Our social tomorrow...

Will McInnes has begun, finally, talking about education (and not the techie issues of where you stuff your data), in the difficult post-lunch session at FOTE09. He's talkig about widgets and communication/education where fragmentation is everywhere... with 'insane challenges' - such as mobile phones being within arms reach most of the time. So how does education fit into this world?

Will's talking about his colleague, Tom Nixon, using the Nike gadget in his trainers to track his jogging, and he's now talking about 'Smashing the Brand' - i.e. can you break your 'brand' (such as a Coca Cola bottle) and still identify it?

Good, and welcome laugh, unexpectedly from Will talking about dead cats... we obviously all love dead cats.

But we seem to be finally reaching a discussion on the issues that matter. You can drag a horse to water but you can't teach it to swim... and you can build all the collaboration tools and cloud computing you like, but they won't teach anyone anything without addressing fundamental issues of engaging people in education. The technology - the tools - should help. But they do not provide the answers.

The Toyota Prius have turned good environmental driving (maximising miles per gallon) into a game... by showing in real time people's mpg - thereby indifferently encouraging drivers to improve their mpg constantly and to adjust their behaviour to achieve that.

OODA Loops by John Boyd explain how fighter jets fight, the one who reacts quickest, survives... as an analogy for Social Media...if it works for some to understand that...great. A good indication that the principles are nothing new...

In summary, Will posed all the questions that, of course, no one has an answer to but that we should have been debating all morning. How do we deal with this overload of information from all sources at all times.

James Clay from Gloucestershire College did a nice little survey of conference attendees this morning to try and 'capture the crowd' and has just presented the results. Nice tag clouds, but not much information to be honest.

His session is finally talking about how learning takes place everywhere... mobile learning doesn't have to be on a mobile phone. If you're reading on the train, that's mobile learning. If you're using your laptop in a coffee shop, that's mobile learning. And certainly, from my point of view, if we have more transportable laptops (that don't start to burn one's groin, such as this laptop is beginning to do) then we will extend the realm of mobile learning far far more.

We use podcasts, for example, but how many of us give audio feedback through recordings?

And he's just dropped a video camera in a jug of water... nice demonstration of how it's easy to find cheap, rugged, reliable technology that can be used in a classroom.

GPS will change the way we learn? Not sure how...but absolutely...the e-book readers (such as Sony etc.) will help enormously. We need to change lecture theatres so that they have charging sockets and free wifi everywhere.

We need to change IT policies (and others) so that all systems are easier able to connect within institutions and also from outside.

But for now, a break.... and I must leave the conference just when it's getting interesting...