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 :-)

Google Docs has a new fan

In the last two weeks, I have created more Google docs, forms, presentations and spreadsheets than ever before. To use an analogy I read in one of Doug Belshaw's blog posts (and I think he attributes the idea to someone else...), it's sunrise time for Google Docs in my world.
So what is the sun setting on at the same time? Etherpad. Having touted it for a while now, the various incarnations available out there (piratepad, ietherpad, typewithme) have been less and less reliable. (With the exception of PrimaryPad, probably, as it's being lovingly maintained by @johnmclear). When using Etherpad, we have also 'itched' for more functionality and that's exactly what we're getting now with Google Docs.
A year or two ago, I wouldn't have relied on Google Docs for my training events. Formatting was a nightmare on the 'Word' equivalent. The spreadsheets did funny things when you scrolled across or down it - data cells crossed over so you weren't sure what you were looking at.
Coming back to it a year later, using the Word equivalent is like using Etherpad, with the chat pane on the right hand side, only this time, we can embed pictures as well, yes!
Multiple people can edit the document directly yet you can keep this as a private document between a group of people (unlike Etherpad) or you can create a public document, turning the doc effectively into a wiki-like page.
A group of trainees and I tried this with Google Presentation too. For feedback and reflection, I asked each person to edit a slide. This helped to structure the input a little bit, compared with using a Doc or Etherpad. @tombarrett inspired the idea as he uses Google presentations to collate ideas together.
And I've gone mad on Forms. What a lovely invention. And all the lovely templates you can apply to them. :-) They are so easy to set up, with the results going into a Spreadsheet (Google of course) with instant graphing feedback. Wow. All my event evaluation forms have now gone online. Unlike the drama involved in getting people to fill in an evaluation on Moodle...but that's another story ;-)
And as I've mentioned in a previous post, goo.gl is my favourite URL shortener at the moment as having a Google account means that you have a record of all the stuff you've ever shortened. You get the Google analytics to tell you how many users access the site using one OS versus another. (Not sure why I might want that info at the moment, but might be handy in future.) My only gripe is that I need another column so I can fill in a personal reminder of what the link is!
And when you're making a Doc, Spreadsheet or Presentation shareable, why not give you a goo.gl URL in the first place? Maybe someone from Google will read this and get it implemented pronto...
I know there's loads of other Google bits that are immensely useful but they will surface in my world when it is their time.
One tutor did bring up the fact that we ought to be careful using something like that in teaching and learning - what about Google and privacy concerns? Hmmm, valid point but IMHO, it's a case of how paranoid you want to be. With the stuff that I'm doing at training events, I'm not too bothered who sees it - share and it all comes back to you manifold!