide. You can find him as @jamesclay on Twitter.

In the best New Blog category I nominate Donna Hay over at The Web 2.0 Optimist for her honest, insightful and thoughtful ideas and comments on Web 2.0 tools and their many applications in school settings. You can follow her on Twitter as @dwsm.

Best Group Blog this year should go to Pontydysgu who under Graham Attwell's leadership have continually provided valuable in-depth commentary and advice on a host of e-learning issues and debates. On Twitter he is @grahamattwell.

My vote for best Resource Sharing blog must go to David Hopkins, whose blog Don't Waste Your Time, has been a constant source of interest, and has me returning time and again. On Twitter he is @hopkinsdavid.

For best individual tweeter, I turn to Alec Couros, whom I have probably RT'd more than anyone else this year. His Tweets are often entertaining, always informative. On Twitter, Alec is @courosa.

For the Lifetime Achievement award, I want to nominate Josie Fraser, who over the years, through her blogposts, twittering and other social media channels, has inspired, challenged and encouraged us all. She is a true innovator, and has in my opinion, over the past few years made a significant contribution to learning technology. For anyone of the few left who are not following her, she is @josiefraser on Twitter.

That's me done. Who are you nominating this year?

A right punch-up

There are only a few days left until we all migrate toward the University of Manchester for the ALT-C annual bash. And this year, perhaps it will be a bash.

This year several of us got together and decided to have a right punch up - the result is below, and we do hope you will come along and book your ring-side seats (Warning: no fake blood will be used).

In the immortal (and fictional) words of Captain James T. Kirk 'It should be fun!'

There's gonna be a fight...

The future success of e-learning depends on appropriate selection of tools and services. This symposium will propose that the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) as an institutional tool is dead, no more, defunct, expired.

And in the blue corner...

The first panel member, Steve Wheeler, will argue that many VLEs are not fit for purpose, and masquerade as solutions for the management of online learning. Some are little more than glorified e-mail systems. Steve will argue that VLEs provide a negative experience for learners.

The second member of the panel, Graham Attwell, believes that the VLE is dead and that the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is the solution to the needs of diverse learners. PLEs provide opportunities for learners, offering users the ability to develop their own spaces in which to reflect on their learning.

The third panel member, James Clay, however, believes that the VLE is not yet dead as a concept, but can be the starting point of a journey for many learners. Creating an online environment involving multiple tools that provides for an enhanced experience for learners can involve a VLE as a hub or centre.

The fourth panel member, Nick Sharratt, argues for the concept of the institutional VLE as essentially sound. VLEs provide a stable, reliable, self-contained and safe environment in which all teaching and learning activities can be conducted. It provides the best environment for the variety of learners within institutions.

The session will be refereed by Josie Fraser.

Structure of session

The symposium will begin with an opportunity for attendees to voice their opinions on the future of the VLE. Each member of the panel will then present their case. The panel, with contributions from the audience, will then debate the key issues that have arisen.

By the end of the debate, participants will be able to have a greater understanding of the evolution and possible extinction of the VLE and the impact on learners. A summary of the key points of the discussion will be syndicated on several blogs and other online spaces, and delegates will be encouraged to tweet and live blog the discussion as it happens in real time.

Look... just watch the video

Image source

Feat of Clay

The fact that many A list celebrities are now jumping on the band wagon and using Twitter for shameless self-promotion may just signal the start of the demise of Twitter. You can spot them a mile off - they are the ones who have hundreds of thousands of followers, but they are following ... yep, no-one. According to Everitt Rogers, all innovations and ideas tend to follow an adoption cycle that starts with the innovators, gradually reaching a critical mass through the early adoptors and then the early majority. It begins to run downhill when the late majority adopt it and it is no longer new and exciting, and everyone has it. Once it has sufficiently penetrated into society, telling signs are for example, that the technology begins to appear for sale in the Argos catalogue. Yesterday the BBC Technology News pages carried the headline 'Can Twitter survive the Hype-Cycle? In a tacit homage to Gartner's theory, it's an interesting piece which asks some serious questions about the future of the microblogging tool.

Well, Twitter won't be appearing in any store catalogues, but it might just be reaching its zenith in terms of use and popularity. Over at e-Learning Stuff, James Clay has pulled off no mean feat of insight by identifying 10 reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die, and interestingly none of them are to do with the invasion of the likes of Oprah (an anagram of Harpo) and Ashton Kutcher (supply your own anagram) - although he does make reference to false celebrities. In amongst all the hyperbole about Twitter, it is refreshing to hear a counterpoint, even if it may read uncomfortably for some.

