Innovations in E-Learning Conference

As part II of my week at conferences, I am now at the Innovations in E-Learning Conference held at George Mason University in Virginia.

This is a small venue with about 250 people which makes it a great conference, small intimate and a chance to get to know and meet a lot of people.

I was walking into the auditorium for the keynote presentation and was taking my seat as a women was typing away on her laptop. She turns to me and says “Are you Karl Kapp?” I said “Yes” and she said “Hi I am Wendy Wickham.” As I get older, I need more time to process information and so I think to my self, hey I know Wendy…but from where? Then in few seconds it hits me.

She is the author of the blog, In the Middle of the Curve. I read Wendy all the time. So we had a great discussion about Hockey, Cats and maybe some learning stuff. It turns out she is blogging the conference and doing a fantastic job. I don’ know how she types so fast.

Check out Wendy’s Wrap Up-Day 1 post as well as her other posts including one of the Keynote addresses, my presentation on Gadgets, Games and Gizmos and Stephen Downes keynote, Light, Agile and Flexible as well as a mobile learning presentation by Mark Oehlert, Dr. David Metcalf and Judy Brown. This conference has some really interesting presenters all together in a really small group. It is fantastic!

In fact, Mark Oehlert and I had the opportunity to do an impromptu session when one of the presenters wasn’t able to make it. We named the presentation Gadgets, Games and Web 2.0…it was a mash up of other presentations we have both done in the past. It worked great considering we have never met in person before (although he was an awesome reviewer for Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.)

Here we are in action

Also, I got to meet another well known blogger, Stephen Downes. Stephen and I have had a number of exchanges about different areas of disagreement or points of clarification over the years (although who hasn’t gotten a clarification from Stephen) and most of the time, he is right on the money. So it was a pleasure to meet him in person and discuss…hockey. We even had a slight disagreement with hockey since I am a Penguins fan and he had picked Detroit to win. Sadly, Stephen was right that last night would end the series. Well, there is always next year.

If you missed the conference, check out Stephen’s presentation Light, Agile and Flexible.

He blogs about the conference and took a fantastic picture of lightening from the storm we encountered while at the conference (it was a really violent storm.) Wendy blogs about it in her post An Interesting Interlude.

Here Stephen and I discuss hockey.

To end the night, I had a great dinner with an alumni of the program Ken. We had a little trouble finding something to eat because many places didn’t have power due to the storm but we managed and it was great to catch up with Ken and to hear what he has been up to.

All in all, a great conference day…storm and all.
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