Abstract:

Conferences are characterised by too many half remembered, half finished conversations, too little time to absorb them and too much time listening. We leave a conference full of ideas, but few that are remembered. Unless we are very disciplined we never recall who said what and who we should follow up with.  The rhetoric of constructivist learning is rarely evident in face to face events. Surely having the right people in the same place at the same time should be an ideal environment for co-creation rather than only dissemination? I will reflect on some of the best conference moments  and try to analyse why they have worked and what would work in the future given we have so many electronic communication and collaboration tools now at our disposal. Of
course much of what I will have to say is predicated on the fact that institutions allow faculty to attend without having to give a paper in the traditional sense.

Biographical Information:

Dr. Michelle Selinger is a director in the education arena of the Global Public Sector practice of the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) and is currently based in Sydney. She has more than 25 years of experience teaching in secondary schools and in teacher education. In
her work with the IBSG, Michelle's focus is primarily on education transformation in all areas of formal education. Prior to joining IBSG, Michelle was the education strategist for all of Cisco's social investments in education, including the World Economic Forum's Global Education Initiative. She also has experience in working with governments on developing their strategies for education reform through technology.

Michelle was the director of the Centre for New Technologies Research in Education at the University of Warwick, a research and multimedia centre dedicated to research and development in ICT.  She has the fairly unique experience of having worked in traditional, distance, and online
education in all sectors from primary schools to universities, as well as vocational education and training, across many countries. Michelle was a member of the second chamber of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan Advisory Group, which informed the European Union i2010 initiative, and sits on steering committees for various ICT and education initiatives. She is regularly invited to speak at conferences and meetings internationally, and maintains an academic publication portfolio.