PELeCON 2012

During the PELeCON conference, Simon Finch spoke to Russell Prue from BETT Radio on his feelings about PELeCON, and the themes for his keynote ‘Something better change’.

Simon spoke highly of the connected nature of the conference, and the way it has linked practice from schools to that happening in higher and further education. He also shared his thoughts on the current state of education policy and the teaching profession.

Thanks to Russell for letting us share this clip with you, more from BETT Radio here.

PELeCON 2012 was a truly connected conference, with social media a buzz with #pelc12 tweets. The current count is over 13,500 tweets before, during and after the conference, and conversations keep on going...

A ‘Wordle‘ of all the tweets during the conference shows the strong focus of discussions:

(as far as possible twitter jargon such as hash tags and usernames have been removed)

Some stats, courtesy of ‘The Archivist‘ (click for larger view):

Check out the ever growing archive here, be patient, it’s pretty big…

Throughout PELeCON 2012 delegates were sharing and tagging photos, which have amassed into a large collection both on Flickr and Instagram. Our own photographer Jason Truscott has been uploading and curating photos from every day of the conference, and we invite attendees to continue to share their photos with the PELeCON Flickr group, and by tagging them #pelc12 on Instagram.

Check out our photos page which will continue to bring these photographs together.

As the conference drew to a close themes were drawn together in a panel discussion with three of our speakers. Questions were raised, and points developed from the specifics of some of the presentations to the wider themes of what the panel would give to a child to help them prepare for the future…

Oliver’s blog of the discussion is here.

In our final keynote for PELeCON 2012, Jane Hart made the link from education to the workplace, and painted a picture of a social workplace where livelong learning and ‘just in time’ rather than ‘just in case’ professional learning should be the model. An apt end to the conference looking forward for out learners towards the integration of their lifelong professional and personal learning.

More detail on Oliver’s liveblog here.

Spotlight speaker Leigh Graves Wolf from Michigan State University this morning had delegates making and doing in her talk on Quickfire challenges. Explaining the importance of tight constraints on creativity, she delivered a fascinating talk with practical examples and advice on developing this approach with students.

More on Oliver Quinlan’s live blog of the event.

PELeCON welcomes you to confess…

Prompted by conference chair Steve Wheeler this morning, people have been entering the PELeCON confession booth and confessing to their failures. So often we concentrate on celebrating only achievement in education, but these people have been celebrating their failures by concentrating on what they learnt from them.

Throughout the conference, visit the confession booth next to the wifi helpdesk to add your confessions and learning to the mix… if you would rather remain anonymous then the facilities to blank out the camera are there.

We also welcome contributions from those watching the conference from afar. Record your confession and send it to use either as a comment on this blog, or tweet to our official @PELeCon. 

In this afternoon’s keynote, Professor Keri Facer made the case for reimagining our schools and universities as sandpits for imagining and building possible futures as alternatives to the many possibilities our society has for collapse. She argued that in terms of elearning we should be approaching this by developing ‘Gothic Digital Architectures’ which allow for creativity and play.

More detail on Oliver Quinlan’s live blog of the talk…

Learning as a game, deliberate deception of students to immerse them in learning; Helen Keegan’s spotlight speech was a provocative story of learning. Where many institutions are moving more and more towards standards and assessment, Keegan has been getting incredibly creative with the delivery of her courses. Her methods raise questions as to what formal education should be, and what the role of educators could become…

More on Oliver Quinlan’s live blog here.

Last night after the main conference proceedings committed Plymouth University Education students organised a TeachMeet event at the student’s union. Ideas were shared from teachers, lecturers and many students, with many of the students providing presentations focused on their research projects.