Had a great day yesterday, two presentations to deliver and both went well.  I took a bit of a punt on my first breakout.  I have had poor experiences with the internet connectivity when I have presented in Rotorua before, admitedly this was at a Learning at Schools conference and not at a Ulearn.  However, it was still a punt, I invited Patrick from TalkWheel to Skype in from San Francisco to tell the audience about his product and to give a short demonstration.  It went really well.  I had wanted a small intimate room, but got the theatre and 110 delegates!  Apart from the lack of a working mic and the lack of round tables, it went well.  Presentation is below:

The annual Ulearn conference has started with pre-conference workshops happening today and the main conference starting tomorrow. I am presenting all day on Thursday and am looking forward to the networking opportunities that this conference always offers to delegates.  If you are not attending you can follow proceedings on twitter by using the #ulearn11 tag.  I will be updating regularly via Twitter, Facebook and here.  It is always fun, stimulating and exhausting in equal measure.  Due to the 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch the conference is being held in Rotorua for the first time.

I have just updated my Twitter badge for the duration of the Ulearn conference in Rotorua to the one above.  If you would like to add the Ulearn badge to your Twitter icon you can download the image from this link here You will need to be able to add it to your own image in an editing programme that allows you to add layers.  http://aviary.com would be a good online solutio, using the Raven Vector editing programme.  Let’s see how many avatars we can change at Ulearn this year.

Thanks to Simon Evans who alerted me to the impending deadline for submission of papers to this year’s Ulearn11 conference, I have now submitted my proposals. This year I have submitted four breakout proposals and now have to wait to see which, if any, of the suggested ideas will be accepted by the organizing committee.

Will know soon enough.

Composed and published via iPad using Wordpress’ iPad app.

The presentation suffered from the morning after the night before and from those who are in Christchurch with other priorities. However, to the 30 of you who turned up so early after the conference dinner the night before, thank you for making the effort. The reaction to the presentation was overwhelmingly positive. It is all about empowering teachers to make the change today as Scott McLeod implored us to make on Wednesday. The presentation is below:

Yesterday I presented in break out one of Ulearn10, the following presentation:

I was asked by the organisers of Ulearn10 to produce a short video for them to promote Ulearn10.

My planned final session was not appropriate for me  and so I walked out and went to the plenary hall to see what was going on in there.  The presenter, who I have no idea who she was was presenting on creating collaborative learning environments for students, something that I have a lot of experience with.  It was a good presentation and at the end of it asked a question and shared information about my own ventures.  All very urn-remarkable, except that as I was leaving I bumped into Albin Wallace.  We had last met in Prague in 2008 when I presented a paper at the IFIP conference with Helen Hardie.  It was such a surprise to bump into him as he is based in London and is at ACEC2010 to present his own paper on day three.

I arrived back in New Zealand after a family trip to Sydney yesterday.  I now find myself in the departure lounge of Auckland International once again en route to Melbourne, via Sydney.  This time I am working.  I am off to the ACEC2010 conference.  The programme has catered for many tastes and I am really looking forward t my breakouts and will be updating this site regularly throughout the conference, WiFi permitting.  Roaming data charges are far too prohibitive for me to contemplate.

I have just got back from another exciting annual marathon that is Ulearn.  I had hoped to present three full sessions this year, but was only picked for two, better luck next year.  The conference was its usual mix of inspiration, affirmation and networking.  This year a good deal of my energy went into the networking aspect.  I have made some promising new contacts that are opening up exciting new leads, all of whom need to be followed up in the coming days and weeks.  Below is the presentation slide show that I gave in breakout 1