6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference – Day #1

In the first of two conferences that I’ll be attending this month, I headed to the University of Plymouth during the middle of last week for the 6th Plymouth e-Learning Conference.

The Roland Levinsky Building, University of Plymouth

With this being the third such conference I’d attended in successive years, I attended to the conference looking forward to catching up with familiar faces and meeting new colleagues.

The conference kicked off with some glorious sunshine on Wednesday afternoon with a Robotics Research showcase from research students at the University of Plymouth, who talked at some length about their work in this fascinating area.

In particular, the discussion around the development of emotional intelligence within such robots was of interest and gave an insight into some of the technologies we might see in the future.

My highlights from this session were undoubtedly seeing a robot attempting to take part a penalty shootout (England football players take note!)  and kids from local schools getting involved. As Steve Wheeler has already noted, these kids really added a fresh energy to conference proceedings this year.

Andy Black’s (@andyjb) Gadgets & Gizmos for Education presentation gave a fantastic insight into the technology journey travelled over the last decade or so, and where we might be headed. To think that Google is only 12 years old, when it is currently seemlessly embedded in a range of my working practises (Google search, Gmail, Docs, Chat, Reader – not to mention Google-owned YouTube) was a bit of a reality check. It is also emphasised that the students now coming into Higher Education (HE) are very much digital natives, from whom such tools have always been around.

Andy demonstrated a Chinese iPhone imitation, which included projection capabilities within the case, sparked some murmuring from within the audience. Indeed with Apple having patented such technologies as early as mid-2009, I’d be interested to see if Andy’s prediction of the iPhone 7 or 8 (released 2013/14) having such technologies embedded, becomes a reality. Does this mean that HEIs might be able to do away with projectors in some rooms and just equip lecturers with a iPhone which has a version of Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer (or something) installed? To work alongside Apple TV, perhaps? Unlikely, but who knows?!

Next up, was Zak Mensah (@zakmensah) and Doug Belshaw’s (@dajbelshaw) thoroughly enjoyable session on Exploring Mobile: Considerations and opportunities, where audience participation was encouraged, and indeed sought. At some conferences sitting in silence through sessions is acceptable, but at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference, such interaction is almost expected!

During the session, delegates were asked: What do you use mobile devices for? To be honest I surprised myself when thinking about a what I used my BlackBerry Bold 9780 for. In short, my list was as follows:

Texting, Phone, Photos, Email (two Gmail accounts and my work email via the BlackBerry Internet Service), Mobile Web, Twitter, Evernote, Facebook, BlackBerry TravelCheck,  Tube/Train times, Google Maps, Calendar (syncing with Google Calendar), Contacts (syncing with Google Contacts), Task list (syncing with RememberTheMilk), Weather app, Scan QR Codes, setting alarms, listen to music and podcasts.

As my group buddy Craig Taylor (@CraigTaylor74) observed, “we’re creating and consuming content”. And lots of it!

Are students doing the same? (Possibly? Probably!) Are they wanting their academic related content delivered in a mobile form? I’m thinking about access to Moodle and Panopto in particular here. But, can we (and/or do we need to) go further perhaps?

The Horizon 2011 Report as already touted Augmented Reality as the next big thing, and with the University of Exeter having already completed an evaluative study into the technology, will those students paying fees in the region of £9,000 from the 2012/13 academic year be expecting more innovative technological developments from their universities?

Day #2 report to follow…

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