What has been and what is yet to come

Photo by Guillaume Speurt on Flickr

Tallinn is one of my favourite European cities. I visited it a few years ago during the early spring, when snow and ice lay around and the medieval towers and wooden walkways of the old town wall were truly magical. As I navigated the cobbled lanes of old Tallinn and discovered the rustic hostelries, hidden courtyards and colourful gabled houses of the Estonian capital, it was as if I were being transported several hundred years into the past. Even in the bitter cold, Tallinn is quite simply a stunningly beautiful place to explore.

It may be steeped in history, but Tallinn is also a city with its eyes on the future. It was the birthplace of Skype, and Estonians believe that using the Internet is a human right. As such, the country has made access to the Web free and easy to use for everyone. No matter where you are in Estonia, you can easily log in and browse online from any connected device.  It's fitting then that this year, Tallinn is also the host city for the annual European Association for Distance Learning (EADL) ... and I'm very excited to be returning to the city as a keynote speaker. This time I'll be there in the early summer (22-23 May), when the weather will hopefully be a little warmer.

The theme of the EADL conference this year is Connected Learning, and delegates will represent corporate learning and development, and other learning professionals from around the globe.  I will share the slide deck of my keynote via this blog later in the year as I prepare to visit Estonia for the second time, and I look forward to renewing old acquaintances and forging new friendships too. In the meantime, here's the title and abstract of my keynote:

Technology Supported Learning: What has been, and what is yet to come

In recent years education has been assailed by waves of new technologies, theories and practises. Some have penetrated deeply into education while others are still peripheral. In this presentation I will explore the use of MOOCs, AI, social media, smart mobiles, virtual worlds, augmented and virtual reality, as well as some of the emerging associated theories, to evaluate their effectiveness on pedagogy. I will also speculate on the future of distance education and how it might be shaped by, and respond to, the next wave of technology.

Tallinn is one of a number of cities I will be speaking in over the next year. My other keynote presentations will be at conferences in cities including Lisbon, Bruges and London. If you would like to book me to speak at your event, please email me at this link to discuss your requirements.


What has been and what is yet to come by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.