Articles by Angela Page

ULearn09 will now be held in Christchurch, instead of in Auckland as originally advertised. ULearn conferences have been held annually since 2005, and previously had alternated between Christchurch and Auckland. With the number of delegates and presentations continuing to grow each year, there are sometimes up to fifty sessions happening concurrently at different venues. The number of venues available for workshops within a close vicinity is considerably greater in Christchurch. While Auckland venues offer excellent facilities for keynotes and spotlights, limited venues available for workshops close by means that numbers need to be significantly restricted. Also, the Westpac Arena in Christchurch is able to comfortably seat around 2000 guests for dinner, whereas seating at the Sky City Convention Centre is limited to 1000, meaning that many delegates will miss out the opportunity to attend the conference dinner.

In addition, the development of the advanced network allowed excellent connectivity across almost all conference venues in Christchurch, and we are keen to exploit these opportunities again in the future. Therefore, with these factors in mind, it has been decided to once again hold ULearn in Christchurch in 2009.

Five spotlight videos are now available for viewing on the ULearn08 website. You can view spotlight presentations by Julia Atkin, Westley Field, Greg Gebhart, Nicola Yelland, and Mark Treadwell. The final two spotlights, and those of our keynotes, will be available shortly.

Please note that the synchronising of video and presenter slides while editing the video may result in some variance from the conference session. Also, some presenters used media files which we have not been able to include in these video versions.

Presenters have given permission for these presentations to be made available online for 4 months to conference attendees by login access to this ULearn08 website, for the purpose of further professional discussion in ICT PD cluster schools. We do not have permission to provide DVD copies of the presentations.

Supporting materials for some spotlight presentations can be accessed from the Find presenters’ material knowledge base.

Listen to the interview between our keynote speaker, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and Kim Hill. The interview was broadcast on Radio New Zealand National Saturday morning. You can access the podcast online.

Just a reminder to presenters to please post your presenters’ material on the ULearn08 site. If you have any problems with this, please contact Angela angela.page@core-ed.net or Suzie ictpdonline@core-ed.net

The keynotes and spotlights were all videoed and most will be available for you to view online the site once they have been edited. We’ll keep you posted!

The conference dinner was absolutely spectacular, with excellent entertainment and food. There was rouge and baubles as far as they eye could see. Here are some pics from the big event:

BubbleShare: Share photos - Craft Ideas

Our conference dinner was held last night at the Westpac Arena. With a theme of rouge, the rest was left up to delegates’ imagination - and what a party it was!

Prior to this year, CORE Education held the record for the largest sit-down meal at the Westpac Arena with dinner for 1967 people at Navcon 2K4. Last night, we exceeded this record with dinner for 2000!

104 staff were on hand to cater for our every need. Here they are, ready to wait on us hand and foot:

We have already had an exciting showcase to the future session, and the second one is now underway!

If you have seen an idea you like and want to find out more about it, check out the Presenters’ knowledge base on the ULearn08 website. There is a special category for the showcase to the future.

Just a reminder that the showcase to the future runs in the James Hay Theatre during each breakout on Wednesday and Thursday at the same times as other workshops (and not at the times incorrectly shown in the programme). Each presentation in a ten minute snapshot of a new idea or innovation. You can come and go as you please and don’t need to register beforehand, which is perfect if you’re looking for something else to do during a breakout.

Look out for the student media team who are looking stylish and happy in their blue and yellow ULearn t-shirts.

The media team will be capturing the spirit of ULearn08 on video. If you are approached by a student for a short interview, don’t be shy! Everyone who takes the time to support our media team will go in the draw to win a prize You can check out what their up to on their team’s wiki.

There is also a wonderful team of student runners supporting each room. These are the people to ask if you have a question or need support for your presentation.

The Ministry of Education supports ULearn08. Visit their team just along from the Registration desk to talk about the strategies, programmes, and research supporting and promoting the effective use of ICT in schools.

Learn more about the development of Te Kete Ipurangi (TKI), the Digital Technologies Guidelines, Digistore, Foundations for Discovery (ECE e-learning framework), The National Educational Network (NEN), e-Principals, assistive technologies, and Software for Learning.

Also, come and give your view on the Online Learning Environment (OLE) project and the ICT PD review.

Check out the at the latest reflections of ministry staff on the conference at the blog – www.lunchbox.org.nz

If you are a twitterer, we are keen to have you tweet about your experiences at ULearn08.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. At the conference, add people to your Twitter network and tweet about what you’re up to, what you’ve just seen, where you’re going to next, etc …!

To keep track of everybody’s tweets, we have set up a ULearn08 Twitter page here. This will show all tweets which include the text #ulearn08. It is important to include the hash symbol # before ulearn08 (all one word), so that our page will pick up your feed.

Tweet tweet!