Looking at learning differently: Learning Technologies 2012 This years Learning Technologies and Learning and Skills was

the largest in the event's 12 year history. Kate Graham, the shows official rapporteur, covered proceedings to bring us all the news from the conference and the exhibition. When Don Taylor asked if I wanted to be the official rapporteur for Learning Technologies 2012, I readily agreed. With a stellar line up of speakers, more exhibitors than ever before and a route through to the Learning Without Frontiers event next door, I knew this was going to be an unmissable event. Day one began with a real honour. I was privileged enough to meet with Dr. Edward de Bono prior to his opening address at the conference. Before researching Dr. de Bono, I had little idea he was responsible for so much of what we take for granted now. His concepts of lateral thinking, the six hats are all ideas that have seeped into the zeitgeist. Dr. de Bono is down to earth, humorous and has real presence. You can see him in conversation with another conference speaker, Nigel Paine, in the video section of this group. Now, a Chief Ideas Officer. Who wouldnt want that job? Sadly its a somewhat imaginary role suggested by de Bono in his keynote. When he came out on stage and started drawing diagrams on an overhead projector, you could almost hear a pin drop as attendees wondered what he was doing with this low-tech approach at a technologies conference. But his pared down presentation techniques enabled us to focus on what he was saying and follow the logic of his lateral thinking discussion. Within moments, everyone was hooked. Dr. de Bono set the tone for what was a fascinating conference programme with his session Meeting the L&D challenge with smart, creative and innovative thinking. His influence was evident in several of the sessions across the two days, particularly in what was to become a key theme; that of challenging the status quo in learning and development and trying to do things differently. de Bono uses the term EBNE, which stands for Excellent But Not Enough. Whilst a lot of what we are now doing in L&D is indeed excellent as witnessed by some of the results driven case studies showcased during the event challenging the status quo and thinking differently can turn a merely satisfactory idea into something extraordinary. Provocation is essential so that we challenge ourselves to do things better. To do this, de Bono says organisations need to find time and space to think creatively and generate new ideas to improve their approach to learning. He also suggests that schools and universities introduce Professors of Thinking as its undoubtedly our most important human skill. Real food for thought which created a great buzz to the start of the event. You can read some thoughts from attendees of his keynote via the LT2012 group page. Personnel Today also interviewed Dr. de Bono listen and read a review of the first day here.

Kate Graham is a Director of Ascot Communications and the eLearning Network. She can be reached via @kategraham23 on Twitter or kate@ascotcommunications.com.

Challenge When asked by Chairman Don Taylor, attendees agreed that aligning learning to the needs of the business is their biggest challenge. Laura Overton and Nic Laycock picked up on this theme in their session on Business Aligned Learning. Overton used data from Towards Maturity research to challenge current thinking about learning and performance. She highlighted that we need to think differently before we can act differently. Interestingly, attendees were challenged develop new ways of driving behaviour that will impact time to competency and business agility and take some real action when they got back to work. Its always great to be able to take action points away from an event so I hope those in this session will see what they can do now theyre back at their desks. Elsewhere, David Wilson was analysing the rise and fall of the corporate academy in the session on Learning Infrastructures. Most of the corporate training academies set up in the past sadly no longer exist, but a trend is emerging towards setting more of them up in the future. You can read a research paper on the topic here. Collaboration At the same time, Donald Clark and Oke Eleazu were exploring Peer Learning. This was a great session. Clark explored the influence of peer to-peer networking and collaboration through nonworkplace examples such as the Arab Spring in 2011. Meanwhile, Eleazu described how innovation is *actually* happening in organisations such as Prudential and Bupa every day. Its often we hear a lot about in theory but very little about in practice. Eleazu described how often employees in these organisations are innovating what they do but not sharing it with anyone else. So transferring knowledge across the workplace has become the focus. Hes worked with Fusion Universal to successfully facilitate peer-to-peer learning and supercharge other formal learning interventions. Read the thoughts of Training Journal on this session here. Joanne Jacobs continued the theme of collaboration was in her session, Connection, Interacting and Learning through Social Media. By now were all aware of the growing importance of social learning, but Joannes session explored one of the trends most important aspects how we identify and interact with key experts and influencers. Jacobs stressed that as humans we tend to make better judgements together rather than individually but to collaborate and interact through social networks we need to trust our contacts and their information. She put paid to the myth that social learning is in itself a panacea or makes things easier. Its actually a challenge to digest information that comes to us via social networks and to build useful sources in the first place. But what it does do is bring people together in a way that would not otherwise be possible. It enables us to question things and look at what were doing from a different perspective through the eyes of our networks. You can hear more from Joanne in the video section of this group. Integrating social networks and peer learning into the workplace remains a challenge for many organisations. Steve Wheeler stated that there are no real organisational constraints to adopting these new learning technologies. What we have are individuals within organisations imposing barriers. He encouraged his audience to find ways around
Kate Graham is a Director of Ascot Communications and the eLearning Network. She can be reached via @kategraham23 on Twitter or kate@ascotcommunications.com.

