The future of technology in Education is obviously a very hot topic at the moment.
I took a few key things away from the conference:
- The future is on a huge range of devices
- The future is very “open” when it comes to sharing resources and content (This I’m 100% behind)
- FOTE is more for FE however it was worth while my attending (being that I work mainly with primary schools)
To the planners
The conference was very well organized and the food/tea breaks were perfectly placed. My thanks goes out to the hosts and the presenters.
Presenting the twits
Some of the presenters were great, some, not so.. I think the real time feedback during Twitter was fantastic and this lead to some very open, honest and sometimes heated debates.
Being offended
Apologies go to people who found some of the content on twitter offensive but this includes a very important reminder that you can chose to ignore comments you might like that. A few times during the conference people “devalued the degree”. Be it presenter or a tweeter this was not well received and I think that FE people may need to look at why some people (usually those working in IT) come to this conclusion.
Virtual insanity
I wish the talk on “Virtual Worlds” had some more real life opportunities for people in none FE to explore, I didn’t get what I wanted from the talk other than a sense of “it’s cheap but not as good as the real thing”. Most of the time in Primary the real thing isn’t “that” expensive
Will I be attending FOTE09 next year?
If the topics fall in my line of interest then yes but I wouldn’t expect anyone else in Primary Education to attend. I could also look at possible sponsoring with School Email which would be of interest to the secondary/college leaders.
Thanks to everyone who was involved, attended & tweeted. I was awake for 36 hours before sleeping… ouch