On Monday, the whole team headed to Birmingham for day 1 of the free conference #DigiFest15. The festival was designed to celebrate innovative use of learning technology, and instead of being a threat to existing classroom based practice, how it could be used to combat barriers, engage students and enhance the learning experience.
We all had a great day with many highlights and we saw, and got to play with, some interesting technologies. Reviews of some of the things we saw are below:
Simon Nelson keynote – Future Learn. This was a good reminder of how valuable online courses with distance learning could be in widening access to reliable information from all over the planet. Of particular interest was the importance of embedding social channels into the online provision so that learners can communicate and collaborate with each other.
Are learning technologies fit for purpose? – Debate with David White, Donna Lancloss chaired by Lawrie Phipps. It was interesting to sit in on this debate on whether learning technologies are fit for purpose. The debate seemed to focus on the virtual learning environment (VLE) vs open-web technologies and did get quite heated! It also seemed to revive the old ‘The VLE is dead’ argument and felt quite strange because as a team we don’t see them as mutually exclusive technologies as they can work really effectively together.
eSafety session – Julie Taylor and Esther Barrett , JISC Subject Specialists. It was good to go to the eSafety session to see where the next steps were going with this and a few areas for the team to explore in more depth such as highlighting the positive elements of a student’s online image. The timing was paired well with a project we are starting at the college and which builds on our existing eSafety resource, which we are proud to say was highlighted in this session and which is available to colleges on request. Over 80 colleges and providers have now requested the course http://blogs.loucoll.ac.uk/learningtechnology/2014/04/11/esafety-moodle-course/
It was also really interesting to hear that the Welsh government is now driving the teaching of Digital Literacy as a standalone topic within the teacher training programme – this will also include eSafety awareness.
Digi Map – Anne Robertson, Edina. This was a demonstration of the digi map software. The main features of digi maps are:
- Browser Based
- Maps for Great Britain
- More Detailed than google maps
- Can be annotated
There was a lot of talk of using Digi Maps with typical subjects such as geography and functional skills. For instance using Digi Maps to create mathematical quizzes, such as measuring distances or areas of specific items like football pitches. The detail in Digi Maps makes this a little easier than in any other openly available online map. The system is currently open source.
The Main hall – Exhibits, demonstrations and workshops. Having the opportunity to network was really valuable and getting to talk to and share experiences with, other people who are experiencing the same challenges, software and technological developments as us in this really exciting time for learning technology was definitely a highlight of the day.
Closing keynote – Bob Harrison, FELTAG coalition
As usual, Bob gave a stirring presentation which laid bare all the reasons for using Learning Technology and the consequences of not using it. An excellent end to a fabulous day. :o) 
Presentations, podcasts and videos from the day can be found here: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digifest