Plymouth eLearning Conference... 'To V or not to V? that is the question'

Another successful elearning conference here at Plymouth University! The venue was the famous Roland Levinsky building, providing the delegates with large lecture theatres and even a cinema! Each area had a dedicated PC with large screen showing the twitter feeds for #pelc10 coming through ...so far some very positive feedback on twitter. Thanks to Dominic Martignetti (Technical Director) for his efforts in organising this element of the conference (amongst all the other techy components of course! I know he work hard on this). On the point of thanks, we must not forget Mark Lyndon's efforts, creating another excellent conference website, with inclusion of his very creative imagery!

We had some very excellent key notes this year from Josie Fraser, Social and Educational Technologist and Dave White, University of Oxford. Professor Brian Chalkley, Director of Learning and Teaching, University of Plymouth, made some introductory remarks before Josie Fraser's presentation, emphasising the importance of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) at Plymouth and its impact on teaching and learning.

Josie presented digital literacy, identity & citizenship. Amusingly but quite poignantly in one part of her talk using the term: 'un-googleable man' a person that has essentially no digital footprint. This had me thinking, could such people actually exist in this technological age? Even if you have not EVER entered anything online, that does not stop others from doing so...Maybe you got a small mention in an online news article? Or published a journal article? Why not google yourself and see what you come up with... Chances are if you are reading this, you probably have some digital identity...

Dave White's talk included elements from the TALL blog (The TALL group is part of the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford). Dave also mentions his technological transition from the Co-Digital to the Post-Digital diagram, and further linking this to: 'The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions' (select the plain diagram to see the full pyramid) that was originally posted on informationisbeautiful.net. Thought provoking stuff indeed.

Shameful plug: I teamed up with Sally Holden, Luke McGowan and Paul Russell from the Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry, UK (based here in Plymouth University) to produce a talk entitled 'To V or not to V? that is the question' that included examples of our virtual development projects from both dentistry and the environmental sciences, to turn the session into a mini debate. Turning Point voting was also included to quiz the attendees.

More information on the conference is also provided on Steve Wheeler's blog (Conference Chair), also Mark Pannell , Mark Lyndon and Flea Palmer.

Some photos on flickr courtesy of Dawn Wheeler.

Thank you to all those involved both on the home and international organising committees. Looking forward to next years conference!