RSC Eastern e-Fair 5 July

I was invited to deliver a keynote at the RSC Eastern e-Fair at West Herts College on 5th July and I chose to use the title 'Standing on the shoulders of giants', partly because it was an Olympic-themed event, and partly because I wanted to acknowledge that all our fantastic ideas, tools and technologies for learning have come about as a result of the creativity and vision of others before us. We have such easy-pickings with the plethora of tools available for our use, we almost have a new problem - what to use, how to use it effectively and how do we get ready for the next thing?

The keynote can be accessed from the RSC Eastern web site:
http://bit.ly/lsefair2012

and my slides can be accessed at http://bit.ly/5efair

From the feedback that I received from the delegates who came to talk to me, the picture of the desire path, more than anything, really hit home the idea that we were perhaps laying down systems, structures and ways of access that weren't the ones that our learners wanted to use. There is so much that we need to learn from other areas like psychology, motivation, procrastination, flow, addiction, cognitive behavioural therapy etc. I've certainly found that my range of 'giants' are not just e-learning experts like Maria Andersen (@busynessgirl) and Tom Barrett (@TomBarrett) but also people like Martin Seligman (Positive Psychology) and Daniel Pink (and his Motivation 3.0 ideas). My list of people keeps growing as one thing leads to another and I'm loving this connected world of learning and development, so much so that I have now committed to gaining my CMALT qualification (but more on that another time).

@xlearn with @joedale

It's a real privilege and pleasure to be invited to share my musings with my peers.  And it's a real bonus to meet with one of my 'giants' in the flesh: @joedale !!

I was also very taken with the ideas of the 'cottage industry' exhibitors, Tabtoob and eScreens, who shared a stand demonstrating their simple product ideas. These people were motivated enough by their ideas that they turned it into reality and a business. We could all do with their entrepreneurial spirit rubbing off on us!

West Herts College was one of my MoLeNET colleges, so I was pleased to meet up with familiar faces like Andrew Wakeford and Charlie Williams (the latter from Oaklands College). As always, when I get the chance to find out where people have travelled on their e-learning journeys, I learn new things or get reminded of paths that I have forgotten about. I love these triggers and although I get almost too many of them on Twitter, there's nothing quite like having a real chat with real people, to reinvigorate you and top up your enthusiasm meter!!

And so it was that the serendipitous after dinner discussion (the night before the event) was like a quenching of a deep thirst that I didn't even realise I had - to reconnect face to face with colleagues who have journeyed with me for years was like reaching an oasis in a desert (Ron Mitchell @Ronm123, Alistair McNaught @alistairm, Shri Footring @shrifootring). Along with Thomas Rochford, our conversation meandered from topics like waves and oscillations to culture and teaching. It just flowed!! It would have made an epic podcast and I'm sorry to say that we missed a great opportunity to share that with anyone who might want to listen, and I didn't even take a picture! I was too immersed in the moment to digitise it, I'm afraid! But it made me determined to get more of my colleagues together in future for networking and updating sessions like this - we almost don't get enough of an opportunity anymore with the demise of so many of the national training programmes.

So a month on, and for me, the highlights of the e-Fair were:

• the unflappable and lovely RSC Eastern staff who pulled out all the stops to organise a great event, with the provision of a diary room, QR code treasure hunt, prizes, humour, showmanship...
• the great venue - West Herts College's new buildings looked and felt like a great learning space, very inspiring for the learners and staff coming through their doors
• the enthusiasm of all the people running workshops, show and tells, and exhibition stands - they were so pleased to share what they knew and to expand the knowledge of others
• the warmth and friendliness of the delegates, who gave lots of feedback and engaged with everything that day
• the connections and re-connections with people, reminding me that there is a layer of communication that cannot be digitised and put into 140 characters or a recording.

Thank you very much @rsceastern for asking me to be there. The pleasure was all mine :-)

QR codes update

Just followed the link on @tombarrett's tweet on QR codes http://bit.ly/bYDi10 and learned something new :-)
If you use a URL shortener like http://goo.gl and create a short URL, add .qr at the end of the short URL and you will get a QR code!

For bit.ly, you add .qrcode

Guess there's no need to use http://splashurl.net anymore!

Some new fav tools

Thanks to various colleagues who have shown me these great tools recently:

http://splashurl.net
This takes the tinyurl concept and goes one further - it generates a large qr code on a web page as well so that at a presentation, people can simply point their phones at the screen to capture the is.gd url! For a recent workshop, I uploaded content onto my web space, created qr codes for them and at the workshop, people simply pointed their phones at the screen to start downloading PowerPoints and other files on to their phones. This works for video files, mp3s etc!
One way for tutors to quickly upload materials to the web and provide a url for that resource is to email it to their posterous account (http://posterous.com).

That brings me on to http://posterous.com, which various colleagues already use. This is a blog site and then some: you can attach any type of file to your email post to the site and it will be there for others to download. It has the usual rss feed options so if a learner has subscribed to your feed, then he/she could look at their feedreader on the phone and simply click to download the resource to the phone! Wow!

That brings me on to http://protopage.com or http://protopage.com/mobile if you are on a mobile device. Lovely mobile feed aggregator that displays well on a small screen device.

http://etherpad.com
This takes the idea of a wiki and makes it even more functional - it allows up to 8 synchronous editors, all colour-coded so you know who typed what. If you need more than 8, you can always create another etherpad and cross-reference them by urls.
AND it doesn't need logins. You simply type http://etherpad.com/ and a word you like at the end of the url and voila, you can create an etherpad with that url! Of course it helps to use something unique so it's harder for someone to accidentally come across your etherpad.
At a recent Digital 20/20 event, people were really excited by this tool and we started co-writing a story on the screen with hilarious results. If only they made a mobile version...this could be the new instant messaging tool.

OneNote Mobile
This is on my new Windows Mobile phone. I can type text, add a voice recording and insert a picture or take a picture and it's automatically inserted into the page on the mobile. It has great potential for gathering multimedia evidence for competencies. Haven't yet worked out how to aggregate all the files that make up the OneNote on the mobile device into one file though, but watch this space...
I started with using Notes on the phone as I could send the .pwi file to other people using the splashurl technique above. OneNote allows photos to be added to the page as well so is definitely more functional, but I need to play around with zipping up the assets that make up the OneNote file on the mobile device before we can truly exploit it.

QR codes

Having heard about QR codes from James Clay, Carl Smith of London Met etc, I thought I'd have a go at it myself.
I couldn't Bluetooth the software to my phone, no matter how I tried (the .jar file went across but not the .jad file), but with my Sony Ericsson, I managed to transfer the .jad and the .jar file on to the memory card via a card reader and install the software on the phone that way. I used the kaywa reader (http://reader.kaywa.com/) and made my own codes using their online facility (http://qrcode.kaywa.com/)

I think QR codes are going to be great on open day - if you provide the students with the phones/kit to read them, and then have a booth to help students get them on their own phones (which in the long run means you can use QR codes around the college more) - will try this out in Sept 08.

Agree with James re reducing the need to type out URLs etc on a phone to access a website, but I think simply using it for location-based information is useful, and if you provide students with the means to make their own for an exercise, it will get them more excited about preparing and then reading information then a simple label on an item/location.

Ideas: anatomy (qr codes on a mannequin/anatomical figure), parts of an engine, a nature trail - identifying plants, identifying health and safety signs around the college (provide a sheet of paper with the signs and the qr codes, they have to spot them around the college and fill in location) etc.