- Opening plenaries
Good, but none strictly relevant for business, so a bit unbalanced if you ask me. You can see for yourself: the recording is here. Interesting sessions though, and delivered by interesting characters. I will recall this session as 'the preacher and the professor'.
- Opening conversation of the Business Educa stream
This year premiered the Business Educa track. OEB is unique in its atmosphere and in the diversity of participants it attracts: from allover the world, and from government, education and corporate alike. That makes it a unique place to get in sync with 'the others'. But it does make it a hard selling case to get your employer to pay the attendance fee, as the conference is not 'pure' for business only. (Which is, let me be very clear, a very good thing! Silos will not bring us any good in an interconnected network age.) Hence the business educa stream, as it where a sub-conference in the conference. Many of its sessions were streamed and you can go view the recordings.Kudos for the internet time alliance and friends for organizing it.
Here is my version of the opening conversation:
- Jay Cross: Our job is to lead the revolution
- Richard Straub and others in audience: Revolutions never bring any good, let's not go into that kind of talk. It is about creation a 'pull' (vs the push, a revolution wants to push people). Let's critically reflect why the pull does not happen. Let's work on continuity in change.
- bla bla
- Someone: empower people to pull.
- And from time to time some general statements that can kill a cow : Everything is part of everything else these days.
- David Jones Clarke : Education is not sexy because educators are not very good marketeers.
....
- Later on an intervention from the audience: I'm a marketeer attached to a learning department for three years now as they don't know how to market. People/learners/employees feel cheated upon with technology based learning, because 1/ they don't get the time whereas in classroom training they get time away ; 2/ they don't get to speak with an expert and 3/ something very important that I forgot to write down.
- bla bla
- Charles Jennings: The forgetting curve. Without context we forget about 50% within the hour.
- Audience : heloo-oo; this is the business track, shall we talk about business outcomes?
...
- Someone: there is an excellent article in CLO magazine on META learning skills
- Hans De Zwart : some comment and advice to all learning designers: turn your consumers into producers.
- Jay Cross: workscapes + there is a myth: They say you can't manage what you can't measure. Not true.
- Laura Overton : we are uncomfortable with business .
...
That's when I left the room because 1- I urgently had to go to the toilet and 2- I had promised Lut I'd have dinner with her. I keep my promises.
- Lab 'hole in the wall' with Sugata Mitra
Another new format this year were labs, where every two participants had access to a provided laptop. The lab session that was overbooked like no other was from the opening plenary star of 2007: prof Sugata Mitra with his hole in the wall project. Interesting person and interesting experiments. First a lot of talk on his hole in the wall project, and then staging the same kind of learning experiment within the audience in groups of 4. "When learners have interest, education happens." and "Whenever you can replace a teacher by a machine, you should.".
Here is how the magic works:
- Get groups of 4 people.
- Give them a question and computer access.
- Step out. Go away.
- They will get to 30% (as knowledge measured on equivalent 'school' children)
- Add a grandmother. This is not a teacher or subject matter expert, but a person who admirers learning.
- They will get to 50%.
More on sugatam.wikispaces.com .
Intriguing. But this is all about knowledge. Does it work for skills/behavior?
I had to leave the session early, as I had to see the guys from shakespeak to discuss the voting in the battle of the bloggers.
- Battle of the bloggers: the graveyard of learning.
This year the battle (3th edition) was in a more appropriate room, and a more appropriate time, so we had more participants than last year. The session was shorter, featured 3 panel speakers (Hans De Zwart, John Traxler and Tom Wambeke). Topic : what concepts, myths, best practices, theories belong in the graveyard of learning? Featured a backchannel and live voting system from shakespeak.
Here are the slides, we covered 5 items in the hour we got.
Here are the results of the votes:
- PODCASTING FOR LEARNING : Alive (66%)
- MOBILE LEARNING CONTENT : Alive (62%)
- ADDIE : Dead (69%)
- DIPLOMAS AND CERTIFICATIONS : Alive (85%)
- LEARNING STYLES : Dead (69%)
I would have liked more time, for example to cover the theme of the conference 'learning for all' as a topic, but alas, the innocent or virgin participants that selected the topics at random out of a possible 10 decided otherwise. What I'll remember is that half the audience did not know what ADDIE was (it lives in the corporate world, is very much unknown outside it), that the vote for diplomas was a bit contradictory with the debate, that people don't like to talk about learning styles any more.
Here's the back channel:
| nice session, thanks |
| Visual learning style? i work in a mine... |
| some hear less and talk a lot |
| http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/never-forget-learning-styles-are-complete-arse/ |
| This is just the 5 senses. As old as hills. Stimulate senses. Not a theory. My granny knew tuis theory before it was one. |
| no actually, science has found out there is no difference in learning styles |
| People are different. Learners are people. Take that into account. |
| too many educators still in awe of simplistic models of how people learn: learning styles, andragogy, personality inventories |
| If it did exist, individuals would still have to adapt to the composite learning style of their community |
| Good content uses all senses |
| How can you integrate all learning styles in one, and will all learners be satisfied |
| did people really learn less before we where told about the differences? Is everyone older than 20 less intelligent then/ know less??? What a bunch of cr**! |
| prof. Jelle Jolles has done a lot of research. google it |
| Good teachers teach well. Bad ones don't |
| edina's book is good but simplistic |
| learning styles are important to take into account when you design courses, but one has to be aware you can't please/suit everyone, so a choice needs to be made |
| sience found out that there is a difference in learning styles |
| http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/11/02/questions-im-no-longer-asking/ |
| whether dead or alive...the fact is, it takes up 99% of my day-to-day life as a teacher! |
| so leave |
| Make this one quick |
| so... put your writing where you mouth is.. get provocative! |
| dead |
| This is babble. Hocus pocus. Mumbo jumbo. Nonsense. |
| Now neurobiological differences are real - but their implications on life are not at all predictable |
| the discussions are a bit lame... Can we be more provocative? It,s a battle after all! |
| There is no credible evidence that this really exists, but as teachers we love simple ways of explaining differences. |
| A diploma is a good goal during educatio |
| do you know the dog with the mba |
| http://www.geteducated.com/diploma-mills-police/life-experience-college-degree/289-dog-gets-life-experience--mba-degree |
| Anyone an app for making a certificate? |
| What an Ivy League education does for you is make you roomates with others who have wealth and power. Not a better education |
| it is still a signal. but where can i get the Curry-Wurst? |
| Diplomas don't screen out loony applicants |
| For non-geniuses, it makes it easier to start life after school/univ |
| 8 Jun 2007 ... The chairman of the software giant Microsoft Bill Gates has finally received his Harvard University diploma 32 years after he left the Univ, |
- The party.
Very good. Award for at least trying Pecha Kuch to Jay. Award for most special dancer to Daniel. Award for almost dancing to Mark. Award for not falling asleep although I had two very exhausting and intensive days behind me to myself. No further comments.
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