Things to come...

Yes, things to look forward to.... We are now less than a month away from the start of the 8th Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference. Those who have previously attended will know that Pelecon is a friendly, stimulating and lively Spring gathering in the beautiful South West of England for those who want to discover and explore more of the world of technology supported learning. This year's line-up of invited speakers will contribute significantly to that. Here below is a sample of some of the keynotes presentations that will be on offer at the event between April 10-12 this year.

Strangely, we'll start at the end. Our closing keynote Donald H. Taylor - chair of the Learning and Performance Institute and a veteran of the fields of skills, productivity and work based learning - will address the title: 'Does Learning and Development have a future?' In his talk, Don will ask: "Learners are doing it for themselves. Both at work and in tertiary education they are increasingly able to find the information they need, the performance support tools and the skills training they need directly. What’s driving these changes and how should learning professionals respond?" Donald will also examine the reasons for these changes, the technologies associated with them, and the likely implications. Whatever else happens, he will argue, standing still is not an option for Learning and Development practitioners. If we continue as we are, we face irrelevance. Join him to explore:

• Change? It’s the economics, stupid – oh, and the technology

• How globalization affects us all

• Does the L&D profession have a future?

• The skills L&D needs to thrive in the 21st Century

• What immediate trends can we expect in the next 12 months?

Two days earlier, one of the country's leading head teachers - Karine George - will give the opening keynote when she tackles the subject of 'Off the beaten track: teaching for the Third Millennium. Karine's school is one of those schools that is held in high esteem as a place where learning is in the hands of the children. One of the projects her school is acclaimed for is the S'cool Radio project, where children take it in turns each day to take the roles of interviewers, journalists and news reporters, bringing their classmates the news and views of the day.  Hampshire's Westfield Junior School is well and truly on the map, continues to receive plaudits from many, and was awarded an Outstanding rating from a recent Ofsted visit. We look forwarded to hearing Karine's unique perspectives on what it takes to create an outstanding school where technology is fully embedded into daily activities.

One of the brightest, rising stars of the e-Learning world, Dr Doug Belshaw, will give a keynote on Day 2 of Pelecon. Formerly at JISC, and now working for the Mozilla Foundation, Doug's title 'The history of Open Badges through the medium of animated GIFs' is intriguing. Doug says: "Last month the non-profit Mozilla Foundation launched v1.0 of the Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI). In this presentation we will look at Mozilla's motivation in developing the OBI, the ways individuals and organisations can use Open Badges, and how Mozilla plans to use them in relation to a new, open learning standard for Web Literacy". Doug will address this topic in his own inimitable way, whilst no doubt reflecting on his recent successfully completed doctoral studies into digital literacies. 

Another of our invited speakers, Derek Robertson, is known by many for his crusading into how video games can be used in education. Derek is National advisor for Emerging Technologies and Learning for the Scottish Government, and anyone who has heard him speak will agree that he is entertaining and challenging in equal measures. Much of the recent past of Derek Robertson's career has been involved in exploring, researching and sharing the benefits to learning of game based learning. He was an instrumental figure in the creation of Education Scotland's Consolarium initiative and it may be argued that his research and the many partnerships with educators who joined him in exploring the  grounded application of COTS games to support learning and teaching has helped to change the discourse around the use of games for learning. In this talk Derek will share examples and insights from his work in this field and with a focus on recent research into Signature Pedagogies with Nintendogs in the Early Years he will argue that the deep learning that we are seeing and, the effective methodologies employed by teachers to enable this, should make us give serious thought to ditching the title game based learning because what we are seeing is so much more than game based learning.

The other speakers in our exciting keynote line-up are Professor Grainne Conole, Professor Steven Warburton, Learning without Frontiers founder Graham Brown-Martin, and all the way from down-under, Joyce Seitzinger.

It's going to be a great event, in a long line of great events. We don't want you to miss out on the fun. So book your tickets now while they are still ... yes still... at the early bird rate. Here's the conference website. This offer will finish on 29th March. See you at Pelecon!

Images from various sources, used with permission


Things to come... by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.