Although I enjoy using Twitter, and have tried out some nice little ideas about how to harness its potential in my own classrooms (see for example my earlier post entitled Teaching with Twitter), it may just, I fear, begin to go the way of some other social software tools. Yesterday I closed down my Bebo account, having failed to use it for more than 86 weeks. I currently use my Facebook account about once every 2 weeks and came perilously close yesterday to closing that down too, in a judicious spate of spring cleaning. As the late, great George Harrison once said: 'All things must pass'.

Image source

...the Nominations are...

I was both surprised and delighted to see that I am in the running for yet another edublogger award as we hurtle towards 2009. Over in the US, Scott Merrick on his blog 'Oh! Virtual Learning!' has posted 5 nominations for January's blog-o-the-month, sponsored by Second Life's ISTE Island Blogger's Hut. All the nominations are non-US, he says.

It's nice to see that the list includes James Clay's e-Learning Stuff blog and Daniel Livingstone's Learning Games blog and that we Brits are making an impact in the blogosphere. So go and vote, because apparently the current voting is close....very close.

The Emperor's new clothes?

I'm grateful to all those who have commented on my recent 'Monkey Business' post. I also seem to have stirred up some passion from the edublogging community, judging by some of the blog responses to my Edupunk rant on VLEs. Felix Grant (on his delightfully named 'The Growlery' blog) wrote a couple of posts agreeing with much of my argument that VLEs are overpriced, restricted in their functionality and poorly designed, and made the point that:

"My own (frequent!) contention is that every (yes, every) benefit of the institutional VLE for the learner can be obtained elsewhere with a little thought, using combinations of other information and communication technology tools which are freely and publicly available and already transparent to the target learner. Also, conversely, that most (not all, but most) of the disadvantages of the institutional VLE can thus be avoided".

These are interesting views, espousing a similar approach to my own. James Clay over at e-Learning Stuff was a little more circumspect with his post entitled: 'A bad workman always blames his tools'. He urged users esssentially to make the best of what is available, and reminded us that VLEs are only tools, used well or badly depending on those who wield them. He also advocated a hybrid approach:

"Using a VLE does not preclude you using other web based tools, it can be the cayalyst. With RSS it is possible to use the VLE as a focus for other web based services".

I agree - I use wikis as a central portal to link to other tools and resources, but it might just as well be a VLE (albeit an expensive option). As for bad workmen - can I respectfully point out that the skills of good workmen are often constrained by poor tools. Helen Whitehead over at Periodic Fable responded by posting 'VLEs - A boon or a bust?" She argued from a similar perspective, in a very much 'wait and see', don't 'throw the baby out with the bathwater' stance:

"Designed for learning, they keep everything in one place and provide for a variety of ways to teach and learn, at a variety of levels of expertise. Recent discussions about the future of learning, e.g., at the Learning Futures Festival and JISC online 08 have shown that there are new more personalised and flexible technologies coming along for learners to manage their own learning. Until then, the VLEs are our familiar territory and it's up to us to find creative ways to use them".

I agree they keep everything in one place, but aggregators can do that and so can wikis - for significantly less cost.

The week culminated in a very enjoyable Skype panel discussion facilitated by James Clay where Dave Sugden, Rob Englebright and Dave Foord and I all held forth about our opinions on the future of the VLE. One of the conclusions from the discussion was that the choice of tool may reflect the learning philosophy of the user. A podcast of this discussion will be posted up onto e-Learning Stuff next Sunday, 30th November.

So, the jury is still out on VLEs. Not everyone wants to ditch them in favour of a patch-work, do-it-yourself approach to using social software, even if it could ultimately benefit learners more. I concede that VLEs have their place in the panoply of learning technology tools, but to consider them the only institutional solution for e-learning would be folly. Look to the horizon, and the rapid advances being made in new social software tools, and we may begin to realise that the status quo cannot be sustained for ever. We need transparent systems that teachers and learners can use easily, without having to think too hard about anything other than the content they are learning.

One final word - I still suspect that the 'one size fits all' approach and the poorly designed VLE systems most universities and colleges have lumbered themselves with, are being covered over by the respectability of huge subscription charges and corporate branding. I hope though that it won't be long before the Emperor's new clothes are seen for exactly what they are.

Resident evil?

Well good grief. There is plenty follow up to the digital immigrants and natives debate. Where? I hear you ask... Well, James Clay over at e-Learning Stuff has just posted up a commentary entitled 'Are you a resident or a visitor?' which addresses the debate from another perspective (read it and you will know). He includes some really useful links to other recent postings by Josie Fraser, Andy Powell, David White and others (you know ... the usual suspects) on the topic of natives and immigrants.

I must admit, this alternative distinction 'visitor' and 'resident' offers a view of behaviour in that 'other place'. I suspect though, that the 'residents' and 'visitors' tag may have been transmitted directly from the Second Life realm, and at present, my SL avatar Loudli Singh still refuses to dance....

