So I’ve given my FOTE10 talk a rather argumentative title, but it’s certainly not to imply that I don’t believe in the use of mobile devices in universities which I do with passion – so let me explain…

The explosion in the use of smart-ish devices, over the past couple of years has produced a rash of conferences, workshops and resulting papers all delving into the dark art of enabling our institutions to be part of the in-crowd. And that’s all great.

But when are we going to get past the “thing”, the technology, and onto embedding what we use mobile devices for in education into the mainstream? My argument is that until we quit talking shop and get on with it we’ll move slowly in a fast moving world. This is also probably argumentative and unfair so please argue against me and tell me about all the wonderful things you’re doing at your place!

One thing many people are doing is providing information via smart-things. There are native apps, mobile Web sites, mobile stylesheets and all or none of these. It’s the technological wild west – nobody is quite sure whether there is a best way to do it so the techies debate endlessly. Providing information via mobile devices is a good thing of course and at UCL we’ve been providing the campusM service for students since the spring. I’m just urging people not to get too hung up on particular technologies. While there’s no money around we have to choose what we get into carefully and try to gaze into the smart-ball and avoid here today gone tomorrow technologies.

Predicting the future is a mug’s game, and the tendency of those of us in the technology game is to over-predict (”by 2020 everyone will have a tablet device” type of thing – reality usually replaces “everyone” with “some people”). Although device convergence was predicted at the phone / music player / PDA level, who would have predicted in 2006 that a phone from Cupertino would revolutionise the way phones are designed and used? I was fortunate enough to attend a pre-iOS Handheld Learning conference – it was a completely different world even four years ago. Then the devices were less endowed. So what were talks about and what were the devices being used for? Well…er…education in classrooms.

Whether by chance or intelligence some predictions are scary. In the summer of 1989 at the end of a conference in Bangor a group of participants was asked to write up some thoughts and scenarios for the future twenty years hence and produced a Education 2010. A lot of what they thought was pretty much on the mark including top prize for a child’s classroom visit scenario by Jonathon Briggs (from what was Kingston Poly in those days):

…the Professor…spends lots of time telling them things. I bet I would not remember all of it. The boys spent ages typing things he said into their pads.

Which is what I’m typing this post into right now! Last year’s model? Maybe, maybe not – but worth the debate…

Location:Foley St, London

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This presentation uses work from Microsoft’s research and development teams to look at the technology, lifestyle and workplace of 2020, and then digs behind that vision to join the dots. We’ll look at some of the research work going on around the world to deliver the technology to support this world – some of which will appear shortly, and other parts of which are still in the research laboratories.


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Jeremy Speller

Jeremy Speller has been involved with the UCL Web presence since 1995. Having headed UCL Web Services for a number of years, Jeremy is now Director of Learning & Media Services which, along with the Web, covers AV, design, learning technology, multimedia and photography.

Prior to becoming a full-time Web “operative”, Jeremy’s background was in planning and statistics at UCL and previously at the University of Birmingham. Way back when he ran the Overseas Research Students Awards Scheme at what was then CVCP.

Some of Jeremy’s previous presentations are at http://www.slideshare.net/jeremyspeller/ and we included one her which he gave at Educamp London.

Follow Jeremy on Twitter: @jeremyspeller

Joe Dale

Joe Dale is an independent consultant working with CILT, Links into Languages, The British Council and The BBC. He is host of the TES MFL forum, former SSAT Languages Lead Practitioner, regular conference speaker and recognised expert on technology and language learning.

He has appeared in the Education Guardian, helped to update the ICT elements of the QCA SoW for KS2 Primary French, written for the TES ICT blog and CILT 14-19 website and designed games for Heinemann’s new course ‘Expo’. Joe also starred on a Teachers TV programme recently and spoke about the Rose Review proposals on BBC Radio 4. His blog has been nominated for three Edublog Awards in the last three years.

Follow Joe on Twitter: @joedale or check out his blog

New social software services come, many go, some stay. Do those that stay, those that are sticky, fill a pre-existing gap in our social experience?

Most of us know that, like the British, the Chinese talk of losing face. Maybe the language geeks amongst us know that “to lose face” was only recently introduced into English from Chinese. Unlike most other loans from Chinese where English borrowed the actual word, so including a sense of exoticness and remoteness (chopsticks, coolie, lychee), losing face we imported the concept because it expressed succinctly a meaning that, before the British heard it from the Chinese, we had no concise expression for in English.

