The JISC conference last week was enjoyable. Managed to chat with Scott Wilson & Mark Stubbs (XCRI-CAP), the Bolton Uni crew (Chris, Chris and Jon - another JISC project) and some ex-colleagues from Keele - always informative.
I did the JISC Projects demo stand with Sue Lee on the Tues morning - was very quick and ok - not really appropriate venue (conference foyet) for getting across information about validation systems and repositories.
In terms of what I saw - the keynote speaches were ok, although didn't quite know where to place the presentation from Lizbeth Goodman - although interesting in regards to helping self-expression for those with disabilities - couldn't see the broader application into wider learning (and beyond the arts). Although - personally - I enjoyed the Geo-location games!
For the main workshops/ sessions - I went to:
- Towards the academic library of the future
- http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme/libraryofthefuture.aspx
- Very interesting presentation about how libraries are coping with a digital world
- Not sure what conclusion they had other than students need academic literacy training
- Geo-spatial worlds - how they can benefit researchers and educators in all disciplines
- http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme/geo-spatial.aspx
- Most of the presentations were excellent and very interesting
- I posed a question about quality resources for academics / researchers - seems that EDINA and Digimaps will remain a diffult service to access, so won't be rimvalling Google - not surprising really as EDINA don't have 1 million servers.
- Same issue came up - students need training in using the mapping technology to get anythig worthwhile out - Google is too crude a tool to be valid (for now!??)
