I was asked to write a guest blog post for ULCCs ‘Future of Technology in Education’ 2010 event last week. As I said in the blog post , FOTE09 was one of the best events I attended last year … there was a wide range of speakers and the ideas they put forward were challenging … but made sense. Here are a few of the key messages I picked up and that I reported in my blog post last year:

• The world feels like it is spinning faster and faster  … technology has made the world more connected than ever before … the internet is changing everything … we need to change too (Will McInnes, Nixon McInnes)
• Students and teachers need to understand the potential of technology to get the most out of it (James Clay, Gloucester College)
• We have to all accept that learning does not just happen in institutions … that degree certificates are probably not the best way of representing a person and their abilities to an employer … that if universities don’t give people what they want, how they want it then learning will still happen outside universities… it did before they existed, after all (Dougald Hine, School of Everything)

For those of you who attended our big event ‘Learning in a Digital Wales – Dysgu mewn Cymru Digidol‘ in June, you will have heard Dougald Hine speak about ‘Unexpected Transformations‘, offering his perspective on the way that technology becomes part of the fabric of our lives. You may also have heard (or read or seen) the latest reports from OFCOM suggesting that on average many of us spend half our waking lives using media and communcations.  Technology is already part of education for so many people in so many different ways and with the Welsh Assembly Government aiming to transform learning in Wales working out how technology can help to address the challenges of the future of education is more important than ever. Hopefully FOTE10 will have some of the answers!

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

A month ago today the JISC RSC Wales event ‘Learning in a Digital Wales – Dysgu mewn Cymru Digidol’ was in full swing in the All Nations Centre in Cardiff … my, how time flies! Since then I have had a 2 week holiday and now that I am back I am taking a moment to reflect on the day (having recovered from helping with all of the behind the scenes work that went into putting it together). From the outset, the aims of the day were to bring together learning providers from across all sectors within Wales to:

• share good practice and experiences in new and existing technologies from across the sectors
• focus on key questions about the transformation agenda and the role of technology enhanced learning
• look at the reasons for change in 21st Century education.

… and I think that on the whole those aims were achieved, through the keynote from Dougald Hind, the opportunity for all attendees from across the education sectors within Wales to discuss the transformation agenda during the Knowledge Cafe and the wide range of sessions led by those who are actually using digital technologies to support learning and teaching across Wales.

Being involved in organising and supporting an event on the day you often miss out on the detail, which is why the information and resources area with presentations, videos, photos and comments from the event has been a great way of reminding myself what happened. The ‘Learning in a Digital Wales’ online information and resources area is available to anyone at: http://moodle.rsc-wales.ac.uk/learninginadigitalwales.  If you would like just a snapshot of the day I would recommend the Flickr photo and delegate comment slideshow … or if you prefer video then how about the YouTube hosted video of attendees’ thoughts, shot (with a Flip camera) by our roving reporter Lis or the compilation of keynote and Moodle videos created by Richard Wenner.

On reflection, a good day … and, now I have had a holiday, I think I’m looking forward to the next one!

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).