ALT-C 1921 Gala Dinner and Dance

Success has gone to James F. Clay's head, I am sorry to have to report. On the back of his hugely popular and now world famous Hood 2.0 workshop (well, 60.5 people attended), he has decided to throw his hat into the world of cinematography by directing his first feature film. (What next, a line in perfumery??)

The Gala Dinner and Dance for the first ever ALT-C conference, which took place at the University of Bognor Regis in 1921 has been recreated by his illustrious camera, and is shown here in glorious monochrome, complete with virtuoso piano playing by Mrs Mills. Watch out for the Learning Technologist of the Year award ceremony (won by Josie Fraser's Grandmother, the Hon. Josephine Montague-Fraser, DBE), the disgrunted Vulcan diner, the chocolate postal order for 12 shillings and 6 pence ha'penny, and of course, the cold coffee... Oh, and by the way, the picture above is of a formation ball-handling team known as the 'Slam-Dunk Virgins', who won team prize for best research paper at ALT-C 1921.



That's it. I've had enough. I'm going to sleep this off now....

Sessions, slams and serious fun

It's been an interesting and varied day here at ALT-C Day two, at the University of Leeds. A somewhat controversial keynote, and several morning papers and workshops kept us all busy. The Digital Divide web slam event was engaging, fun and jam packed full of ideas about how we are all using technologies to either bridge the digital divides (yes there are several) or to perpetuate them. Several slams were performed, including one by myself, James Clay and Joss Winn (collectively known as the Slam Virgins - don't ask). We actually received the most votes from those present, surprisingly, so we were the winners on the day. The video of our slam 'It's not for Girls!' can be viewed here on Youtube. (Picture by Helen Keegan).

I later spoke at a F-ALT fringe meeting in the middle of the dining room at 3pm, on the subject of Edupunk. There was fertile and passioned debate about whether edupunk exists or is just a fad, and whether the name actually does the concept justice. Thanks to all those who took part - it was another enjoyable and captivating session. (Picture here)

The cream on the cake, literally, was our evening ALT-C Gala Dinner, which was held this year in the executive rooms of Headingly Cricket ground - the home of Yorkshire County Cricket Club and the scene of many fascinating Test matches between England and the tourists. The turf was being dug up as we arrived, which was a disappointment, as I wanted to see the ground in it's full glory. Never mind. It was still pretty spectaculr, as was the food, brought to us by two local catering colleges.

Highlight of the night was watching Josie Fraser receive the prestigious award of Learning Technologist of the Year, and a substantial cash prize, presented by in-coming ALT president Steve Draper (London School of Economics). A splendid time was had by all. Look out tomorrow... last day, here we come.

Looking forward.... to ALT-C

So many things to look forward to next week at ALT-C 2008 at the University of Leeds, although I don't relish the long drive up from Plymouth. The conference promises to be the best yet, if the pre-mailed abstracts and research proceedings books are anything to go by. I'm looking forward to the workshops in particular, including the sessions on Web 2.0 - 'It's a Web 2.0 world out there' (James Clay) and 'Learning about the Digital Divide' (Frances Bell, Helen Keegan, Josie Fraser et al). From such presentations come a host of new ideas, and better still, an energising to go off and try out some new things you hadn't considered before.

There are already success stories before ALT-C has started. Take a look at the Crowdvine site the ALT team set up and you will see that there are already over 340 members (well over half of the 600 plus delegates who are booked into the event). I have already made contact with a number of people I am intending to meet, including one of the keynote speakers, Itiel Dror (Southampton University) and Mark van Harmelen (ALT Director of Operations).

Then of course, there is the Fringe ALT-C event - or F-ALT, as it is being called. There are a limited edition F-ALT badges designed by Josie Fraser that are being given away to the first 50 people who sign up to the F-ALT Wetpaint wiki site. When I looked just now there were already 36 people registered, so be quick if you want a badge! Yes, there is plenty to look forward to....

I heard it on the Crowdvine

It's immensely enjoyable, and quite addictive this Crowdvine thing. My Twittering is suffering, I can tell you. ALT-C 2008 has set up its own space on the social network tool to enable people to discuss, organise, schedule and generally get together prior to the event next week at the University of Leeds. As I write this blog entry it already has 260 members, and more are joining every hour. There are already several threaded discussions on eclectic and diverse topics, and everyone is building up their own little networks of people they want to meet, talk to, have a beer with, etc.

As James Clay commented on Crowdvine yesterday - 'How things change'. Two years ago, only 6 people participated in the ALT-C wiki, and last year saw the first surge of interest in blogging from the conference, with about 15 of us regulalry posting. This year, social networking is de riguer, and we can expect a lot more blogging, tweeting, flickring and other digital jiggerypokery going on as the conference takes off. To join in go to the ALT-C Crowdvine site here.

