Robot invasion!

The 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference will kick off with a free first day on Wednesday 6th April, where we will see an invasion of humanoid robots and artifical beings. The Faculty of Science and Technology in Plymouth is well known for its Robot football team and its work into intelligent systems, and delegates will get the chance next week to see them roaming the exhibition floor, and will even get the chance to interact with them! One of the cutest robots ever - iCub - is pictured here.

There will also be an evening Teachmeet, a student voice technology showcase, a panel discussion on e-safety and a keynote speech from Professor Jane Seale (on technology and inclusion). You can reserve your place for the Day 1 free events here, but hurry, because tickets are going fast. In previous years we have seen the popularity of PeLC growing, with interest from international delegates. This year delegates are attending from as far afield as Argentina, USA, Turkey and Australia, with plenty from across Europe and from all over the UK.

This year, for the first time, PeLC will be a 3 day international event. There will also be keynote speeches from John Davitt, Professor Stephen Heppell and Shelly Terrell, as well as invited workshops from Simon Finch, Andy Black, James Clay, Mark Power, Zak Mensah and Doug Belshaw. The conference will be officially opened by University of Plymouth Deputy Vice-Chancellor and former UK Minister of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, Bill Rammell. Together, over 50 individual events await delegates from Wednesday 6th through to Friday 8th April, all within the prestigious and futuristic Levinsky building. For those hardy souls who are immune to inertia sickness, there will be free showings of the university's stunning 3D Vision Immersion Theatre on Day 3.

And of course, there will be prizes and free gifts after the plenary on Day 3 for those keen enough to stay to the very end, including a 3G Kindle, Nintendo 3DS and numerous other gadgets and gizmos designed to please our tech savvy audience. As usual, our conference dinner will be held in the historic and picturesque area of Plymouth's Barbican quayside (pictured), and there will be a Devon cream tea. Don't say we don't spoil you. See you there, or follow on the #pelc11 hashtag and via live streaming (of selected events) on the conference website.

Image sources: University of Plymouth and Jose Luis Garcia

Robot invasion! by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Pineapple flavoured Leeds

Wow, that was quite a drive - 320 miles, done in 7 hours, but I'm now here in Leeds, for the ALT-C conference, and I'm sat trying out the Ethernet connection in my student room. I have a nice view from the fifth flooor out over the campus, with plenty of greenary and the big white tower glowering from the distance. I bumped into Jane Seale who had arrived just before me, and we made our way down to try to find registration. And got a little lost. Fortunately we were intercepted by Mark van Harmelen, (ALT's Director of Development) who showed us where to go.

The conference venue, what I have so far seen of it, is spacious, with a large balcony (registration) overlooking the dining area on one side and the Conference Exhibition area on the other. Great if you don't suffer from vertigo.

The parking here is difficult. I'm about a mile, three months and a weekend away from my digs, and it took all my remaining strength to trog my case over, and up 5 flights of stairs (there is no lift in the Henry Price Building, so Henry, you should be ashamed, whoever you are). I managed to spill a carton of pineapple chunks in the bag holding my cables during my slog over from the car park, and it went everywhere. I am now the only official ALT-C delegate with pineapple flavoured computer cables (make that Leeds). It's quite warm here as well, and to cap it all, I now have sticky pineapple juice all over my cables (see my earlier blog) where my pineapple carton burst Getting ready now for the pre-conference buffet which takes place at 18.30 tonight. I think I need a shower first though....

Reporting research

Last year I was asked to convene a research network for the Faculty of Education here at the University of Plymouth. I was given a small amount of money to promote a culture of research within the field of e-learning. Tomorrow I will be reporting on progress to the 'top brass' during our Faculty research day, and will tell them that we now have 30 members (mainly academics and researchers from education, but also from 3 other faculties, and several learning technologists and computer professionals). We are planning our e-learning conference for April next year, and I have booked Professor Mark Stiles (Staffordshire University) as our keynote speaker, after we met up at ALT-C 2007. The group has produced an impressive output of papers, book chapters, journal articles and a book, and I have arranged a series of research seminars featuring internationally recognised speakers including Mike Sharples, John Traxler, Steven Warburton, Avril Loveless, Palitha Edirisignha, Jane Seale and Steven Furnell.

I'm also going to talk about the six research projects we have started since the group formed, including our Second Life project for which we recently received a free one year land grant. The details of all of these activities and outputs can be found on the group's wiki space. This coming year is going to be very busy (but I guess it keeps me off the streets...)