
(c) @GlennWoolaghan [Twitter]
Firstly it was free other than the cost of getting to London, Victoria and back for 10:00am – 3:30pm. A cup of coffee and a pain-au-chocolate later and we was shown a brief “Sway” presentation before the big reveal, doors slid open in our relatively small room, showing a much larger room with bright colours, comfy stool and giant bean bags. We grab a mobile device… this is going to be interactive! I pick a rugged grey “Stone” tablet with keyboard and a carry handle, colleagues pick HP tablets or Surface Pro’s – they all do the job they need to do.
We are asked to rate out the following out of four possible options: Don’t know what it it, aware, used a bit, used a lot using coloured post-it’s.
- Windows 8.1 – its search capabilities and seamlessness
- Yammer – social networking in a safe environment
- Office 365 – buckloads, I even learnt about “Delve” (did you know a 365 account gives you 5 downloadable office’s?)
- OneNote – the collaborative side utilising OneNote Classroom
- OneDrive – limitless
- Lync (Skype for Business) – connect to others and record sessions!
Now I was able to answer “used a lot” for all but that’s more a comment upon the organisation I work for and the projects I am involved in. I found the delivery that followed upon these technologies well thought-out and verging on seamless. a worthy day for the less tech proficient for sure. We had an outline of Mix and Sway (yes I felt an over whelming smugness) and then a hard-sell pitch for taking back-end services and pushing to our learners – progress, options, etc. (way off but lord-able goals). Finally we had highlighted windows 10 and HoloLens.
I certainly found the day worthwhile but I took a number of key things with me…
- The organisation I work for are certainly embracing the tech discussed
- Although the room looked funky the backless “stools” were not nearly as comfortable as the “sit-in” bean bags
- Despite discussing how being untethered from the front of the classroom is ideal, it wasn’t applied (beyond a demonstration)
- A number of technologies will not work fully until we are in a 1-2-1 device position (such as OneNote)
- I cannot see myself bringing everything together under one platform, I am all for diversity in technology (Our D.A.V.E. intranet covers the likes of Delve and Yammer)
- Finally, there was a lot of discussion around learners subverting the technologies. More of this on a future post.
Andy