Up at 4am and flew out of Glasgow at 6:10 without a hitch. Slept almost from take off to landing, missing the inflight meal. Tube to Paddington twittering all the way. Navigated to the White House Hotel using only my iPhone’s built in GPS . How cool is that utility? You see yourself as a wee blue pulsing dot, meandering across a virtual map.
At the hotel , the paperwork from the booking agency hadn’t come through and I wouldn’t know until 2pm if I had a room or not. It meant I would have to carry my bag all day.
Found The Brewery which is the venue for the event, again using GPS. I signed in as a delegate and scanned the programme, some really cool stuff going on over the next few days. I want to attend everything, but sadly can’t.
I spent the first couple of hours walking around the stands, getting a feel for everything. The first seminar began at 11:30 which I missed. It was repeated at 13:30 so I aimed for that one.
In the interim I tested some of my networking skills (staff development may me required for future events I think). Spoke at length to Apple with regards to my iPod Touch study. They sounded really interested and pointed me towards some of the events that would be particularly pertinent. I wrote them into iCal.
There seems to be a great emphasis on gaming here, no suprises that Nintendo were leading the charge. I managed to break one of their Wii controllers, apparently by just looking at it. Sony had a stand, showing off the PSPs educational potential. I have made a note to investigate this further.
The basic impression I got when asking about Moodle was that it was both unweildy and unattractive to students, unless the teacher put in an uneconomical amount of effort in. It also isn’t the best solution for mobile learning as it lacks development in that field. As I had spoken to the most relevant people I could find with regards to my project, I decided to look into other VLE’s that are better placed to form a bedrock for mobile integration. Study Wiz seemed to have everything. It looked attractive, had all you needed straight from the box and with the minimum of effort. The downside is that it doesn’t have that attractive and cost free ‘open source’ label attatched. Another line of investigation to pursue.
The 1:30 seminar was a series of short presentations by innovative thinkers using technology in interesting ways to engage learners. As with most of the events this was aimed firmly at the primary sector. It did however stimulate thought and showed that thinking out of the box is key. I particularly enjoed the presenter who used Robosapiens as a learning tool. I could see how it would be engaging to kids (and the teacher!). Which brings up another keypoint, if the teacher is engaged then the chances are the pupil/student will also be. Gone are the days of both being bored of each other.
Although a great deal if the conference is based around primary and secondary education, it takes little imagination to elaborate and upgrade it to HE. The most obvious way would be to take a basic primary level idea and make it more sophisticated. The danger is then to over-complicate the concept. Some of the ideas could be presented to a student almost precisely as you would with a secondary school pupil. The terminology would differ, but the base concepts remain.
I was also blown away by the SMART board that they used to present their projects. One speaker showed how you can link the board to a class full of mobile devices, making it truly interactive. A technology that I thought was still a few years away. I’ll have to find out if Promethean have plans to develop a more portable version of their boards ( they may gave already developed one).
The key word at HHL08 is ‘ubiquitos’ and that’s as it should be. Mobile learning has to be for it to be truly effective. And it’s not just the devices, the software that connects us all to it must also be. There is also a strong surge from big corporations to jump on the bandwagon, though few are developing devices designed with education solely in mind, they are at least ‘thinking outside ofvthe box’ themselves. Using existing devices on new ways, that way the pupils/students don’t have to go through process of familiarising themselves to new hardware. There were a couple of exceptions to this, Toshibas new notebook being issued as an educational model.
After the seminar I headed downstairs to watch a bit of Pecha Kucha. PK is a very simple concept which cuts out all the extrenuos information wasted when presenting a keynote. The rules are that you can only use 20 slides, each only 20 seconds long. This commits you to get your information across in under 6mins 40secs. Keeps everying concise and short, cutting down those painfully long powerpoints. I can see myself doing 2 or 3 PKs interspersed with practical excercises over a single session. We could also use it as the presentation mode for students e.g. Opera 1 project, in which each student presents their peice of the bigger picture in palatable chunks. It really must focus the mind, in both planning and delivery. It’s also a good laugh.
I stayed there for almost two hours intrigued by the possibilities. The subjects ranged from digital registry solutions to the benefits of owning an iPhone.
Tony Vincent was particularly good. I had watched his podcasts before and knew his website. He is a real advocate of using the iPhone & iPhone Touch as educational devices.
I twittered all the time. At first it was to inform my colleagues of what I was up to with small flashes of interesting info. It soon became a great networking tool, with other delegates picking up my tweets. Pretty soon there was a small army if us twittering, sharing information a thoughts on the content we were witnessing. It also turned into a note taking tool, with several angles of the same thing being recorded. The transcript (which Im using to inform this blog) is easily available. A great wee tool to use for aiding reflection.
All in all, it was a fantastic day. Today was open to the public and a faster of the conference proper, which begins tomorrow…
