How to attend a conference!

Stephen Downes recently published a post in his blog about: How to Get the Most out of a Conference.
Based on his experiences and reflections from many conferences, he is providing some general technical and practical guidelines from finding a good conferences, preparing a submission, traveling, presenting and networking in conferences, preparing your talk and following the activities after the conference.  It’s really a good source to take a look at and get something out of it.
He has also referred to Clayton R. Wright‘s list of educational technology conferences which is normally updated every six months or every year.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

Since few years ago, the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies @C4LPT conducts a survey on tools and apps for learning and ranks them according to the votes. On 13 November 2011 it published 5th annual survey of learning tools. 

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2011

View more presentations from Jane Hart

As for the past two years, Twitter is number one, then YouTube, Google Docs, Blogging tools, sharing tools and social bookmarking tools. This is quite what I was expecting according to my experience. Especially, Twitter has got its popularity as a connecting and networking tool used very widely in scientific events like conferences and also in online communities to keep following the activities more easily.

The future of learning...

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), as part of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), has just published a report about: The Future of Learning: Preparing for Change.

It is a great resource that envisages the future of learning and the fundamental transformation of education and learning which will need new skills and competencies. It illustrates a vision that personalization, collaboration and informalization (informal learning) will be at the core of learning in the future. It emphasizes the potential of technology very crucial in this process.  It is then presenting the persona of the future learners. I found it very interesting and worth reading.