Last December I had the privilege of presenting some notions around the 'Bebo Boomer' at the Online Information Conference, the largest information professional conference in the world. I've got around to publishing this crammed 20 minutes of ideas, where I wanted to see if business and public service organisations were prepared to harness the basic skills of youngsters entering the workplace to create more innovation and better communications.
My co-presenters on the panel that day, Roo Reynolds and Mary Ellen Bates, sandwiched me in a way that made it look like we had conceived and carefully woven the whole hour together: Roo on the intricacies of virtual worlds in the workplace, then me on how young people entering the workplace could see their skills better harnessed, then Mary Ellen on the importance of play and gaming.
Roo carries the audio from the all three mini-presentations (including his Slideshare) and the discussion that followed, after I curated comments from Twitter, this blog and mobile phone SMSs. After much bullying from Roo (;-) here is the full presentation, slides, audio and laughter, from my intervention that day.
Thanks for putting this up Ewan. I was really inspired by this at the conference you keynoted (is that a word? It's certainly not meant to be a verb!) in Derbyshire last year. It's kick started a whole new way of thinking for me which is now spreading to other members of our school. I'll get some of our staff to have a look at it this week.
Posted by: Anthony Jessop | January 21, 2008 at 09:45 AM
A truly invigorating and fascinating 20 minutes when I saw it at Online and flicking through it again now.
I know of various LEA contacts in London that would be fascinated to have this view from you on the future of the classroom - perhaps we can make it happen if you're not too overloaded with work in Scotland?
Posted by: Dominic Campbell | January 21, 2008 at 09:58 AM
Great talk - and helpful for what I'm doing - but hey: you changed out of uniform so's it'd still be wearable the next day!
;-)
Posted by: chris | January 21, 2008 at 12:51 PM
Great presentation Ewan - I realised I listened to it whilst multitasking too ;-)
Posted by: apolaine | January 21, 2008 at 03:09 PM
Ewan, thanks so much for sharing! You're my role model for presos!
With appreciation,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.net
http://mguhlin.net
Posted by: Miguel Guhlin | January 22, 2008 at 12:43 AM
Fantastic presentation, thanks for sharing it!
I am involved with an exciting new alternative education program in Bermuda (http://tinyurl.com/36ybl9) and we intend to integrate social media/technology into the education and training experience.
We are losing lots of kids because traditional methods are no longer enough in this fast paced, interconnected world. We believe that young people need to be challenged in many different ways in order to develop the knowledge and life skills to compete in the 21st century.
I'm a new visitor to you blog, but I've just loaded it into Google Reader and look forward to more enlightening posts in the future. Thanks.
Fair Winds,
Peter A. Mello
Director of Institutional Advancement
Northeast Maritime Institute
w. http://northeastmaritime.com
b. http://sea-fever.org
Posted by: Peter A. Mello | January 22, 2008 at 04:12 AM