Steve Wheeler : Weblog

A shower in Bath...

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:39:35 GMT

I have just arrived back in the UK via Bristol airport and have driven straight over to the beautiful city of Bath. Tomorrow I will be speaking at a staff development workshop on Web 2.0 at the University of Bath, on the invite of the Head of e-Learning, Andy Ramsden. I keep bumping into Andy all over the place, so it will be nice to finally get to see his set up and see how they do things there.

I'm staying at the delightful Tasburgh House guesthouse, which overlooks the city from its high vantage point. I have had a shower and a change of clothes after the dreadfully bumpy flight back from Warsaw, and I am feeling very much more human thank you very much. The hostess is charming, and has already brought me tea and cake, whilst I sit here in the conservatory writing this blog post. Gentle saxaphone jazz is playing in the background (Stan Getz if I'm not mistaken), there are potted plants all around and I have excellent wireless connection - what more could a boy need? (Above, complete with cake and tea, is a picture of my well travelled laptop in situ, - it has already been to Portugal and Poland in the last ten days - are there any other countries beginning with 'Po'?)

Tasburgh House is certainly the place to chill out. There are stunning views all around. In a nice touch, the rooms are all named after British authors. I am staying in the room named after Eliot (George Eliot who was a girl of course...) and each room has a teddy bear who represents that author. You should see Charles Dickens (and Lord Tennyson is to die for) ... More from Bath tomorrow when I have presented my workshop and seen around the university...

Pole position

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:49:27 GMT

It’s the first day of the Polish Virtual Universities conference here in Warsaw and I must admit I’m feeling a little lost. I opened the conference with the first keynote of this three day event, and then it was all downhill from there in. The audience was disturbingly quiet, but I’m told that this is the way they listen to speakers. They applauded heartily at the end of my speech, but no-one dared to ask a question. It’s a different culture, a different reaction, so get over it Steve.

There are 140 delegates registered for the conference and 136 of them are Polish. So naturally the entire conference is also in Polish, and I don’t understand a word of it of course. At other conferences there is usually an interpreter, but I am the only Brit here, so I shouldn’t expect anything else should I? OK, there are also a couple of other keynote speakers from France (Ronan Chabauty) and Spain (Albert Sangra) and they will also present in English, but apart from that, nada. There are over 70 papers and posters due to be presented here, and also 8 keynotes. I have managed to decipher some of the paper headings, which include podcasting, blended learning, e-portfolios, wikis, 3-D storytelling, Second Life, and several others have Web 2.0 in their title.

Oh how I wish I could hear them, or at least be able to read them in English.

Emerging Mondays Tonight

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:50:49 GMT

I'm taking part in a live podcast tonight for Emerging Mondays using Skype direct from my new wireless laptop. I actually managed to get the blasted software to download on the third attempt. Must have been a flaky wireless connection.

I'm going to be talking about social software and open content for e-learning, and will be in conversation with the show's host, Graham Attwell. This was a session I agreed to do with Graham earlier this week whilst attending the Edumedia conference in Salzburg. Just one small correction - I'm not from Plymouth College, which doesn't exist any more (I worked there for a few years back in the nineties). I'm now working at the Faculty of Education at the University of Plymouth which is much more upmarket dear. Speak to some of you tonight I hope....;-)

EDEN on the Tagus

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:54:46 GMT

This year's EDEN (European Distance and Elearning Network) conference looks like being a real blast. It will be in Lisbon, Portugal, in the middle of June. Last week, I was informed that my paper had been accepted (I will be talking about blogs, would you believe?) and so this week I booked my hotel. Today the message below was sent from EDEN HQ and now I can't wait...! "The Conference Dinner online booking will open on 13 May. You can reserve places for this special event by using the above booking link and completing the form. The dinner will be held on 13 June, Lisbon's celebratory day of St. Antonio, as well as the date when our host Universidade Aberta will be 20 years old. On this truly festive occasion, the magnificent Estufa Real Restaurant will offer a rich, typical dinner with Portuguese dishes, drinks and Fado music in the heart of the 18th century Ajuda Botanical Gardens, overlooking the Tagus river". Hope to see as many of you as possible at EDEN this year. Comment in the box below if you are attending!

FreeSat

Tue, 06 May 2008 21:56:16 GMT

The new free satellite service being offered across the UK probably won't cause any dramatic changes in pay-to-view TV in the coming months. But we could certainly see the demise of FreeView, which the new service could make completely redundant. According to the BBC News service article, FreeSat is going to be made available in 98 per cent of UK homes, and will carry 80 TV and radio channels even in areas where FreeView is unavailable.

With television viewing on the decline anyway (youth in particular are reported to spend more hours per week using the Internet than they are sat in front of the box) this means the old fogies will have even more channels available to watch on which there is nothing but sit-com repeats, make-over programmes and other assorted superficial drivel, all neatly laced with the increasingly regular, irritating adverts.

So, no change there then.

Redefining Learning Spaces

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:04:19 GMT

I have just posted up a FaceBook site to announce next year's Plymouth eLearning Conference (23-24 April, 2009). Next year we will be under the banner of 'Crossing Boundaries: Redefining Learning Space'. As with this year's conference, we will be in the eyecatching Roland Levinksy Arts Building (pictured). All are invited from any sectors of education and training, and there is an early call for workshop, papers and demonstrations on the theme:

The 4th Plymouth e-Learning Conference will examine the theme of e-learning in a time of change, and will challenge notions of traditional boundaries, learning spaces and roles. We will focus on new practices, new technologies, new environments and new learning. There will be primary, secondary and tertiary education threads. We invite papers on the digital divide, e-learning methods and case studies, mobile and pervasive technologies, digital games, multi-user virtual environments, informal learning, new classroom technologies, personal learning environments and social software.

The event will be over two days next year, and we have some interesting sessions planned, and a spectacular social event for the evening of 23 April. Just think 'marine life', and you may guess what we will be doing! (Hint- no, nothing to do with the Royal Marines!)

I hope to see you there for what promises to be an excellent and memorable event.

Elluminating experience

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 14:54:24 GMT

Just enjoyed an interesting half hour testing out the Elluminate Live! platform in preparation for a panel session I will be doing with Helen Keegan and Nicholas Breakwell for the Sloan Consortium Conference. It will be held on 9 May and hosted by Pheonix University, Arizona. The moderator for the session will be Gary Morrison, and my invite to present at the panel is a legacy of last year's EDEN conference in Naples. I spoke then on wikis and social network tools and how they can be used to support nomadic learners. They must have liked it because Gary Morrison blogged about it and then got in touch. Looking forward to it...