The Social Summer Part 3 - LearnPod 13
Because two events and trips away in one week simply wasn't enough!
I'd barely recovered from my weekend of little sleep at Startup Weekend Sheffield and I was spending a day over at Doncaster College for their annual LearnPod Unconference. (http://lanyrd.com/2013/learnpod13)
It was my first ever unconference so I found it rather odd at first that there was no schedule. The schedule is made on the day by the attendees (who must pitch sessions they want to run) which, as it turns out, is actually a great way to run an event like this; why attempt to anticipate what the attendees may want weeks or months in advance when you can present to them the sessions they want at that time. Great concept and I'll be on the look out for more events like this.
I successfully pitched a session on VLEs related to my upcoming MSc research, another session on VLEs was also successfully pitched so it's clearly a hot topic.
I attended three sessions throughout the day , the first one centred on iPads in colleges and universities. Almost all the attendees at LearnPod were using iPads yet very few people in the session seemed to know how to use them in education even though their institutions had spent tens of thousands of pounds on buying them leaving it a distinct appearance of a solution looking for a problem.
A lot of the ideas floated seemed to involve apps that my degree students would have been offended at being expected to use in a class as they were using incredibly basic apps that wouldn't look out of place in primary school.
My main concerns with iPads is that as most tutors pushing for them aren't particularly technically savvy enough to understand the implications of them. From the socioeconomic aspect of using iPads and specific exclusive apps in classes (what happens if a student can't afford an iPad? Or if the apps won't run on their existing tablet or laptop?) to their idea that they could replace all their computers with them (how are students supposed to learn and use industry standard software such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite? And how are they supposed to learn how to build the apps their tutors are convinced are the future?) and the entire session just concerned me greatly that many colleges and universities are out there spending money on devices they have no idea what to do with and that promote vendor lock-in to one specific product and one specific avenue to buy software for them…
Tablets (not synonymous with iPad, shockingly) are fantastic devices, and they absolutely can offer a lot to education, but it seems there need to be better resources to educate the tutors first.
Next up was a session titled 'Is the VLE Dead?' which proved without a doubt that the VLE is most certainly not dead, but what is expected of it is evolving. It seems a lot of people have a lot of problems with their current VLEs (Blackboard and Moodle) and are continually having to try and find third party alternatives to suit their needs. I won't go into the specifics here as I'll save that for the MSc. ;)
After a wonderfully catered lunch (the cake selection alone was deserving of an Instagram upload) I ran my session on VLEs that evolved from the previous session's problem finding into a discussion on how we could solve problems. A couple of attendees were actually the VLE developers at their respective colleges which provided an interesting counterpoint to the rest of the delegates, who were all users.
I gained a lot from the event and got to talk with a wide variety of educators from across the region. If you're in education I'd definitely recommend going to LearnPod 14 next year, if not for the unconference then to at least visit the wonderfully modern and spacious campus Doncaster College have.