Today I attended the 8th Annual Conference of the Centre for Learning Technology, CAPSL, in Trinity College Dublin. The title of the Conference was Embedding Innovative Technology Enhanced Learning: Podcasting to E-moderating. The main attraction was Professor Gilly Salmon of the University of Leicester who spoke about technology and learning. I have read some of her work and have cited it quite a bit in some recent writings. She gave an excellent presentation and I had plenty of ideas to take away. There were several other presentations though well presented, were not as inspiring. I felt as if the intended audience was for people who knew very little about podcasting and the use of technology in education.
The good thing about this conference was that there were at least two presentations on how things didn't quite go according to plan. You rarely get talks on projects that failed or didn't work - we got this, which was refreshing as well as interesting.
Highlights for me - Dr Kevin O'Rourke of DIT gave an interesting summary of some work he and the major Dublin Colleges (excludes NCI) are doing in the area of e-Learning. Support is the big issue here. Catherine Bruen of the National Digital Learning Repository (NDLR) gave a good summary of the potential of Communities of Practice, and the availability of content on-line. She even mentioned my YouTube Channel! I also found the last speaker, Dr Tom Hayes, who spoke on "The Potential of Podcasting in Higher Education" to be interesting, though I was familiar with much of the work he talked about.
Overall, a good day. The usual Learning Technology suspects were there, and it was good to catch up with people I hadn't seen for a while.
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