Just arrived home from the veritable smörgåsbord of EdTech delights that is (was) Online Educa Berlin 2007. Although OEB has a rather more substantial ‘tradeshow’ element than some of the more research-focused events (such as the EDEN Research Workshops, or ALT-C), it’s a great conference, and a welcome opportunity to meet up with colleagues just before Christmas, being a refreshing respite from the ‘day-to-day’ - and in glorious surroundings…
I was there along with Graham Attwell, Dai Griffiths, Steven Warburton, Steve Wheeler and David White to speak at a special focus panel session entitled ‘No Life in Second Life?’, and it went really well (I think?) – or at least we enjoyed ourselves! Diverse panel, diverse set of SL experiences – but luckily it all seemed to fit together rather well and there were plenty of questions and discussion with the audience – no mean feat with an audience of several hundred! Luckily Graham took on the role of ‘roving mic’… along with a last-minute keynote later on in the afternoon, which he delivered with his usual rousing aplomb... More pics on Flickr…
Professor Sugata Mitra delivered an awe-inspiring (and extremely witty) keynote where he presented his well-known ‘Hole in the Wall’ experiments, which ran across India over a number of years. In each experiment, he would place a high-speed computer in the wall, connect it to the Internet, and watch who, if anyone, might use it. Within minutes, children would fathom out how to point and click and by the end of the day they would be browsing the internet. Mitra replicated his experiment across India, in other settings, each time with the same result. Within hours and without any instruction, children would be browsing the Web. Mitra’s mission to overcome the digital divide in India is a reminder that children CAN self-instruct; with children, the most important word in education is ‘if they WANT’ to, and learning is often a question of triggering the right emotions…
The idea of learner empowerment - children or otherwise - is becoming increasingly prevalent, and for good reason. Graham presented us with some wonderful examples of student work centring on comic books, blogs, wikis, podcasts… with warm and fruity undertones of Illich, Freire etc.
Luckily, Andrew Keen (another keynote speaker) was on hand to warn us all of the perils of shifting the emphasis from the ‘authority’ to 14 yr-old monkeys tapping away at typewriters… and of listening to the ‘utopian, anti-authoritarian, ex-hippies’ who champion Web 2.0 in education.
Err... that'll be us then.
Keywords: conference, Dai Griffiths, David White, Emotion, Graham Attwell, keynotes, Motivation, Online Educa Berlin, Second Life, Social Software, Steve Wheeler, Steven Warburton, Sugata Mitra, Web 2.0
