Really new style of conference for me. Loved the format of Development Papers where in round table format there was no av but papers were presented with handouts (when people remembered). The great thing was that everyone round the tables contributed, as interested “supervisors” or “advisors” to the paper. So having gone with less than huge enthusiasm about my topic – leadership in not-for-profit organisations – not sure whether it was a legitimate study, not sure if I knew nearly enough to talk about this, in fact I came away from the session so stimulated and keen, that this is now on the active research list for me and I need to find some small scale funding to move from pilot stage to larger interview stage.

And being in Brighton, ice-cream was available next door…

Yes two conferences in Manchester in the space of two weeks. While I have nothing against Manchester, the prospect of going again in the third week of September for an Examination Board is not vastly pleasing.

ALT C will be worth it though – last year’s conference was greatly stimulating, great fun and came away not just with new academic thoughts but also workshop feedback and new technology understanding. This year my colleague and I offer a paper based on that feedback and further research – will we find some answers to helping staff use VLEs etc? Many have tried and few have arrived. The answer, as always, is likely to be complicated but primarily needing a focus on the human level, whatever the technology.

Due to be my first visit to this esteemed conference; looking forward to the experience. My colleague and I will be presenting a discussion paper on some action learning research, feeling our way towards relevant practical conclusions and recommendations. How hard it is not to be solipsistic when reporting action research around your own attempts at innovation.  Let’s hope we can strike the right note of humility without getting an inferiority complex in the face of all these clever people…

Looking forward to the ICEL conference in Toronto where another Greener paper will hit the masses.. Also looking forward to a brief holiday there as a first-timer in Canada.

Great conference – good standard of papers and some interesting side conversations.
My paper asked questions such as: Can educational institutions justify the hyperbole about promoting reflective practice as a performance improvement tool? and Do talking about reflection and assessing reflective practice belong more comfortably in HE and professional CPD than in the workplace?
I had searched online and publisher databases for relevant journal articles from 2003-9. Relatively little in the management literature which really helps practitioners cope with deadlines and high pressure working and still make the most of reflective practice. Much more evident in healthcare professions where supervision and reflective practice are more visibly encouraged. Have to turn this into a paper soon.

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/brighton09 is the website to visit to see what Brighton girls are doing this year. oddly enough I am attempting a 10KM race this year (“race” just means walking with friends in this context!).
anything you can spare to sponsor would be so gratefully received.

Keynote presentation on changing teacher roles

Link to Conference website where the video of this keynote can be seen along with other interesting takes on e-learning http://www.ut.ee/547971

Great conference in the Hilton Metropole, Brighton, ably hosted by Chairman Avril Loveless in Education and Sport.

http://www.cal-conference.elsevier.com/ is conference website.

Wonderful to hear Diana Laurillard, Josie Taylor, Roger Saljo, Dave Cliffe, Grainne Conole and so many more VIPs in the elearning world.

A few byte-size bits of info from the conference:

Dave Cliffe talked of cloud computing or massive data utility centres (warehouses packed with many thousands of blade servers) which will become the next utility, with computing being paid for by time use at minimal marginal cost. Also ubiquitous amorphous computation based on networks of minute memory spots externalising “brain” linkages between them.

Dave also suggested that if a person could wear a video cam to record everything they saw from birth to 70 years, the total video storage required for a “lifetime” of images would be 27.5 terabytes, which in ten years time could cost approx. £1000. What’s extraordinary to me is that we can calculate this, make it measurable. Not of course that anyone would particularly fancy recording everything they saw! Imagine the retrieval system to find the right image….though it might help partners to get the details of where they first met right.

His tour de force keynote also mentioned some amazing intelligent prosthetics, cognitively enhancing drugs, quantum computing and plastic electronics – conjuring up a 3D copier which can produce physical objects rather than paper images – dramatic impact on manufacturing.

only a little reassuring that there are some processes which it is cheaper to employ people rather than computers to do – are we the new slave labour for the web?

Dave’s final message was about systems learning – we are getting to the stage where computers can deal with meta-systems or systems of systems – which is getting beyond our ability to understand. He believed the inability of so many to think numerately and to understand systems thinking was a potential major risk for humanity. Yet another advocate of systems thinking and numeracy – HEAR, HEAR!

Laura Czernewicz and her colleague Cheryl from University of Cape Town clarified the trend in S Africa to get elearning via mobiles rather than laptops, with some students spending on the highest range mobiles as this infrastructure cheaper and more reliable than investing in laptops.

Many symposia from CETLs around the UK on subjects such as Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) – it may be just possible that some of this work could enable real teachers to generate useful learning objects with very limited technical knowledge – right up my street.

Other key debates around the conference included the range of definitions (and understanding?) of the term pedagogy – for some this is learning theory and for others just beliefs of teachers about what works in teaching – a distinction I have written about elsewhere. Also varying perspectives of personalised learning and the extent to which Web 2.0 should or shouldn’t be adopted by HE/FE/schools as part of formal education. This is a hot issue as many feel that Web 2.0 should remain the preserve of people’s social lives rather than their formal educational lives, even though social networking clearly encompasses much personal learning. Glamorgan project exemplified this by a headline “Get out of MySpace!”.

I won’t give a further rundown here of my 27 pages of notes on the conference!! Suffice to say it was a great opportunity for Asher and I from BeL research group in BBS to talk to many colleagues about staff adoption of technology-enhanced learning around our poster site and questionnaires – much to sift through and analyse now.

Conference in Tartu from 2-3 April 09.
http://conference2009.e-uni.ee/index.php?n=en&do=20 is website for conference.
Estonian teachers in vocational and higher education gathered in Tartu for a conference with international speakers. So many shared problems, so many worries and fears around online learning, so many varying definitions.
My papers on the changing teacher role and the plasticity of the online environment can be found in next week or so from the conference website.
Have a look at LeMill – Estonian shared repository for teachers and trainers. www.lemill.net. Also used as social software. Links to world, and flickr etc!

Great hospitality from Estonian conference team – many thanks for great simultaneous translation, at social as well as conference sessions, good food, great company from other keynote speakers and the team.

CAL09 Brighton, UK 23/3/09-25/3/09

Learner 2.0, Tartu, Estonia 2/4/09-3/4/09

UFHRD, Newcastle, UK 10/6/09-12/6/09

ICICTE, Corfu 9/7/09-11/7/09

ICEL 09 Toronto, Ontario 16/7/09-17/7/09