So much of a need did it fill that English speakers used “losing face” as a building block for concepts – like “face-saving” – that have no exact analogue in Chinese. Although we can’t agree on how to spell it, email (e-mail, eMail?) similarly filled a pre-existing hole in our working lives. How our ancestors BCE (before the computer era) did work, flamed one another, circulated dirty jokes, virus scares, and “corporate communications” is lost in the mists of diminishing productivity.

We early adopters, abandoning last year’s iPhone for an Android even as we swipe through the day’s feeds on our iPads, bemoan the benighted mundanes – those users who “don’t get it”: the hapless, clueless academics who didn’t take to the VLE as quickly as they annoyed the PVC with caustic all staff emails, the benighted commentators who sneer at the vapidity of the Twitterati, the people who buy iPads because they want an easy to use computer rather than score earlier adopter points. These poor mundanes might not be able to use Outlook if their lives depended on it, but they sure “get” email.

Me, I got Twitter right after it came out of private beta, and I stuck with it, even though I had almost no one to talk to, because, as well as having precious little evidence of a business model (and let’s face it, watching VCs burn cash never gets old), it had the look of a general purpose communication tool – something that asked little (or, rather, 140 characters) of me, and yet offered so much pregnant possibility. Possibility was all it offered until the day Twitter became the 21st century’s upgrade to passing notes in the back of the class.

I attended a conference one day, and, wow! I was on the “backchannel”. Your mum and dad’s bad manners all of a sudden got a hip name and became the reason you lugged your laptop to conference in the first place. You’ve forgotten those oldskool pre-Twitter conferences now, haven’t you, where you actually listened to the presenter? Twitter, pointless, vapid, I’m not interested in what you had for breakfast Twitter filled a hole we never knew we had. And like email, one day the mundanes will get that too.

Last year, my Twitter stream filled up with people announcing themselves mayors of local Prêt-à-Mangers. Should I un-follow these deranged megalomaniacs with expensive tastes in sarnies? There was an odd, repetitive quality to their tweets that’s the signature of a machine. So I discovered Foursquare: the most transparent attempt I’d seen so far to induce you to give up your location so advertisers could monetise you. Meh. I didn’t get it – perhaps because the “mayor” business didn’t sit so well with my instinctive anarchist tendencies. Maybe I’d want people – friends – to know where I am, but I don’t need points and titles (or free cups of coffee with a catch).

Do you care about the location-based web? Do you get it? This is the beginning of realtime metadata about you. Technology has put into the hands of the private sector information about you that was formerly only available to the police – with a warrant. Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt talk, insouciantly, about the end of privacy. Using their services is a bargain from which we can extract many benefits. For their respective corporations, though, we are all money-spinners now. When we ask “what can this technology do for me?”, we should also ask, “and what do I have to lose?”

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Philip Butler

Philip Butler works as the Senior e-Learning Adviser at ULCC and has been in post-16 education sector as a teacher and manager for nearly 30 years.   He developed a strong interest in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and in 2000 was appointed as one of the founding members of the JISC Regional Support Centre for London.  In his subsequent capacity as a regional advisor he helped establish a strong reputation for high quality strategic advice and guidance on e-Learning and organisational transformation.

He has supported innovative development in the education sector whilst working as a consultant on several national projects for JISC, NIACE, BECTA, NLN, DTi, and others.  He has presented papers on effective use of e-Learning, Virtual Learning Environments, the Personalisation of Learning and many other subjects to conferences in the UK, USA and India.  Philip presented at our first FOTE conference back in 2008 and you can see his talk below.

Follow Philip on Twitter: @moodleprof

There is something very beautiful and sensual about a new book. Anyone who has ever bought a new book will know what I mean. Whether you open the parcel from Amazon, or remove the book from a bag of a high street bookseller, there is something about the smell of a new book, the feel of the roughness of the paper between your fingers as you slowly flick from page to page. As you open it for the first time you can feel the stiffness of the spine of a book that has never been read. The smoothness of the dust jacket, the rough texture of the cover, combine to produce a tingling feeling of excitement as you realise you are about to open the book and start to read.

