Category: Future

A Future of E-learning

This morning I delivered a talk on the future of e-learning!   I was unusually apprehensive before I started – no familiar faces in the audience, a sector I have limited knowledge of (schools) and a topic that took me slightly out of my comfort zone.  I felt it went well though and received some complementary feedback and one offer of work, so not all bad!

My slides are below and along with the presentation links you’ll get a flavour of my themes: open education, participation (communication, collaboration & creation), mobile learning and personalisation. Of course you are missing the real meat, mine & the participants’ voices – but you’ll get the idea.  And you can ignore the govt strategy stuff… paid it lip service!

The technology in the room looked state of the art but unfortunately failed to deliver… my attempt to show the Google video below was prevented (I think) by a slow Internet connection, youtube was blocked completely! The room layout, presenter podium and the dual-projection interactive whiteboard were a big let down:

  • Dual-projection – absolute overkill for a room the size of double garage.
  • Interactive whiteboard – I have little time for them so didn’t go there but as the next presenter discovered it wasn’t configured/orientated correctly so ultimately unusable.
  • Podium – too small for the keyboard & mouse to sit side-by-side. No monitor on it, making it impossible to face my audience while doing the demonstration bits and because of the dual projection / room layout I couldn’t actually see the right-hand side of the screen.

It’s such a shame when the technology gets in the way but today it really didn’t need to… a simple PC / data projector with decent, un-filtered Internet access was all I wanted.  Oh well, take some inspiration from Buckingham Primary School…

How to Silence a Politician

Tell them you’re a Learning Technologist.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the audience of BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions? Afterwards, once I’d finished admiring Theresa May’s boots,  I was chatting, as you do,  to a real-life Secretary of State.  We started off on safe ground talking about his dad.  Once that was covered, I was asked, ‘what do you do?’; Learning Technologist I say, after which an explanation was not unsurprisingly required.  Now, it may well be the way I tell ’em but the Secretary of State was struck dumb and an awkward silence ensued.  I kid you not.

M25 Motorway
M25 Motorway

Of course, I should have directed him to the What Do I Do? blog post I wrote a few months ago, following a meeting of the M25 Learning Technology Group.

Yesterday I attended another M25 meeting where we discussed the varying structures and strategies that our institutions have adopted for developing the use of learning technologies.  Speakers from Imperial (or Imperial), City, UEL, LondonMet & LSE showed just how varied the structures, strategies, approaches and levels of funding are. Continue reading “How to Silence a Politician”

A Portal to Media Literacy

Michael Wesch is a Cultural Anthropologist who explores the “impacts of new media on human interaction”.  He’s probably best-known for his Web2.0 in 5-mins YouTube video: The Machine is Us/ing Us It has been viewed around 6-million times and has received 20-thousand user ratings and 7000 comments…  If you’ve not seen it or any of his other short videos then take a look on YouTube.

Last month he gave the following talk entitled A Portal to Media Literacy at a University of Manitoba conference.

It’s just over an hour and well worth finding time to watch the whole thing.  Alternatively, below’s a rough breakdown of what he covers so you can dip in: Continue reading “A Portal to Media Literacy”

Those Horizons (again!)

Coast near Cala Gonone, SardiniaFirst post since my hols (very nice, thank you!) and I’m flagging up something I found before I hit the beach which follows on from my Future Technologies post.

Scott Leslie has shared his recent presentation on the 2008 Horizon Report – 6 technologies on the horizon for educational institutions. There is also a wiki page with links to explore this further. Interesting stuff. I’m still not clear on one of the long-term horizons: “Social Operating Systems” and would love someone to explain it to me but the examples that Scott lists for it look pretty cool and I’ll definitely be trying some out.

Future Technologies

Today I’m dipping into the Eduserv Foundation symposium 2008 “Inside Out: What do current Web trends tell us about the future of ICT provision for learners and researchers?” via the live streaming. If you’re reading this today, join in, it’s free!

Look out for other conference blog posts tagged efsym2008

The first session of the day is/was by Larry Sanders from New Media Consortium who publish the Horizon Reports. I blogged about the 2008 Report on CLT@LSE earlier this year so if you are new to the reports take a look there or at the Horizon Project wiki.

I missed some of Larry’s talk so what’s been most interesting is how well the live webcast is working – almost feels like you are there! It’s very easy to get distracted in the office though, you need discipline for online attendance to work. There is also a live chat for the online viewers on the streaming page, which during the end-of-talk Q&As is being shown in the conference venue. So the live participants get to see our views and a questioner just referred to some comments in his question to Larry.

Larry’s used of virtual bulleted lists in SecondLife as his presentation tool was questioned both virtually and by a member of the live audience. I have to agree that it didn’t add anything and actually made reading them difficult. Technology for technology’s sake?

Image: http://flickr.com/photos/mrstargazer/2467906248/

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