DevLearn 2011

Devlearn 2011 was great. This event effectively brought together learning and training practitioners, vendors of e-learning and learning technologies and thought leaders into a vibrant and well organised event, well done to the e-learning guild for putting together such a worthy event.

The themes of the conference were broad, with a massive amount of choice of presentations to see from both practitioners, vendors and thought leaders, it was easy to select an event of interest or follow a specific theme. The highlighted themes being The Cloud, Emerging tech, Management Xchange, Strategic buyers and Virtual learning, each theme being hosted by an expert in that area.

We followed where possible The Cloud theme and where keen to see what the future of e-learning is looking like!

The Buzz or DevLearn in a paragraph!

A quick synopsis and buzz words in one sentence would be: Change and lots of it!

In one paragraph:

Driven by “The Cloud”, “Self- organised networks” and “social business”, learning and training will change in how it is designed, delivered and recorded –it will now be built around “activity streams” (forming the basis of beyond SCORM standards) utilising “CaaS” (content as a service),  moving to a world beyond rapid authoring to “rapid reuse” . Learning communities will be “mediated through technology”, content and knowledge will be “curated” and intelligently suggested by and to members of the networked community. The learning experience will become “frictionless”, thanks in part to “XML” all leading to the next generation of learning and performance in how it is recorded, as learning and reporting of learning is separated leading to new community developed or organisationally developed “analytics” as, it is wise to remember  the cloud never forgets!

Just click on the headings below to see our reviews on the many different presentations and vendors we engaged with.  

  • DevLearn Keynotes

    DevLearn had 3 top notch key note speakers, Dr Michio Kaku, "Learning, Technology and the Physics of the Future", Tom Koulopoulos "Living and Learning in the Cloud," Steve Rosenbaum "Why the future of learning is context" all pulled together ably by Brent Schlenker from the eLearning guild, and who hosted the Ignite session.

  • DevLearn Vendor expo

    There were many vendors exhibiting and we just did not have time to see them all, which is a shame. There were many innovative solutions on show, with a major focus on “cross platform authoring” – with content being authored that could be delivered across mobile devices, tablets and to the desktop. The industry is really responding to the desire of learning practitioners to really deliver on the m-learning promise which is now really arriving (at last).

  • DevLearn How The Cloud impacts upon your job

    Ellen Wagner explored “How The Cloud impacts upon your job.”

  • DevLearn Scorm in the Cloud

    Mike Rustici and “Scorm in The Cloud”.

  • Collaborative Content development in a post LMS world.

    With Xyleme’s Mark Hellenger, who began with an interesting theme, highlighting that by 2020 the L&D industry will have to support 5 different generations of learners!

  • Crowd accelerated innovation: The reincarnation of Reusable Learning Objects, Michael Allen.

    With an intriguing title and an interested audience we learnt of a change of mind set from Michael Allen towards the concept of re-use of learning objects, as a way of both speeding up the development of e-learning and an answer Dr Kaku’s question how to reduce the cost of learning!

  • Technology Trends on the horizon, Aaron E Silvers of ADL.

    Here Silvers of ADL was brave enough to look ahead 4-5 years, into how and where e-learning and learning technologies are heading. This was a fascinating and wide ranging view into the future.

  • Beyond SCORM and Project Tin Can: Mike Rustici and Aaron E Silvers

    This joint session addressed the findings of Project Tin Can – ADL’s consultation with the e-learning industry undertaken by Rustici software with additional input from ADL’s Aaron Silvers. Scorm has been a success as it has brought standardisation, but increasingly the SCORM solution to integrate games, virtual reality, augmented reality, mobile learning and simulations is getting harder and is certainly not pretty!

  • The delegates and the demo-fest

    We enjoyed many conversations with very friendly fellow delegates, and would reflect on a number of trends, but this is by no means a representative sample.

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