JISC does well

Enjoyed an interesting and profitable day at the JISC South West Regional (Higher Education) e-Learning conference in Bristol today. Travelled up under blue skies... a good omen. The venue (At Bristol, left) was high quality, and apart from occasional 'noises off' from the exhibition downstairs, a most excellent place to hold a conference. Food was good - company was good. Met up with some old friends including James Clay (Gloucestershire - who did some live streaming video from the event), and Andy Ramsden (now Head of e-Learning at Bath), both in the picture below.... as well as David Benzie (Marjons) and Ali Press (Cornwall College).

After a somewhat disappointing start from some of the keynotes, we got down to some real business in the breakout sessions. Neil Witt (Plymouth) was on form with his presentation on videoconferencing. Julie Hughes (Wolverhampton) presented an interesting and engaging talk on blogging and e-portfolios for PGCE students. I used my iPhone to Twitter throughout the day directly to this blog for the first time. Will do more of this from other events. My own two sessions on MentorBlog and WikiLit projects were well attended and seemed to be well received going on the feedback I had. There were also papers on mobile learning, Shibboleth and digital storytelling to name a few.

So congratulations, JISC - you have done well with this one day event, succeeding in bringing together the great and the good e-learning bods from across the region in a thought provoking and stimulating day. But, please, one small word to the wise - there is still room for improvement on the keynote speaker front!

Meme: Passion Quilt

Right. It's an interesting challenge and looks a little like a chain letter, but here goes. Mike Hasley, of TechWarrior Blog, has laid down a challenge for me and 4 others to add to a collection of photos that represent our passion in teaching/learning. I have to tag it 'Meme: Passion Quilt' and post it on a blog, Flickr, FaceBook or some other social networking tool with a brief commentary of why it is a passion for me. I suppose it's quite appropriate for me to be taking part in something with the tag of 'passion' on Good Friday of all days.

So, above is my picture taken from a tour of South African township schools in 2004. I came out of the school and was instantly surrounded by dozens of school kids, all eager to talk to me. They were such great kids, full of energy and all desperate to learn something new. I showed them my digital camera and took some shots of them. They were probably still talking about it for weeks afterwards. The title of my photo is: 'A Passion to Show'.

Now I have to tag five other friends to see if the meme spreads... Helen Keegan, James Clay, Graham Attwell, Josie Fraser, and Andy Pullman.

Web 2.0 again

I'm sat in the Web 2.0 workshop which is being run by James Clay (Gloucestershire College), and we are exploring a range of social software tools. James is asking us all to report back at the end of the session using a variety of tools, including blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos. He has set up a blog called Molenet which everyone is posting their responses into. Everyone is asking the right questions, and everyone is realising that there are probably more questions than answers.

Earlier Graham Russell, Mark Pannell and I presented a session on the iHub project (see the post from earlier today) and had a heavy duty discussion about privacy, anonymity, control and institutional policies. It was interesting, and very helpful to hear views from the audience (who are mainly very tech-savvy people working in learning technology) and to be able to make mental notes about possible research and development directions for the future of e-learning provision.

I'm shy, therefore iHub

I'm speaking at the JISC Regional Support Centre conference in Taunton later today. (streuth - it's 1.30 am already - better get some kip in a moment....) It's an event especially laid on for learning technologists and 'webmasters' (are there any of those still around?) and looks so interesting I may stay for the whole day.... I'm accompanied by my colleague Graham Russell who is a health psychologist here at the University of Plymouth, and a marauding band of learning technologists who are doing wonderful things with ...erm... learning technology at the moment. We will be presenting an update about our project - the development and testing of the iHub - a web service for students who suffer from social anxiety (shyness).

Other presentations are from Mel Roberts (JISC RSC), Janet Harvel (Bridgewater College) and a fellow edublogger ... James Clay (Gloucestershire College). Remember Hood 2.0? That was him, that was....

Web 2.0 will eat itself

My new best buddy James Clay has posted the link to the video created for the Web 2.0 Slam Performing Innovative Practice Workshop at the ALT-C conference here in Nottingham earlier today. It's hosted on YouTube right here and shows the delegates in their small groups performing their own vignettes and parodies of Web 2.0 tools. We laughed until we stopped - a bit like our trip out to the Jongleurs Comedy Club last night (sponsored by our kind friends WIM-Bah! Thank you Bob Mills!) where we laughed until we ached.

Well, already there has been a lot of interest in the Web 2.0 Slam workshop, and a fair amount of blogs and other sites are carrying it. I know my blog hits have gone through the ceiling. Web 2.0 has a habit of looking back in on itself, and reflecting its own capabilities and characteristics. Talking to Mark Stiles tonight over dinner, it appears that Web 2.0 may not exist at all, and if it does, it's in danger of disappearing up its own backside. Or maybe it will simply eat itself. Whatever it is, now all we have to do is try to catch a little of it and make it work for our students...