Reflection on #LWF12 (updated)

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This week was the Learning Without Frontiers conference at Olympia (Jan 25/26). Below are a few pictures from the day (if it’s not mine, then credit is given below the picture where credit is due).

I also used Instagram for my photos, just to add something ‘different’ to them. I have learned, however, that it is better to use the standard phone camera for the original picture and then process that inside Instagram then to take the picture with the app, the result is slightly better quality).

Here are some picture galleries for you, from LWF delegates who’ve uploaded and shared them:

Lego Ducks

Jacob Kragh, LEGO Education President – each of us was given a pack of 6 bricks and asked to make a duck, here are mine!

Stephen Heppell (@heloukee)

Stephen Heppell engages the audience in his usual amazing and inimitable fashion showing us students and learning spaces designed for the modern world … and a great picture of his boat too! He is championing ‘shoes off learning’ and ‘bring a browser’ (like bring your own device, but simpler) and captured the mood of the audience.

Graham Brown-Martin

Graham Brown-Martin introducing the final sessions of the day.

Martin Rees – ‘From Here to Eternity’

Stehpen Heppell / CloudLearn.net

Stephen Heppell in one of the amazing ‘pods’ (see below) showing the results of the CloudLearn.net project. I have read (and re-read) the report and hope to blog on it at some point, but I’ve a few ideas to get clear in my own head first.

Andrew Eland / Google (@heloukee)

TED Talks (@heloukee)

As someone who enjoys the TED talks it was great to hear from one of the main people responsible for them, and about it’s history.

Dame Ellen MacArthur

Dame Ellen MacArthur demonstrated a very focussed and amazingly simple view on life: go out and embrace it (my words), from her early sailing adventures to the completion of her world famous sailing exploits, to the formation of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

BBC Model B, in the BBC ‘pod’

Nostalgia in the BBC pod – I didn’t have one of these but I started out on a ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, while my friends had the BBC Model B (as did my primary school, and only the one, on a trolley … !). No, I couldn’t remember any code other than “10 Print ‘Hello!'”

Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky on The Purpose of Education (@heloukee)

The opening keynote from Noam Chomsky (disappointingly pre-recorded) was interesting but a rather dry start to the conference. Noam said in his opening keynote “Be obedient, don’t ask too many questions, don’t cause a crisis of democracy”, as well as the “purpose of education is to teach people how to learn on their own” and (at last, just what I’ve found all my life) “a person can do magnificently on a test, and understand very little”.

Pod-tasticPod-tastic! (@heloukee)