I’m working to catch up after a busy week of activity at ASCILITE 2008 at Deakin University in Melbourne. The conference has just finished and looking back it has been a pretty good one.
The highlights:
Thom Cochrane presented some of the interested work happening at Unitec re mobile learning and the use of smartphones such as the Nokia N95 and iPhone. I have to confess that this sort of thing isn’t my cup of tea as I teach in programmes which are almost exclusively technology enhanced distance education/wholly online, but I can definitely see the potential of enriching learners’ experiences through not only the use of but the creation of rich media as part of a read/write web. As a recent phone convert, I have been impressed by the power and flexibility afforded by smart phones…and with prices coming down, including the price of data, this looks like an idea ‘with legs. Kudos Thom. I’ll be keen to see what else comes out from the Unitec mob in the near future.
Lots of buzz on social networking…and web 2.0 tools. Perhaps I shouldn’t put this in the category of ‘highlights’, but I am going away from the conference with a sense that many educators are naive and/or ignorant about web 2.0 and what it (might) offer to education…lots of hype, number of UTube videos and a great many questions at the conference, but not nearly so many answers coming forward.
Another ‘buzz’ magnet is the notion of digital natives and their relationship with digital immigrants. The short of it is bit of a backlash against some of Prensky’s ideas about digital natives and what they might be able to do or ways in which they might prefer to work. Plenty of evidence at the conference to suggest that the idea that ‘neomillenial’ learners as ‘wired up’ and ready for technology enhanced learning just doesn’t ring true…HOWEVER, there are some intriguing questions being posed: Is being a ‘digital native’ about how you USE technology OR is it about an ability to learn/adapt/modify behaviours quickly to assimilate technology into daily routines? No clear answers from ASCILITE 2008 as far as I can see.
More on Day 3 coming soon.
Mousework 