WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at [1] dougbelshaw.com... [2]

Despite it being my half-term, I’ve just got back from a two-day conference. It was pretty much the only way I could go: the combined cost of the conference, hotel and rail fare meant that my school wouldn’t have also been able to shell out for supply cover. I had a great time - here’s what I got up to…

Day 1

Session 1: Dan Sutch - Innovations

Dan, one of the learning researchers at [3] Futurelab, spoke on innovation. He discussed how both the top-down and end-user approaches don’t really cut it and how they need to be used together. Although various definitions of ‘innovation’ were flying around, he thought of it as:

The successful exploitation of ideas generated at the intersection of invention and insight, which leads to the creation of social or economic value.

He talked of the contexts for innovation and that instead of being put into groups we need to be forming interest and skills-based networks. I was pleased that he mentioned [4] NextGenTeachers as an example of this.

My notes on this session can be found via Google Docs [5] here.

Session 2: Donald Clark - NEW theories and OLD practice

I was warned before Donald’s presentation that he was a ‘love him or hate him’-type figure. I’ve just discovered his blog [6] here. He has a very engaging presentational style which unfortunately I can’t reproduce here. He did provoke some discussion, especially around the kind of inevitability of using ideas and tools without the pedagogy to back them up. He attacked VAK learning styles, the graph which shows that you remember 10% of what you’re told, etc. and talked of classrooms being like ‘boxes’ in which we put students.

My notes on this session can be found via Google Docs [7] here.

Workshop Session: John Morgan - Enquiring Minds: enquiring schools?

John discussed the [8] Enquiring Minds project he has been involved with in his role with Futurelab. Details of the (ongoing) project can be found here. I found this session to be very poorly presented and executed, unfortunately and I lost concentration. It reminded me of being back in the classroom as a pupil 10 years ago during a lesson by a bad teacher, unfortunately. I didn’t make any notes that couldn’t be found on the Futurelab website.

Session 3: Trevor Baylis - Why Invent?

Trevor used this session to promote his ideas about Intellectual Property and tell the story of his life as an inventor. My [9] notes can be found here - bereft, of course, of his wit and personality.

Evening

Instead of going to the evening dinner and entertainment I met up with Dan Lyndon, commenter on this blog, Advanced Skills Teacher and webmaster of both [10] comptonhistory.com and [11] blackhistory4schools.com. He’s a great guy, an inspirational teacher and it was good to catch up with him.

Day 2

Session 1: Lizbeth Goodman - Inventive play: technology-enhanced learning and gaming tools that enable community engagement and communication

Lizbeth is from [12] SMARTlab, the Digital Media Institute at the University of East London. SMARTlab work with physically and cognitively disabled people, as well as abused women, etc. - those who can be on the margins of the society. They aim to allow them to express themselves through dance, use of technology, and such.

She gave an engaging (although occasionally scatty) multimedia-rich presentation to which my [13] notes can’t really do justice…

Session 2: Dan Sutch - Summary and overview of workshop sessions

Dan gave some feedback from text messages and comments made during the conference so far and asked questions, encouraging us to reflect in time for Tim Rudd’s session in the afternoon. Brief notes [14] here.

Workshop Session: Mark Pearce - Alternative futures - a practical guide to using visual scenario planning techniques in education

By far the best session of the conference, a hands-on approach to planning for the future given its unknowability and uncertainty. We were given the task of pitching on behalf of a specific company to control education in London in 2015: my group were [15] Innocent, another was [16] Virgin, and the final one [17] Google. We had to take into account our company’s interests and priorities when coming up with what education would look like and when presenting. To assist us, [18] theWorkshop have developed something called the [19] Scenario Visualization Tool which can help flesh-out and demonstrate what you are thinking.

At the end of the session we reflected whether the insights we had gained had helped our practice and worldview. Guess what? It had. What a great session! My notes are [20] here, not that they’ll be much good due to the hands-on nature of the session.

Session 3: Tim Rudd - All change for innovation

Tim’s was a manifesto session - an open-floor question and answer and discussion time to try and think about how to deal with barriers and resistances to innovation. The questions which drove this were:

• What are we trying to achieve/bring about through innovation
• Are we doing innovation for innovation’s sake?
• How to we convince others - institutional logic - existing cultures - folk pedagogies?
• Do we need a wider debate on the purpose of education?

No notes from this session as I was involved in the debate!

Thoughts and take-aways

I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to be surrounded by people from different areas of education who are nevertheless working towards the same thing. I met people from industry, from Becta, from universities, from charities, from schools, from all over the world. I made real-world connections with people I’d never have had the chance to make otherwise (I must make sure I follow those up). I also met some people like [21] Leon Cych that I’ve only ever met virtually.

One last point: I’ve never seen so many people using Macbooks in one place. And if they weren’t using Macs they were using super-slim Sony VAIOs. And if they weren’t using either of those, they were using tablets. It just goes to show that those in the know appreciate both form and function. I’m not being flippant here - I really do think the interface with educational technology is very important and something for institutions to consider.

(Futurelab has a blog called [22] FLUX for their latest thoughts/ideas)

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