innovation prevention in order to introduce these technologies and tools. Nigel Paine meanwhile surmised theimportance of this because, The old approach to learning and development has had it. New learning is where were headed its based on need, its business aligned, its a combination of social learning, informal learning, knowledge management and other more formal interventions all brought together in a blend. You can hear more from both Steve and Nigel in the video section and check out Steves presentation here. Engagement Another key theme that emerged from the conference was one of learner engagement. Mark Berthelemy did a great job of engaging attendees in his session. Initially we all had to turn around and talk to each other about some challenges were currently having with engagement in our organisations. He then played a short video which grabbed our attention and truly did engage the audience. It was good to see the topic being demonstrated live! You can view a SlideShare of the presentation here as well as a short interview with Marks thoughts following his session in the video section. Complementing Marks session was the Cambian Group case study which showed just what can be achieved with e-learning when engagement is part of the strategy. Theirs was a programme of learning that was carefully branded with an identity aimed at engaging learners, creating a connection and encouraging adoption. Within six months of launching their new e-learning content, the Group had a 90% uptake. This impressive feat won the Group a Gold E-Learning Award and Id encourage anyone to read their case study here as its inspiring to see what they achieved. Ben Hines provided a very different perspective on learner engagement in their Transformational Learning session. Using the emotions and creativity that music provides, they provided a metaphor for learning and how teams work together in organisations. The parallels were demonstrated by a live five piece wind quintet who visually and audibly demonstrated the importance of being in tune with one another, listening to colleagues and also being engaged emotionally with what youre trying to achieve. Whether thats the performance of a piece of music or the execution of a business critical project. Hines states that if we want people to change or learn new skills, they need to want to change and emotionally connect to it. de Bonos influence was in evidence as they used creativity to break learners out of established patterns to look at things in a different way. Here are some more thoughts on this particular session.

Kate Graham is a Director of Ascot Communications and the eLearning Network. She can be reached via @kategraham23 on Twitter or kate@ascotcommunications.com.

Technology The closing keynote speaker on the first day explored future technologies in The Web Within Us: When Minds and Machines Become One. Ray Kurzweil is an American scientist, author and futurist. In his address, he explored the inevitable growth of computing power and the coming singularity as he calls it i.e. when computers have the same intelligence as humans. Naturally his thinking has its critics but the future he discussed sounded exciting rather than terrifying and that the progress technology will make is entirely positive. It was a thought provoking session that had the audiences imagination buzzing with the concept of artificial intelligence and just what the future might hold. Joanne Jacobs has gathered a useful summary of Kurzweils thinking and his session here. Henry Stewart also provides his thoughts here. The second day of Learning Technologies 2012 began with a keynote from Jaron Lanier, the writer and computer scientist who coined the term virtual reality. He continued the technology theme from Ray Kurzweils session the previous day by exploring Are we at the beginning of the rise of post-human machine intelligence? Laniers pared down presentation style (no slides, no PowerPoint, just him on the stage) and his quite amazing experience and connections had the attendees intrigued throughout. He urged us to take a long hard look at how we fit in with some of our own technological developments. His stance is that the technology is nothing without human input and that we need to be careful with the technology that is evolving around us. We must control it not let it control us. Personnel Today provides more insights and a review of day twos proceedings here. Learning Technologies eXchange A new initiative this year was the Towards Maturity eXchange. This brought conference speakers into the mix on the exhibition floors to answer questions and speak to attendees about their specialist areas. It was good to see the experts coming to work through some of the challenges and questions of the exhibition attendees. Pictured here is Bob Mosher of Ontuitive sharing his experiences. Its a great concept and one I hope continues at Learning Technologies 2013. Exhibition In comparison with previous years, the focus on the conference has been less on individual tools and technologies and much more on the big picture. The sessions examined the strategic use of technology in learning, and feedback from attendees was that this had been both valuable and thought provoking. Meanwhile, in the exhibition, more immediate and practical solutions were available. The stand out themes from over 200 exhibiters this year included mobile learning, cloudbased technology, gamification and a noticeable shift from learning management to performance and talent management solutions.
Kate Graham is a Director of Ascot Communications and the eLearning Network. She can be reached via @kategraham23 on Twitter or kate@ascotcommunications.com.

There was a noticeable increase in the size and stature of some of the stands too, indicating a certain buoyancy in the market and that despite wider economic trends, the market for learning technologies continues to prosper. In terms of attendees, numbers were evidently up. The crossover with Learning Without Frontiers also seems to have brought in a mix of attendees from the education sector as well as the corporate world. The free seminar programme was well attended with theatres full whenever I crossed the floor. It seems the suppliers embraced the concept of trying to present more innovatively with interactive polls and the live creation of mobile apps. Some resources from the seminars can be found on the LT2012 group page. The Chairman of the eLearning Network, Rob Hubbard, even took his shirt off as he launched the new Campaign for Effective Elearning. Some people will do anything for publicity! If you missed the presentation you can listen to a recording here. And TrainingZone collected some thoughts from the exhibition floor on innovation in e-learning here. You can also view some other thoughts of exhibitors and attendees in the video section. The event also provided a lively backchannel and Id like to say thanks to everyone for all the tweets! Martin Couzins has provided a great analysis of the tweets here and David Kelly has curated a fantastic list of resources from the backchannel here. Inspiration and perspiration The feedback from attendees was one of overwhelming inspiration. It seemed the keynotes moved them to think differently about how to achieve their goals within their organisations, and took encouragement from the case studies which show what can be achieved within a corporate setting. This powerful motivation was complemented by the solutions and services provided by suppliers at the exhibition. There is an enthusiastic and passionate drive among vendors to demonstrate the effectiveness of their solutions and move on from click next e-learning. There was a sense of wanting to provide practical help for attendees inspired by the conference, but knowing there will be a lot of hard work to do once theyre back at their desks. Finding time and space to be creative in our day-to-day roles may be a whole other challenge. But, the conference message is that it is one which is worthwhile addressing. Don Taylor nailed it in his summary when he said We have to challenge the status quo because things are moving forwards so quickly - not just technologically, but in terms of expectations, skills requirements and the resources available to do our jobs. And the alternative of not challenging the status quo could be L&D becoming seen as unnecessary to organisations in the future. And you can check out the videos and other resources on the Learning and Skills Group website.
Kate Graham is a Director of Ascot Communications and the eLearning Network. She can be reached via @kategraham23 on Twitter or kate@ascotcommunications.com.