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Review of IDEA10: "Learning Futures: Technology Challenges"

I was fortunate enough to attend this year's !DEA conference (IDEA10) last week and my first impressions of it were 'what a long way it has come over the last few years'. What started out as a lab where content and application developers got together a few years ago to test how they could move learning content from one application to another, along with some presentations on areas of interoperability has now emerged as a very important conference. As some of the speakers stated, discussions on interoperability and technical standards can cause many an eye to glaze over but when you look at what they are enabling, and the fantastic outcomes for education that they can and are achieving, you realise just how important this work is. Day 1 of the conference was the IDEALab Workshop. In the morning we looked at the Systems Interoperability Framework (SIF) and the work that is happening around the country as school education jurisdictions work together to solve common interoperability problems. After lunch we looked at the consultation work Link Affiliates has been doing for DEEWR in supporting the DER. These areas included:

  • 21C Curriculum Content
  • W3C Accessibility guidelines
  • Curriculum description
  • Lesson Plans
  • Content discovery and exchange
  • E-portfolio technologies
  • 21C Learning Environments
Following this we had a detailed session on Accessibility and the WCAG 2.0 (Web content accessibility guidelines). A demonstration on accessibility really highlighted for me just how much consideration really needs to be put into making your web content properly accessible. The 'Technology in Education Open Forum' began on day 2 and this was a really interesting day. The scene was really set in the panel session from a group of educators talking about what they want from technology to support and enhance the work that they are doing. Following this session a number of panels looked at how they, as infrastructure developers, providers etc are working towards providing the types of environments that our educators need. Another panel of educators then responded to the earlier sessions and discussed what was needed so that they could use these environments. Following this was a session which looked at some of the amazing work that is taking place - unfortunately I missed this session as I had some other duties to attend to. Finally, we had the IMS GLC Learning Impact Awards Regional Finalist Showcase. A number of initiatives were showcased and I would love to have seen them all however I was representing one of those initiatives and there was no time for me to get to see the others. On day 3 we had an international perspective from IMS GLC and ADL. These two standards organisations are doing some great work and gave fantastic insights into the work they are doing at the leading edge. What came through for me is that standards really do provide a platform for innovation. Finally we had the Winners of the Regional Learning Impact Awards and congratulations must go to Peter Higgs and his team at the Tasmanian Polytechnic and Skills Institute for the work they have done on Mobile Assessment and Online Recognition using QTI solutions. They are very deserving winners. I am also really pleased to say that we were runners up to them and took out the "People's Choice Award" for the work that we have been doing developing personal and professional development social networking environments using our tool - Fused. A big thank-you to all who participated.