Abstract:

Nowadays’ youngsters have grown up with technology as a commodity for playing, communication, information and for learning. Many of them act within virtual environments and have developed virtual identities as an extension of Self (Second Life, WOW, Facebook, Plaxo, Plazes, Twitter, Dopplr etc.) Wim Veen argues that their online behavior and their virtual presence in cyber space has fostered the development of competencies that former generations could only do within a restricted realm of physical presence. For this generation, called Homo Zappiens, scarcity of reaching out, communications and resources has vanished to a large extent; Homo Zappiens lives in human and technical networks that provide new opportunities to act share and co-create knowledge and expertise.

How do these uses of technologies influence conferences? As virtual presence is no lesser part of life than physical presence, conferences will have to integrate these two worlds. Wim will present the way he thinks future conferences are going to look like.

Biographical Information:

Wim Veen (1946) is a full professor at Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management. His research focuses on new concepts and strategies for ICT enhanced learning in both private companies and regular educational institutions. Traditional learning arrangements no longer hold in a society where knowledge is a key asset of networked organizations. Knowledge production and sharing require flexible strategies for professional development in which learning is an embedded and continuous team activity that is work based, networked, informal, self regulated, and strongly related to business goals or core activities of the organization. In the corporate sector, employees are the social capital of the business.

In regular educational institutions teaching and learning are also undergoing profound changes. Delivery modes are replaced by blends of distributed, networked, and face-to-face learning approaches requiring students to become active and productive learners. Both in the private and public sector the uses of technology appears to be crucial in new ways of learning, knowledge co-creation and sharing.  

Related to the above-mentioned changes in learning, Wim Veen is particularly interested in the cyber culture of the generation growing up with technology. He uses the concept of Homo Zappiens, a generation of learners that has never known its world without the Internet. This generation appears to develop a variety of meta-cognitive skills that are mostly disregarded by traditional teachers and managers. It is now time to learn from this net generation how to take advantage of ICT enabled learning in a networked society.  

Wim Veen is teaching corporate learning. In addition, he is a consultant for educational institutions as well as for private companies and governmental authorities.