Pushing the buttons

The 5th Plymouth e-Learning Conference has drawn to a close, and it's time to reflect on what I think has been another great conference success. So many new friends have been made and so much discussed over the two days it is difficult to know where to start. I have been following the very busy Twitter stream of the event, and have been impressed by the amount of traffic, and the varied commentaries flowing out of, and back into the conference venue. This conference really was participatory I think, not only because of Twitter and the blog posts that have resulted, but also because of other technology support such as the streaming video we used to cover both keynotes, and several of the breakout sessions and discussions. BECTA even picked up on #pelc10 and called it the hashtag of the day.




Dave White's keynote this morning pressed so many buttons, it's hard to summarise what was said and discussed. I will leave it to the video capture (we will post both Dave's and Josie Fraser's keynotes as soon as we can to the conference website and link to them via this blog). There have been some great images posted from the event too, which will help us all to recall a memorable gathering of learning technologists, teachers and academics in the months to come. I will ensure that the official photographs from our two photographers will also be posted up and shared through the conference website soon.


We enjoyed an excellent and hard-fought debate today in the Jill Craigie Cinema (yes, a real Cinema on campus) where Tara Alexander, Dave White and I argued the toss over Prensky's Digital Natives/Immigrants theory, against Dave's Residents and Visitors model. Many of the audience engaged with us in a very useful exploration of the ideas, and we all went away with more questions than answers, which was exactly the required outcome. I was also very proude of all my own students who presented their research in four separate papers at the conference. They were met with glowing praise, great questions, and useful feedback from delegates.


Next year we are doing it all again, and the publicity is already there, on the back of the abstract book. The date for the 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference is 7-8 April, 2011. We hope you will be able to join us as we continue this increasingly popular and exciting conference series. I'm off now to put my feet up for a few days... Thanks to everyone who took part!


Image source (courtesy of Daniel Kennedy)



'Pushing the buttons' Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Being there

Well, I finally managed yesterday to get some time to complete a proposal for a workshop at ALT-C 2009. I co-authored the abstract with Tara Alexander, who is in the Faculty of Health and Social Work here at the University of Plymouth. I won't spill the beans on the workshop topic just yet, but it is ironic that, if it is accepted, and we both travel for several hours all the way up to the University of Manchester to present it, that most of it could be done remotely without us, or any participant, actually being there. People will be able to participate for most of it sat at home on their Internet linked computers if they choose. It's nothing new. I have been delivering remote classes for over 15 years and so have others. But I still find it interesting after all these years that people still want to come together face to face to do workshops, seminars, participate in lectures and demonstrations, and generally network in a co-present manner. This despite all the issues of travel pollution, rising fuel prices, travel delays, terrorist threats, stress and anxiety, and so on.

People still have an innate need to meet together face to face, and just about every survey and study I have read on the subject reports that face to face is still valued as the richest social experience. Well - of course - you reply. Yet I wonder just how long this might last, with emerging technologies increasingly mimicking and even replicating co-present experiences.

Second Life has its detractors, but the majority of SLifers I have spoken to talk about the 'other worldliness' and addictive interactive nature of the multi-user virtual environment saying they love it and invest a 'lot more time on it than they should'. Millions of people play almost obsessively on massively-multi player online role-playing games (MMORPGS) such as World of Warcraft and interact socially on another plane. My own children spent an inordinate amount of time on MSN and Bebo talking to their friends in the evening, even though they have spent all day at school with them. We are a technologically mediated society, and I could go on, and on, and...

Here's a question: Is Western industrialised society becoming a world in which we are reluctantly substituting our favoured forms of communication for synthetic versions? Are we migrating to virtual forms of social interaction because we don't have the time or space to meet personally anymore? Or is it simply the case that we are learning and practising new communication skillsets as we increasingly spread our lives ever more thinly across so many spaces and technologies?

I'm looking forward to going to ALT-C again this year - I will be there physically, but I will also be there virtually through my blog, Twitter, Flickr, Blip.tv, Crowdvine... through my iPhone...

