maandag, december 03, 2007
Online Educa: afterthoughts
The Online Educa Berlin conference is done since Friday evening, but I stayed the rest of the weekend in Berlin. So here are some of my afterthoughts on the event:
- The presentation styles of the slide shows have changed. More and more people use very visual slides with only a few words, and no bullet points. I like it better. On a side note: I've tried to so similar with my presentation this year, and I've put it on slideshare.com and in my other blog if you are interested. There is still a lot of difference in the presentation skills of the speakers, but I guess with such a mixed audience it is difficult to screen out the good presenters only.
- I finally saw the famous '100$ laptop' with my own eyes. It is smaller than I imagined, my adult fingers could not really use the tiny keys on the keyboard. But from what I could see it looks like a well designed, fit-for-purpose device. I do believe learning has a great role to play in the development of nations and regions, but it is not a field I find the time to keep up with. Apart from the 100$ laptop a very interesting project 'The hole in the wall' was presented, about how children in rural areas in India can teach themselves to use a computer and speaking English.
- On Friday evening attendance drops of course because people need to catch their planes, but I still had about 30-40 people in the session on corporate learning I was chairing at that time.
- Benjamin is still part of the staff, still plays the piano and still has a cute smile.
- Content-wise, I did not notice many new themes. That's not specific for this conference, it was the same at the Masie one I attended earlier this year. All the things we were talking about now, we had been talking about last year: mobile learning, can Second Life be used for learning, learning 2.0, serious gaming, etc. So no new hypes or themes. I did see however much more practical and concrete cases on the topics above, where some years ago it was still rather theoretical or conceptual. Maybe that is a good sign for the learning profession: we don't need new hypes every year, we finally have the time to improve the things we have.
- Online Educa is a unique conference in that it combines academic and corporate perspectives. Coming from the corporate side, it is also a unique opportunity to hear what universities are currently doing with their students in terms of technology supported learning. Quite frankly, it is scary (but good scary). Oh boy, most companies have no clue what will hit them in 2-3 years when these students will enter the workforce. I hope the organisers will actually make this a main theme for next year's conference: "The Nextgens are coming!" An entire generation of people that live and learn native with technology will massively enter the workforce at a time the baby-boom generation is leaving. That makes they will be on the better side of the negotiation table. And it also makes the learning profession will have a historic opportunity to prove its value in capturing and transferring knowledge and skills between totally different generations. It's gonna be interesting times... What better place than the Online Educa conference to talk about this, having an audience that understands both sides?
- I had the impression there were slightly more academics this year than last year, and the number of big corporations has dropped in favor of a lot of smaller and mid-sized ones. A lot of innovation happens at these little players. My understanding is that a lot of university projects have found their way in start ups that bring the research to the marketplace.
- The presentation styles of the slide shows have changed. More and more people use very visual slides with only a few words, and no bullet points. I like it better. On a side note: I've tried to so similar with my presentation this year, and I've put it on slideshare.com and in my other blog if you are interested. There is still a lot of difference in the presentation skills of the speakers, but I guess with such a mixed audience it is difficult to screen out the good presenters only.
- I finally saw the famous '100$ laptop' with my own eyes. It is smaller than I imagined, my adult fingers could not really use the tiny keys on the keyboard. But from what I could see it looks like a well designed, fit-for-purpose device. I do believe learning has a great role to play in the development of nations and regions, but it is not a field I find the time to keep up with. Apart from the 100$ laptop a very interesting project 'The hole in the wall' was presented, about how children in rural areas in India can teach themselves to use a computer and speaking English.
- On Friday evening attendance drops of course because people need to catch their planes, but I still had about 30-40 people in the session on corporate learning I was chairing at that time.
- Benjamin is still part of the staff, still plays the piano and still has a cute smile.
- Content-wise, I did not notice many new themes. That's not specific for this conference, it was the same at the Masie one I attended earlier this year. All the things we were talking about now, we had been talking about last year: mobile learning, can Second Life be used for learning, learning 2.0, serious gaming, etc. So no new hypes or themes. I did see however much more practical and concrete cases on the topics above, where some years ago it was still rather theoretical or conceptual. Maybe that is a good sign for the learning profession: we don't need new hypes every year, we finally have the time to improve the things we have.
- Online Educa is a unique conference in that it combines academic and corporate perspectives. Coming from the corporate side, it is also a unique opportunity to hear what universities are currently doing with their students in terms of technology supported learning. Quite frankly, it is scary (but good scary). Oh boy, most companies have no clue what will hit them in 2-3 years when these students will enter the workforce. I hope the organisers will actually make this a main theme for next year's conference: "The Nextgens are coming!" An entire generation of people that live and learn native with technology will massively enter the workforce at a time the baby-boom generation is leaving. That makes they will be on the better side of the negotiation table. And it also makes the learning profession will have a historic opportunity to prove its value in capturing and transferring knowledge and skills between totally different generations. It's gonna be interesting times... What better place than the Online Educa conference to talk about this, having an audience that understands both sides?
- I had the impression there were slightly more academics this year than last year, and the number of big corporations has dropped in favor of a lot of smaller and mid-sized ones. A lot of innovation happens at these little players. My understanding is that a lot of university projects have found their way in start ups that bring the research to the marketplace.
Labels: nextgen, online educa
