There was a definite buzz at this year’s Learning Technologies 2012 exhibition and conference at Kensington Olympia on Wednesday and Thursday last week.
Keynote speakers Edward de Bono, Ray Kurzweil and Jaron Lanier brought a philosophical bent to the proceedings as if they had been selected purposely to emphasise the post-technological age in which we live.
Although the world may have been experiencing web 2.0 for nigh-on a decade now, social media has updated its status from ‘picking up speed’ to ‘hardwired’ over the last 12 months. The adoption of both social learning and tablet computers in both big and small companies is on the continual rise, to the point where it has become an unremarkable fact.
So where does that leave a learning technologies event? Attempting to answer the big questions, that’s where. Why do we learn? How do we learn? How can we make use of ideas that we don’t fully understand? In 2029 will we be overtaken by a race of super-intelligent robots? (The answer to that last question is ‘maybe’, depending on who you choose to believe).
Edward de Bono – the man who invented the phrase ‘lateral thinking’ – kicked things off on day one with a fascinating exploration of how to go back-to-basics in learning by examining the neural pathways of the brain. He challenged delegates to meet the learning and development challenge "with smart, creative and innovative thinking’ in order to challenge accepted truths about how we learn.
"One of the main problems with learning is being blocked by openness. If a concept is too successful, it completely blocks the ability to see any other outcome," de Bono said.
His use of acetates and an overhead projector was an anachronistic start to a conference about learning technologies, but far from just being the quaint idiosyncrasy of a man of advancing years, it served to underline visually the fact that learning is actually about the fundamental, transcendental machinations of the mind.
The singularity
The next step was to sit in on Donald Clark’s session on ‘Peer learning – why instructors need to get out of the way’. Referring to ‘The Nurture Assumption’ by Judith Harris as "one of the most important books on psychology ever", this neurolinguistic programming sceptic and advocate of social learning came out with one of the best lines of the conference.
"We have nothing to teach children about collaboration and 21st century learning skills. They have everything to teach us," he said.
Bob Mosher’s long haul across the Atlantic, meanwhile, hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm in the slightest as he hosted an afternoon session entitled, ‘Supporting learners at the five points of need’. Going against the viewpoint of many of the show’s exhibitors, his view was that: "There is no such thing as death by PowerPoint, just death by bad presentation."
Alvin Toffler got a mention, when Mosher cited him as saying: ‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." But he chose to end on a rather Cantona-esque note, saying: "A ship in a harbour is safe, but that’s not what ships are made for. Let’s go out to sea."
Check out Bob’s writing on performance support here. He is a presenter of great charisma and enthusiasm.
But it was the intimidating as well as inspiring Ray Kurzweil who gave the closing keynote of the day. With 19 honorary doctorates, his predictions on technological advancement over the last 40 years have always been on the money.
This time, he talked about "the web within us – when minds and machines become one", forecasting that, by 2029, machines would assume human levels of intelligence, a concept that is otherwise known as the singularity. With realistic talk of three-dimensional printers and quotes like "the smartphone will be the size of a blood cell within 25 years", it was very difficult not to get swept up in thoughts of the future. Exciting stuff.
Day two
Day two was busier than in previous years, however, with attendees perhaps buoyed by the prospect of seeing the keynote speech by Jaron Lanier, the man upon whose life the 1990s sci-fi film ‘The Lawnmower Man’ is in part based. He also had plenty to say on the subject of our place in technology’s future, or vice versa.
But when asked: ‘Are we at the beginning of the rise of post-human intelligence?’, his answer was ‘no’. "In order to rationalise the idea of the singularity you have to anonymise the human contribution to technology…all automated devices rely on a continued stream of information data which would not exist without humans," Lanier said.
He also railed against Kurzweil’s assertion that the singularity was a foregone conclusion. Having impressed upon a captivated auditorium the need to remain sceptical about ‘current collectivist fads’ such as Twitter and Facebook, he concluded by referring to one of Karl Marx’s theories in Das Kapital as ‘crappy’, which was an admirably bold statement.
During the first session of the afternoon, Plymouth University’s Steve Wheeler also began talking about the future of digital learning, opening with three of his quotes from over the years:
1989: ‘the future is multimedia’
1999: ‘the future is the web’
2008: ‘the future is the smartphone’
The aim was less one of ‘I told you so’ and more to reinforce and celebrate the growing number of technological possibilities that appear to be occuring over time. While Wheeler’s talk was undoubtedly rooted in the future of gamification and the like, he was also at pains to say how close such concepts were to being implemented and to point out that the world was ready for them.
As he said: "Today’s learners are more self-directed, more inclined to collaborate and better equipped to capture information." To look into the future according to Steve Wheeler (and Pranav Mistry), click here.
But a final session by Charles Jennings rammed home the point that: "You cannot manage learning, only a learner can manage learning. You can only manage training." What more is there to say?
