My Brain Hurts

The conference started in earnest today,  a non official source stated that the attendance is up to 20 000 this year. The exhibitors hall is incredibly large. The image here only shows part of it as it covers an area equivalent to 5 football fields.

The first session attended today was entitled on “Blogging Communities in the Classroom”. Didn’t realise he was a University type, by the time they collect, collate and present their data it’s often out of date. He started talking about the data he had collected and I started looking for the door but the room was so crowded escape was impossible. He then moved onto his own classroom experiences and the session became a lot more interesting. He favoured free writing which I’ve always thought provided little quality unless some structure is present. He went on to mention that the most important point is that students feel part of a blogging community within which they respond and critique each other.

He showed numerous example of very impressive student work as he compared traditional school writing with expressive writing. He was content to develop the creativity and inspire the writing process, then bring up spelling and grammar.

Now talk about coincidences: there are 20 000 people her and who should be coming through the door I just opened than Martin Levins. A good chat and some note comparing and I missed the next session.

The next session was Ian Jukes whom I had heard on podcast and was very keen to listen to him in person. It was extremely disappointing when deja vu hit and he delivered the exact same presentation as last year that I had already heard on podcast. He is very animated and passionate about his topic and was easy to listen too, even if it was a repeat. His main point was that students today are mentally different learns as a product of their over stimulated digital upbringing. He made many interesting points but his reference sources were quite outdated. He stressed the point that because of digital bombardment students are digital learners and switch off in text based lessons.

I’m sure that there is a lot of truth on what he says but I’d like to see some more current data to substantiate it. His advocacy for change was certainly well received. One surprising point was when he mentioned do you use a Windows PC or a really educational computer as e pointed towards his Mac. The surprising part was the crowd reaction, a very large and loud chorus of support. I guess we Mac user get used to being in the minority but no so here.

After the session we were hanging around outside perusing the next session when Ian came over and started chatting to us. He is actually very personable and seems a nice guy, even if he does think the Aussie accent is a “speech impediment”

The next two sessions I tried to get into were full when I arrived so I spent the afternoon wading throughthe jungle that is the exhibition floor of which I managed to cover about a third.