Cathy Moore

Keynote Title:

How storytelling techniques can make any material more engaging

Abstract/Description

Storytellers make any message more memorable by giving it structure and meaning. Elearning designers can do the same by using basic storytelling techniques.

Cathy will show that any type of elearning can benefit from the methods that storytellers use to create anticipation and emotional engagement, and she'll help you decide what approaches will work best for your projects. Soon you'll be using storytelling techniques to make even dry technical material more engaging and easier to learn.

About Cathy

For more than 25 years, Cathy has used technology to help people learn. These days, she helps people strengthen their instructional design skills, and she designs and writes elearning for businesses.

Her materials are used worldwide by professionals, including several Fortune 500 companies.  You can find out more about Cathy here.

Nancy White

Keynote Title:

Why should we "do" community (or why not) for learning?

Abstract/Description

We are navigating a tumultuous and VERY interesting transition of how we think about learning. We are stepping beyond the boundaries of "course," questioning the continuum of formal and informal learning -- all in a time when technology is fundamentally changing what it means to "be together." From this context, the idea of using the social structure of "community" for learning has come center stage. Community has shown to be valuable in some contexts. But should it be THE structure? Is structuring our educational frameworks around community central, or place along the continuum of individual--community--networked learning. When is community the sweet spot? When is it the trap? Let's talk.

About Nancy

Nancy is an international practitioner and learner in understanding and practicing online group facilitation of distributed work, learning, community and networks.

She is a designer, builder and facilitator of online interaction spaces and has done extensive work with "web 2.0" tools and approaches, formal and informal learning and iinstructional design.

Professor

Martin Westwell

Keynote Title:

Creating capacity: meeting the needs of an uncertain future

Abstract/Description

As the world changes at an increasingly fast rate so the economic, social and cultural needs that can be met by education also develop. In a technological world, the environment in which individuals find themselves has the capacity to change the way that people think, behave and learn in ways that were never previously possible. In this context how do we "prepare our students for jobs that don't exist, using technologies that have not been invented, to solve problems that we haven't even considered yet" (Richard Riley, US Secretary of Education, 1999).

Martin will explore the ways in which the emerging evidence from research in neuroscience, the cognitive sciences and education can be coupled with experience and expertise of teachers to gain new insights into the way that the changing world changes learning.

About Martin

Martin brings a scientist's view to learning, science education, policy and industry engagement. Martin Westwell is the first Director of the Flinders Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century.

Martin has won a number of awards for communicating science to non-scientists. In 1999 he was named as 'The Times Scientist of the New Century', and most recently he was short-listed for the Parliamentary Science Writer of the Year award in the UK. More about him here.