Catchup time

OK, I'm miles behind with my contributions to this blog. Time for a summary and some other thoughts

Some highlights:

• Marc Prensky - ace keynote (I didn't gain much from the others). Myself, Andrew and Susannah first heard about him when we were working games for learning a few years ago. He covered loads - I tried to take notes but he just went so fast! (must get his slides from the web, even if the colours he used on them were awful!) Some of his key points were about the development of technology, and students teaching themselves: "Mobile learning will be more complex, and will involve more doing". He also talked about gaps: student/teacher; haves/have nots; present/future and researcher/practitioner. My final note of what he said is: "The small disappearing box called the classroom". I was pleased to see him eating some black pudding at breakfast the next day - an honorary Northerner in my eyes
• Andy Ramsden's sessions on QR Codes and Twitter - Interesting. Innovative. Engaging. Participative. Pretty much what I was hoping for at the conference- if only I'd attended more like that
• Mark Kramer's session - I've looked at his work online since the conference. I only wish I'd seen it!
• I went to a session about accessing and downloading videos via Bluetooth from city centre kiosks -it gave me an idea about something we can do with the media space in the Adsetts extension
• An interesting conversation with someone doing her PhD about 'spontaneous mobile learning'
• The Pondicherry Indian restaurant in Ironbridge. Fabulous
• The "Australian Tony Soprano" who was attending the conference. He looked just like him. I saw him on his mobile a few times, probably talking to Paulie Walnuts, arguing with Carmela, or booking an appointment with Dr Melfi

Some lowlights:

• Marc Prensky - his session over-running had a domino-topple effect on ours. Can't really blame him though, because...
• ...not a single thing ran to time, which was also affected by...
• ..the ridiculous mid-afternoon timing of a wine-fuelled book launch
• The complete and total lack of fresh fruit at the conference, at breakfast and at lunch (and no, a token bowl of apples on the registration desk does not count) which prompted a trip to Asda. Water was hard to find too, but there was plenty of cold tea and packets of biscuits
• The beautiful-sunny-day-outside-but-curtains-closed-and-all-the-lights-on approach used in the conference rooms. In the ones that had windows
• The doorstop of a conference proceedings which were also provided on CD. I'm guessing mine is now in a bin in Shropshire somewhere
• The wireless access. Oh dear, I wont repeat what Liz has already covered, but I pity the poor guy who had just arrived from Chicago to present, to be told that there was no web access. He didn't have a backup, so he tried to improvise but I'm not really sure it worked... ...poor guy. You live and learn
• Multiple trips over the not-very-convincing bridge over 2 dual carriageways, between the hotel and the railway station. I'm amazed at how many bridges there are in Telford...

Some other notes I made:

My own thoughts, translated directly from at-the-time scribbles:

How to best evaluate mobile learning activity? Is it possible?
You can't be device-specific
It's what you do and where, not how
Dishing out kit to mega-cohorts is not sustainable, and it goes out of date (like our Palms with Office 2007). It's more about equipping students to learn via different methods of access

Some conclusions:

• I thought the conference was trying to cover too much - it was just so broad, Liz has referred to this in a comment elsewhere. I found it difficult to relate some of what I saw to mobile learning
• 20 minutes is not long enough for a conference session, especially when things don't run to time

I've added some other (belated) thoughts etc as comments on the other posts in this blog