I am realizing that one of the difficulties of conferences is that there are at least four presentations going on at any one point that one would like to attend. Then there are whole dry spells where there is nothing going on that is remotely applicable to your interests.
The eLearning Conference in Accra, Ghana has so many presentations of merit that I am having difficulty levelling it to down to one choice per time slot.
In a seemingly bizarre, yet relatively common, convergence of people and purpose, Dr. Hamish Macleod of the University of Edinburgh will be giving a presentation on eLearning at the University of Edinburgh. The bizarre part of this is that I am using this very eLearning platform as I work towards a LL.M at the University of Edinburgh. I am hoping to attend his conference and perhaps even talk with the man afterwards. Edinburgh’s eLearning platform is relatively robust and scores fairly high on my limited metric of usability.
From what I understand, it is also developed in-house, which besides being a fairly impressive commitment of resources is also a virtual vote of no confidence in the commercial alternatives, namely Blackboard. Being the accidental expert on virtual learning environments (this is my second distance program), I give the nod to Edinburgh over Blackboard. I say this as a host of Blackboard litigation swirls above my head like vultures.