Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

A delegate at an upcoming e-learning conference (DevLearn) has just incorporated a cool m-learning idea into his remixed version of the conference guide: http://mlearning.edublogs.org/2007/10/31/qr-coded-e-learning-conference-guide/

Could Handheld Learning 2008 consider doing something like this in its conference materials?

Hi Leonard

 

Thanks for the input!

Slides from most of the presentations are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/HandheldLearning/slideshows

What you have at http://handheldlearning.blip.tv is the raw feed that was used to broadcast the main plenary sessions to the rest of the venue and we have chosen to share this with rest of the community freely.

It would have been nice if the camera person had been familiar enough with the material to know when to pull back and when to focus on the speaker but regretably this is a resource issue as we would then need to add a producer and to perform fly-edits to reduce later post-production costs (part of my career history was working in TV and film).

There are also a few reasons why we didn't do the big screen "pull-back" at every juncture:

1) copyright - not all presenters are able to share their slides

2) privacy of subject - some slides have pictures of children that have not been released for dissemination on the net or broadcast

3) cost - we would have required 2 camera people and then edit nearly 16 (x2) hours of material. This would be prohibitive and mean that we would need to either charge for access to these video's or find a sponsor and put adverts in the clips

Looking back it would have been nice to have also had video recordings from the many breakout sessions that were running but that is a sizeable undertaking not just in camera personnel and recording equipment but also in post-production and uploading. We currently shoot to broadcast standard DVCAM.

We don't run the event as a big profit making exercise, with the help of sponsors and exhibitors we try to keep cost of delegate entry low and don't charge our speakers to speak/attend consequently there's a balance to work out.

As always, there's room for improvement and we will continue to do so. 

Call me old fashioned but I think that as much as we desseminate materials over the net it doesn't beat coming to the conference itself (so I'm really pleased you'll be coming next year!) as whilst the speaking sessions are great it's the networking and discussion with fellow "inmates" that makes it truly special.

Handheld Learning TV is also planned for development over the coming months as we start putting other materials on there beyond our conference.

Keep watching!