Books are extremely portable, they can be easily carried to any location and used. They fit into a multitude of bags and can be used whether you are a passenger in a car, on a train or flying in a plane. You can use books at home, in a coffee shop, on the beach, in a library, a classroom or in the park.

Books have an unique user interface that has never been adequately duplicated on any electronic device. You can flick from section to section, page to page. You can highlight and annotate. Put sticky notes on specific pages. Use bookmarks to identify sections.

Books are wonderful things, but still, the iPad is the future of reading…

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In my FOTE10 presentation, ‘We have the technology, we have the capability… all we need is love’,  I’ll be ignoring the shiny new technologies discussed earlier in the day to focus on the importance of educators in the FOTE. That’s not to say that technology isn’t key, I whole-heartedly agree with Niall Sclater:

Technology often leads the way and can make new forms of learning possible. The key is to apply the lessons we already know about learning to new technologies as they arise, and to evaluate continuously whether the new applications are having a positive impact on learning.

For now I’d like to broaden the focus beyond my talk and consider all the factors that are necessary for the successful implementation of technology, while conveniently side-stepping annoying questions such as ‘what counts as successful’!

Leadership & Strategy – There needs to be enthusiasm, support & funding. It requires local leadership too, e-learning champions for example, and departmental approaches, not just tick-the-HEFCE-box T&L strategies.

Teachers - Their existing knowledge, their beliefs about teaching, their interest in technology all matter, as does time. I don’t think most teaching staff are really time-poor but like everyone they have competing demands on that time and enhancing their teaching with technology is not always a high priority. Teachers are critical in the development of appropriate pedagogies that capitalise on available technologies.

Support - Staff & students need support with both the technologies and the pedagogies. A collaborative editing exercise using a wiki is as foreign to many students as it is to many teachers. I don’t think this can be under-estimated and not just because it keeps me in a job.

Students - Let’s not forget them! Students’ willingness and ability to engage with technologies incorporated into formal teaching is also important. Students can drive implementation. Students can also shop elsewhere if their needs are not being met!

"Don't Stop Innovation"

Technology – Last in this list, but certainly not least. Whether it’s a case of selecting the right tool for the job or devising new educational activities for new innovative tools, appropriate technology is at the heart of successful technology-enhanced learning.

One more thing to add, that’s less tangible but crucial. Success will depend on the process of implementation and in turn on the local context. How does all of the above link together, which drives the other and so on.

That’s my take, but I’d be interested to hear yours.  Is this list complete? How are you fairing at your own institutions? Are you addressing all these areas?

Matt Lingard

Matt Lingard is a Learning Technologist in the Centre for Learning Technology at the London School of Economics with over 15 years experience of teaching and training, including 8 years in the field of educational technology.

He regularly delivers internal and external workshops to staff across the education sector on a variety of e-learning topics and is particularly interested in the use of social media & social networking in teaching, learning and research. Matt is one of the M25 Learning Technology Group facilitators & also a web participation co-ordinator for the ALT-C 2010 & ALT-C 2011 conferences.

Matt occasionally gets round to blogging as the Reluctant Technologist & on the CLT blog.

In his presentation Matt will focus on the importance of educators’ attitudes to and their engagement with technology to enhance their teaching.  He will emphasise that technological innovation is all well-and-good but it’s only a small part of the story.

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattlingard

Miles Berry

Miles Berry is a senior lecturer in ICT Education at Roehampton University. He teaches initial teacher training courses as part of the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, as well as tutoring students on school placements and masters students. His principal research focus is the role of online communities in professional formation and development. Other professional interests include knowledge management in education, use of open source software and principles in schools, provision for the gifted and talented and independent learning.

He is a chartered fellow of the British Computer Society and a fellow of the RSA, Mirandanet and Naace, serving on the latter’s board of management as a vice chair. He is a member of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and an Apple Distinguished Educator.

He helps run the Open Source Schools community and is on the executive committee of Computing at School.

Until recently, he was Head of Alton Convent Prep. In his former post as deputy head of St Ives School, Haslemere, he pioneered the use of Moodle and Elgg in primary education. His work on implementing Moodle was documented as the dissertation for Leicester University’s MBA in Educational Management, and won the 2006 Becta ICT in Practice Award for primary teaching. Other interests include classical music, creative cookery and photography.

Follow Miles on Twitter: @mberry