Keynotes

Dr Peter Norvig

Director of Research, Google

Peter Norvig is the Director of Research at Google Inc, where he has been since 2001. From 2002-2005 he was Director of Search Quality. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the Association for Computing Machinery and co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, the leading textbook in the field (with 94% market share). Previously he was the head of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center , where he received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award in 2001. He has served as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and a research faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley Computer Science Department, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1986 and the distinguished alumni award in 2006.

He has over fifty publications in Computer Science, concentrating on Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and Software Engineering. He is also the author of the Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation and the world's longest palindromic sentence.

'Learning in an Open World'
What happens in a world where students have instant access to trillions of words of information (and disinformation), without need of a teacher as an intermediary? What roles do the student, teacher, and other citizens play in this world? We'll soon find out...

^

Dr Michelle Selinger

Education Strategist, Cisco Systems

Dr Michelle Selinger joined Cisco in 2001 where she is currently the Global Education Strategist for Corporate Affairs as well as an adviser for technology in education across the company. She has worked with a number of governments through Cisco's social investment programmes in education and also running visioning workshops on the future of technology-enabled education. She has a strong background in education and immediately prior to joining Cisco she was the director of a research centre for new technology in education at the University of Warwick.

Michelle is Chair of the Academic Advisory Board for the World Economic Forum's Global Education Initiative. She sat on the steering group for the European Commission's e-learning conference in 2005 and was a member of the advisory group for e-Europe 2005 which informed the European Commission's i2010 initiative. She has led a number of evaluation projects on technology-enabled learning and has published widely on many aspects of ICT in education.

'You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps'
In the 21st century gaps in many facets of our lives are quickly becoming vast chasms: chasms between cultures; chasms between what learners do with technology informally and what formal education allows them to do; and chasms between learners widened by the opportunities that the new technology affords those that have it and can use it. The lifelong learning agenda assumes smooth transitions between school, college, university and the work place, yet the changes in learning paradigms in these institutions are so variable that the chasms between them are widening too. David Lloyd George (1863-1945) said, "Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps". It is now 2007. Isn't it time we bit the bullet and made some bold changes to our formal learning systems: changes that really take advantage of what technology can help us do to improve the quality and richness of the learning experience?

Dylan Wiliam

Deputy Director, Institute of Education

Dylan Wiliam is Deputy Director of the Institute of Education,University of London. In a varied career, he has taught in inner-city schools, directed a large-scale testing programme, trained teachers,served a number of roles in university administration, including Dean of a School of Education, and pursued several research projects focused on supporting teachers to develop their use of assessment in support of learning. From 2003 to 2006 he was Senior Research Director at the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, USA.

'Assessment, learning and technology: prospects at the periphery of control'
Dylan Wiliam will explore some of the ways in which technology will change how learners are assessed. The technology or scoring multiple-choice items has been in widespread use for well over half a century, but more recently it has become possible to score automatically short-answer constructed-response items, graphs, and even essays with the same accuracy achieved by humans (although this feat is less impressive when it is realized how poor the agreement between humans can be). These changes will lower the cost of large-scale authentic assessments, thus improving the validity of the assessment of student learning. More significantly, however, recent developments in classroom aggregation technologies suggest that it will be possible to use automated scoring of student responses to allow teachers to make real-time instructional decisions, thus increasing student engagement in learning, and the responsiveness of instruction to student needs.

There will also be a welcoming keynote from Professor Alan Dodson - Pro-Vice Chancellor responsible for information systems and e-learning at the University of Nottingham.

^

Theme speakers

Dr. Hans-Peter Baumeister

Director of the ESB-Research Institute; Lecturer in International Studies at the European School of Business, Reutlingen University.

Theme: Learning and internationalism

Hans-Peter researches in the field of innovation for knowledge societies and regional clustering processes ("learning regions") with particular emphasis on the role of universities.He has extensive knowledge of developments in distance education, e-learning and methodologies, as well as the major fields of application and organisation. He has experience in trans-national joint course development as well as implementation in single and mixed mode institutions, and works on the design of virtual teaching/learning environments and the running of international e-learning programmes.

Hans-Peter lectures on European Integration, European Identity and Globalisation. He analyses various R&D/educational systems and also conducts a range of professional training programmes. In 1994 and 1996 he worked with members of the Chinese National Audit Office (CNAO), evaluating their learning video production, and assisted European experts in Higher Education between 1998 and 2001. He co-ordinated the evaluation of the EU-Phare Multi-Country Programme in Distance Education between 1999 and 2001, and is also an EU expert for Technology Enhanced Learning (5th, 6th and 7th Framework Programme).

^

Marion Miller

Manager, JISC Regional Support Centre for Yorkshire and Humber, University of Leeds

Theme: Learning technology for the social network generation

Marion joined the University of Leeds in 2002 to manage the JISC Regional Support Centre for Yorkshire and Humber. The centre provides e-learning strategy and implementation support to 6th Form, further education, specialist and higher education colleges; work-based learning providers; and local authorities in the region. The centre is well known for its innovative approaches and their challenging summer conferences which make full use of new and emerging technologies.

Originally a mathematics teacher in a comprehensive school, Marion studied for an MSc in Computing at University of Bradford part time after moving into Further Education to lecture in computing at Dewsbury College. In 2002 Marion received a Becta National ICT in Practice award for 'Management of ICT in FE' and has presented at a number of National and Regional Conferences. Marion is a member of the National Delivery Group for the DfES Harnessing Technology e-strategy.

^

Dr Frank Rennie

Head of Research and Post Graduate Development at Lews Castle College;
Course Leader of the MSc in Managing Sustainable Rural Development at the UHI Millennium Institute in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Theme: Large scale implementation

Frank's research interests lie in the general areas of rural and community development, especially in community based approaches to integrated sustainable development.

Recent work has been on new approaches to online education and distributed learning on and in rural communities. He is an advisor to several government programmes and committees and is a Fellow of a number of learned societies.

Frank has been involved in developing and delivering various combinations of distributed learning solutions (with a particular emphasis on networked solutions for rural areas) with colleges and university partners in Europe, Amazonia, Asia, and New Zealand. He has published a wide range of materials related to rural issues and is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences.

^

Tim Rudd

Senior Researcher, Futurelab

Theme: Designing learning spaces

Tim is Senior Researcher in Futurelab's learning team, working and advising on a range of research projects, written outputs and events. Prior to this he was head of evidence and research at Becta, where he worked on a range of policy-related projects and programmes relating to research into ICT and education.

Tim's work and writing has covered areas such as the digital divide, home-school-community links, personalisation and learner voice. Previously he gained his doctorate whilst studying at the University of Bristol, focusing on ICT and the reproduction of social inequalities.