2008 Friends Retro

I have made many new friends in 2008 (picture left: with Paul Kirschner, Paul Walsh and Debby Notts in Barcelona). Here is an alphabetic list of 20, including links to their splendid blogs and excellent websites, but it is by no means exhaustive. There are many other great folks I simply haven't had time to post up here - if you are one of those I have missed, forgive me. Thanks to all of you - you have made my year interesting and stimulating and the conversations I have had with each of you have been fabulous.

Have a peaceful and prosperous new year!

• Tara Alexander (University of Plymouth) - only met Tara @blueocean47 a few weeks back when she joined us from the great state of Texas, but already we are working together on some research around Web 2.0. Tara has a lot of energy and learns fast - it's great to work with her.
• Andy Black (Handheld Learning, London and Online Educa, Berlin) Andy's Black Hole was known to me long before I bumped into him. Andy @andyjb is a dynamo and you need to stand well clear when he gets going...
• danah boyd (Handheld Learning, London) What a pleasure, after reading her work for so long, to finally talk to danah, and then to have the whole conversation recorded and posted to the web.
• Mark Bullen (Open EduTech, Barcelona) Another academic whose work I was familiar with long before I met him. A foil to Prensky and a great all round guy.
• Dianne Conrad (EDEN, Lisbon) We met at breakfast and spent a great deal of time during the conference. It was a pleasure to share ideas and discuss distance education for a few days in the sun of colourful Lisbon.
• Jay Cross (Edumedia, Salzburg) Jay is the informal learning guy, and a great image maker too. He spent the evening before the conference taking pictures of us all, and then when he gave his keynote, there we all were - on his first slide
• Ulf-Daniel Ehlers (EDEN, Lisbon and Online Educa, Berlin) - the gentle giant - full of ideas and well respected in the field of e-learning. Ulf is an inspiration and a real encouragement to all.
• Philippa Gerbic (IFIP, Kuala Lumpur) - I met Philippa in Kuala Lumpur for the first time after plenty of e-mails. This kiwi and I worked together with Elizabeth Stacey on a new volume on blended learning which is published in the new year.
• Mirjam Hauck (EDEN, Lisbon) - another dynamo, this time of the feminine variety. Mirjam and I were partners in crime as we blogged our way through the EDEN conference together.
• Wolf Hilzensauer (Edumedia, Salzburg and ICL, Villach) - Wolfie has a sense of humour that is wicked and ironic. He is also one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject of e-portfolios.
• Sigi Jakob-Kühn (Edumedia, Salzburg) - Sigi is a bundle of fun - we spent quite some time together touring around Salzburg, and we have followed each other ever since through each other's blogs.
• Paul Kirschner (Open EduTech, Barcelona) - I simply need to say 'digital scaffolding' because it was our idea and a joint effort. We are fellow psychologists with a lot more in common, and I hope we can work together again in the near future.
• Debby Knotts (Open EduTech, Barcelona) - it was nice to spend some time with Debby and to work with her in the awesome team 'D' at Open EduTech, in the wonderful, outrageous city of Barcelona.
• Peter Micheuz (IFIP, Kuala Lumpur, and ICL, Villach) - The man who bought my book straight off the shelf in Kuala Lumpur and asked me to sign it on the bus home. I met Peter again when he presented at ICL - and I learned a lot from him.
• Marc Prensky (Handheld Learning, London) - Marc sidled up to danah and I as we discussed digital identity under the unblinking eye of Kramer's camera. I didn't know who he was and he certainly didn't know me. We do now though.
• John Sanders (ICL, Villach) - @greyrab my new Aussie mate with whom I spent a lot of time at ICL. Several meals and drinks, and a day trip to Venice later, we are still in contact through Twitter, even though we are separated by 12 time zones.
• Dirk Schneckenberg (EDEN, Lisbon) - Dirk is a very creative individual, and I look forward to working with Dirk and Ulf on their new edited volume around the idea of Web 2.0 technologies in education next year.
• Kath Trinder (Handheld Learning, London) - @ktrinder Twitter buddy extraordinaire. Nice to finally meet her face to face after all those tweets.
• Jon Trinder (Handheld Learning, London) - @jont - husband of the above, and a jolly decent guy. Rarely laugh so hard as I do when I read some of Jon's tweets.
• Joss Winn (ALT-C, Leeds) - together with James Clay, we created the video 'It's not for girls!' about gender and technology, at ALT-C in Leeds.