Sharing 2 Learn & Learning 2 Share

What can I say? Where should I start?

Well, I think most will agree that it was quite an interesting experience at different levels. Although, I have been taking part in Onine conferences for years, this one was definitely an experience different from the others I have been accustomed to. Still it was as enriching as the others, as if not more, for the diversity of people I was able to interact with.

Being able to co-lead the organization of event by keeping close contact with all parties involved: participants, speakers and rest of the team was quite an eye opener.  I am not going to say it was not hard work, but it was also a lot of fun. That’s the added value of working  in a coherent team. I must say Pontydysgu Rocks!

For those who missed the European Online Event of the year, this was a conference opened to everyone, not only in terms of attendance, but also in terms of participation. They only ‘condition’ we had was that people connected to us. After that, it was up to us all to make that connection meaningful. And that I think I can say was achieved with flying colours. The most impressive aspect was that the event not only brought together people from different countries and with different background, it also joined people with different takes on the role of learning technologies in pedagogy, and also with various levels of user-expereince in terms of ICT. We are all not techies, nor should we. But we should all be open to new perspectives. And that was what our audience wanted from this event: to be shown a landscape they are used to (The reality of trainers and training) from a different perspective – through the eyes of other. Isn’t that the greatest driver of learning: to want to?  Willing is what it takes to get us started.

And so we started. A two-day discussion around topics related with the concern of training the trainers. Contemporaneous issues were raised and well represented in practical examples. The educational concerns and wishes are common across countries: how do we engage people to learn differently? How do we innovate and comply with the assessment and outcome “rules”? How can we value, and recognise, work-based learning? How little impact informal learning still has in official recognition of skills and competences. How to change that? What should be the role of the trainer in the 21^st century?…. Many thoughts were added to these questions and many others that arose from the presentations.

The interactions increased as the technology became less of a stranger. The written chat was quite powerful in that sense, and some people were even brave enough to communicate with the speakers and the rest of the audience with audio. By the last two presentations, we had completely forgotten the formalities of the traditional question- answer format and were bouncing questions and comments at each other with enthusiasm. It became a big conversation. We went global right there and then, and all of a sudden all barrier (space, time, technology glitches, etc) seemed to cease. We were just taking part in a great conversation.

Above all we were just doing what the presenters had inspired us to do: to share, communicate and work together.

I think we can say we all learned something and we all had a bit of fun. It was a meaningful opportunity to power the connection and encourage people to come together, to consider a future which some of us are already part of.

As I had planned to quote in my last two slides, and which I missed to present because the conversation took us in different routes (and I am glad it was so):

We are standing at the threshold of a new era in learning approaches and itineraries where the greatest novelty of ICT resides in the full use of the C: C for community, communication and care. (Prof. Roberto Carneiro during Online Educa 2007)

And that’s the situation some have already embraced. It is also the future others are looking forward to making into their own present reality. Change takes time (but the truth is that times are a-changing…). And I have faith we will get there. We just need to want to and to be able to show we care through meaningful, personalized communication inside the community.

So a final thought:

The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet. (by William Gibson)*

* On the day of the conference professor Alan Brown sent me a paper he wrote. Coincidently he had finished his thoughts with this same sentence – the sentence I had planned to finish my slides with too. Maybe the future is getting more even than we think.