We're better connected

I recently presented at a conference with my Plymouth University colleagues Peter Yeomans and Oliver Quinlan. We had planned to present a version of this paper at the annual EDEN Conference held in June in Portugal, but for one reason or another, none of us were able to make it. This is probably the first time we have presented as a team, and I hope it is the first of many future conference appearances together. The result can be found as a 20 minute YouTube video - Connected: Supporting Student Blogging and Communities of Learning - complete with audio track and slides below:



Pete, Oliver and I spoke about the work we have been doing with undergraduate teacher students in Plymouth, using a variety of social media, including blogging and Twitter to support and encourage critical and reflective learning. The important concept we wanted to talk about was communities of learning, and how students can use social media tools to participate in them. Peter talked about the power of social media to create a Personal Learning Network (PLN) and also discussed the ways students manage their online presence. Oliver presented some case studies of how students have successfully harnessed the power of social media tools to gain a foothold in the teaching profession and promote learning. The final section of the presentation, which I presented, dealt with some of the pedagogical theory and implications. I talked about connectivism, paragogy, heutagogy and other emerging theories that seek to explain how we learn in new digitally rich environments. We hope you enjoy listening to the presentation and following the slides. We look forward to reading any comments you may have on the presentation.


We're better connected by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

The Pelecon (brief)

It's all over for another year, but I really believe that this year's Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference fully lived up to its theme - create, connect, collaborate. Many blogs, videos, photos, tweets (at the time of writing almost 20,000 in less than 3 full days - here's the complete archive) and other content has been created throughout over the course of the conference. In brief, here are a few of the artefacts created: The Instagram collection of photos itself is richly representative of the event from start to finish. The Pelecon Flickr collection curated by Jason Truscott is even more detailed, as is the Pelecon Photo Stream. My colleague Oliver Quinlan did an amazing - nay Herculean - job, liveblogging every one of our invited speakers, and then posting them very quickly onto the web complete with many of the important links to video and other content each speaker presented. The failure confessional attracted a few delegates to spill the beans of their failures, and what could be learnt from them. All too often we celebrate success at conferences, but forget that we can also learn a lot from what went wrong. You can see some of the 'confessions' on the Pelecon YouTube channel.

More than 200 delegates throughout the three days enjoyed presentations that were fast moving, varied and challenging, and plenty of time and space for networking. As usual, Pelecon has proved to be a great place for making new friends and consolidating old friendships, sharing ideas, discovering new tools and technologies, and generally increasing the digital footprint of the technology enhanced learning community. Matt Lingard and his colleagues are crowd sourcing reviews from delegates for a special ALT Newsletter report. Others too, will be busy writing their blogs as they reflect on three extraordinary days. Search for the #pelc12 hashtag and you will find them.

I made the joke in my introduction that although most people think Pelecon is an international e-learning conference, for me it is actually an excuse to have a three day party with all my friends. And yet, in a strange way, it is actually true. It felt more like a party, a celebration - than it did a conference, because everyone was having such a great time, in excellent company, in a fabulous location, exploring, learning and discovering together. For me, from my perspective as organiser, Pelecon has been the best conference in the series. We are already planning next year's event, where we will aim to do even better. The eight Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference - Pelecon 13 will take place between 10-12 April 2013. We hope you will be able to come and join us.

Image by Jason Truscott


The Pelecon (brief) by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

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.