Lost in translation (again)

Travelling up on the National Express bus from Plymouth to London was rather tedious. I had a guy sat behind me who insisted on speaking very loudly into his mobile phone for most of the 6 hour journey. It couldn't have been an iPhone because the battery wouldn't have lasted. What was worse, I couldn't even listen in to the gossip, because he was gabbling away in some far Eastern language...

I was in London to speak at the Learning Technologies Conference at Olympia. I was invited to speak by the urbane and witty Donald Taylor, who really does know how to organise a smart and glittering event. In the speaker's lounge (yes they have one) Don introduced me to a smiling grey haired, bearded man who turned out to be Lord David Puttnam, our first keynote speaker. His Lordship looked into my eyes and it was as if we were old friends. He has that effect on people. Some may remember him as the force behind some of the greatest movies in the British cinema, producing such classics as The Mission, Local Hero and Chariots of Fire. And here we were talking about how he had recently been down to Plymouth to speak at a prizegiving at one of our local primary schools. He really has a way of putting you at your ease.

Lord Puttnam's keynote speech will no doubt be covered much more eruditely elsewhere on the web, but I want to capture just the essence of his talk here. He argued for education as the answer to all the world's needs, including climate change, and gave the example of climate change simulation games where the first thing children do is destroy the world. Later they learn how to save it. He said that no education system can be better than the professionals it employs. My favourite soundbite was that 'good teachers should be able to walk into your head and turn on the lights'. The bottom line for Lord Puttnam was this - only through engaging with digital media are we likely to nurture a generation of smart learners, who are agile and flexible enough to cope with the world's changes.

The first day of LT10UK was mainly about technology used in corporate training and development contexts, and it had a distinctly HR feel about it. My own session on smart technologies was in the main auditorium, complete with stage, large screen, coloured theatre lighting, and a video camera that captured everything for playout later. There were around 200 in my audience, and boy, were they polite! I braced myself for a barrage of 'what ifs?' and 'so whats?' - the type of feedback you get from a savvy academic audience. But no, this lot were on their best behaviour and the discussion was very placid indeed. It was almost as if we were talking in two different languages. I suspect that the worlds of training and education (which collided a few times at the conference) are not converging as fast as many think they are, and LT10UK really was dominated by training and development - and of course that's why most people were there. After my presentation, I had several approaches from people who wanted to quiz me more about my talk, most blown away by the idea that handheld devices could be used in the ways I had described in my slideshow. I had to convince some over coffee by doing some live demos on my iPhone of Navigator and other GPS based tools.

I paid a brief visit downstairs to the main exhibition where 200 stands reached out and tried to grab 5 minutes of your time. Most appeared to be VLE vendors. Many were chancing it, in a market that is probably burgeoning for corporate training, but which in my opinion, is already 10 years out of date for schools, colleges and universities. Again, the VLE companies were speaking in another language - this one more akin to Latin or ancient Greek, so I quickly left the arena.

The conference party that evening over at the Kensington public bar was outrageous. All the drinks were free, plates of food kept circulating, as did a team of street magicians, doing card tricks and close up illusions. I withdrew politely at just before midnight after an excellent Italian style meal, but some of the hardier souls went on to other venues and stayed out as late as 4 am. They may be a placid lot at Learning Technologies, but they certainly know how to party.

Day 2 was interesting simply because so many of the corporate speakers seemed to be reading from the same script. Social learning is a good thing, they said. Do collaborative stuff and your employees will learn better, they advised. It sounded suspiciously like lip service though. I suspect that many are 'on the verge of beginning to think about considering it', but haven't yet taken the plunge. After all, user generated content seems a little risky for those businesses who want to protect their secrets from their competitors and maintain their unique branding. One of the more vocal delegates did manage to ask a sticky question of one of the presenters in the mobile learning session. The response was: 'Why do you ask? Are you one of our competitors?'

On Day 2 I enjoyed a very interesting 30 minutes over lunch with Professor Stephen Heppell, whom I had never had the pleasure of talking with before. I had heard him speak several times at events such as Handheld Learning and ALT-C, but this was a real opportunity to speak to him on a one-to-one basis and hear his ideas. We covered everything from MPENSA, to schooling in post-conflict areas, to disaster relief, and one of his most recent ideas - to take over vacated highstreet store spaces of the likes of Burger King and Marks and Spencer and turn them into learning centres. 'They're already DDA compliant' Stephen said, and convinced me it is an opportunity too good to miss. I said to him, 'Stephen, you're a busy man.' His reply, with a twinkle in his eye was 'I'm having the time of my life!'

All too soon the conference was over. I got to meet several people I had only ever met on Twitter, including Barry Sampson and Jane Hart, and had several very interesting conversations with a number of the delegates, mainly from Scotland, for some reason... The bus trip back home was horrendous, as Chiswick flyover was closed and we were diverted across town in heavy traffic. A man behind me was talking loudly and incessantly into a mobile phone for most of the journey home. And guess what? It was in a far-eastern language and I didn't understand a word...

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