and the rest of Wednesday

Several sessions on virtual worlds and social networking. The Center for Digital Media in Vancouver has a masters degree with a physical world - a real building on their campus, and a virtual world - a digital campus in Second Life. They are developing something they call participatory pedagogy, where students contribute to the learning process. The virtual world was interesting - it's completely modifiable, and reality does not apply! Not sure how it contributes to the learning process though. I have an account in Second Life but it's sessions like this that make me realise how little I know about it and how little I can do. I did learn about griefers, and what do do if a student shoots you while you're teaching him. You set him on fire of course.

Sessions on the use of social networking such as facebook, blogs and wikis were disappointing. Nothing new or earth shattering, apart from a realisation that I think we're way ahead in the UK with using these tools.

A surreal experience in the last session where a group of us had gravitated to the edge of the room to plug our laptops into the power sockets. A Facebook friend and colleague Tony was blogging the conference and managed to post a photo of me during the session. He was blogging live, I was commenting on his blog, while we were listening to a session on the use of blogs.

Lots of laptops here. At least half, probably more, are Macs.
This conference is huge - at least 1000 were turned away because bookings closed before the conference started. The British contingent are using Facebook to keep in touch, arrange where to meet etc.
It's interesting to watch the tactics the exhibitors use to get you to go to their stands. Cisco has a magician! Others have nice chocolate.

It's been a long day - sessions start at 8am and finish at 6pm. Collapsed in the bar for a quick G and T with Sue after the last session. We told the waitress to keep the tab open as we might need another. "Well you can't fly on one wing" she said. Too true.