XChange

I've spent the last few days at the XChange conference in Birmingham - all about ICT in education. The conference was at the National Motorcycle Museum but I didn't actually see any motorcycles - I was stuck in the conference bit of the museum.

An interesting few days with some excellent speakers including Angela McFarlane and Stephen Heppell, both of whom always make me think but my mindset is closer to Angela, possibly because I've worked with her on and off for so long. She's an excellent speaker and I can't help but think that her students are very lucky. My boss was also a good speaker but I'm ashamed to realise I only spotted one thing wrong with his presentation - it's a sort of ongoing game for me and my team to find factual inaccuracies in his presentations. He's obviously learning!

Had useful chats with Don Passey and Anna Rourke who are both doing good work worthy of support, and, of course, Valerie Thompson and the e-Learning Foundation (now, where did I put that orange and white wristband...). The highlight for me was seeing and listening to two of the ICT in Practice Awards winners, both of whom were very inspirational and quite brave as well, standing up on stage in front of 300 international (so-called) 'experts'. Well done on them! I like the Awards - I was on the judging panel a few years ago and really enjoyed it (I sort of miss that hands-on involvement). That section was all very well managed by Vanessa Pittard who's really grown into her role as a Becta Director - good on yer, lass!

I'm in two minds about the event, though. It could (possibly) turn out to be an important conference and the start of something big but it might also just be another version of the same old talking shop with the same old people and nothing changing as a result. It continues next year in Belfast so I should think that'll be the real test.

It's nice to get it over with. I've been involved in the margins of it for months now so it's a relief that it's actually happened. It's a core UK Presidency event so that gives it some status, but ...

Still, I heard some interesting speakers, did some useful business and networking, arranged to talk to regional colleagues about funding and was asked to speak at a seminar in Manchester in December, so it was worth the effort.

Home now, of course, and listening to Public Image Limited so I'm pleased to be here rather than there!