DevLearn 2011 eLearning Trends
Well I’m alive…just about! What a week at DevLearn2011 in Las Vegas, so many highlights! It was also an amazing trip as I had never been to Vegas before. It certainly is sensory overload. I feel my office is quite boring now as there’s no constant ‘ding, ding, ding’ of the slot machines or flashing lights and noise of the strip to keep me entertained.
During the first week of November, myself, the Directors and some of our Development team attended pre-conference advanced training workshops in Articulate with Tom Kuhlmann from Articulate and Ron Price from Yukon Learning. Yes, we did meet the man himself and I have a photo to prove it! We spent a lot of our time with Ron Price, learning advanced techniques in both Articulate and PowerPoint. It really opened our eyes to how much you can do with these tools to make courses more engaging. We will be adding some of these techniques to our Master eLearning Course. Also, as a result of further training with Ron in Vegas, B Online Learning will be offering basic and advanced training in Articulate next year as we are now the only certified Articulate training providers in Australia.
The theme for this year’s conference was ‘Expanding the Possibilities for Learning’. The first keynote speaker was a bit left field. Dr. Michio Kaku gave us a guided tour of the next 30 years of learning and what the world will be like. It was based around physics but also linked to learning of the future.
The Cloud also seemed to be a popular theme for sessions in the conference. Tom Koulopoulos described ‘Living and Learning in the Cloud’. Steve Rosenbaum was the last keynote speaker and ended with what technology can do to help humankind deal with information and uncertainty, and why eLearning professionals are critically important.
DemoFest2011 and Ignite were also popular amongst attendees. DemoFest2011 showcased dozens of conference participants latest and greatest development efforts. The conference ended with Ignite. This special event featured 6 speakers who had 5 minutes and 20 slides to present their next big idea in eLearning. Neil Lasher’s, ‘Street University’ idea proved to be very popular. Solving the problems of today’s world by using technology in a way that people can and will find compelling and convenient.
The conference was held in the new Aria hotel which was an amazing venue. A big thank you to the eLearning Guild for putting together such a great event….I hear it’s in LasVegas again in 2012!
Finally, yes we did see a lot of great things and meet lots of innovative people but it’s nothing different than what B Online Learning are doing here. We finished up the week with lots of new ideas and strategies but also with a sense of satisfaction that we are eLearning innovators in Australia.
