International Conference on Information
Communication Technologies in Education (ICICTE) held in Kos, Greece, July
9-11, 2015
I have had a copy of the ICICTE
conference’s call for papers for many years on my pegboard at work. However, I’ve been loving attending the
Advanced Association of Computing in Education (AACE) conferences over the last
six years, and while this year the AACE conference was in Montreal, PQ, I
decided to give the AACE conference a miss and try a similar kind of conference
in a country I am growing to love: Greece.
POLITICAL CLIMATE
This year, because of its political
bankruptcy situation, going to Greece was a bit of a concern for me. News reports warned of travellers not being
able to access cash from bank machines and were advised to carry cash. I worried that tourists like me would be targeted
and I would be susceptible to robbery. I
wondered what the mood of the locals would be like, but the beauty of the
landscape, the language, the food, and the learning opportunities drew me like
no other place draws me. After weeks of
planning a conference workshop with a colleague, no last minute plans were made
to interrupt our voyage, and to Greece we went.
CHANGING LATITUDES
Our first stop was on a little island just
a 20-minute ferry boat ride from the island of Kos. The island, Kalymnos, where we spent four
nights was a perfect location to acclimatize to the time change and the pace of
life. We practiced our workshop parts on
the beach and in café’s meeting other internationals and indulging on fine
Greek cuisine. We explored the island one day learning of its many hidden caves
perfect for climbers from around the world to visit and scuba divers like me to
explore beneath the sea.
A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE
After our sojourn on this beautiful island
and port city of Portia, we made our way back to Kos to join the conference
delegates from major places like Greece, the UK, Australia, the US, and three
others from BC. The conference numbers
are small (i.e. 75), but hearts are big.
The main organizers are like a family and many have been on the Steering
Committee for over 15 years. With such a
small number of delegates many opportunities present themselves for rich
conversations that deepen because of the frequency you see others who share the
same passion as you in educational technologies. I’ve never had such richness of conversations
at any other conference. Yes, the back
chanelling like with any conference is done, but at ICICTE almost every other
delegate is a presenter and meeting this kind of fellow presenter and
researcher was just the icing on the cake.
At last year’s conference in Tempere, Finland, a similar phenomenon
began because of my involvement in the presenting community, but this year
there was something even more special which occurred.
Luckily, my co-presenter, Lisa and I got to
present on the first day. I think I’m
lucky because bringing all the energy and ideas into the first day helped me to
relax on my topic and spend the next two days absorbing other topics around
me. Meeting at the social events focused
on “shop talk” because we all knew we had the same experiences in common. Ideas abounded as we chatted on topics we
were passionate about. In addition, we
could take in the beauty of the resort and conference centre (Neptune) where
ICICTE took place, and even the beach at Mastichari where the final dinner was
held. Such a fine location and food were
a perfect spot for us to build knowledge.
The Conference Director, Nancy, used her special gifts to find this
location, and will be doing the same for the next location for 2016.
GAINING KNOWLEDGE
Three key workshops I’m reviewing are on
the following topics, problem solving, scaffolding, academic citations, and
engagement in online support for face-to-face students. Having connections with people who have done
research on topics on which I am interested will help me to build a topic of
investigation for the 2015-2016 school year.
With a focus on how to support learning in my classrooms, I will have
more to contribute at the next ICICTE conference.
Some ideas I’m considering are how to help
students make use of my office hours remotely as I have found that students
that find time to get feedback understand the content better and more
deeply. Although our students at BCIT
are time challenged (who isn’t), having access to an instructor remotely
reduces travel time and they can “pop” into office hours through skype or
facetime. Having the opportunity to a conference event called "Philosopher's Cafe" really helped to solidify all of the ideas that were swirling around in my head after three days of sessions and conversations.
In our workshop Lisa and I and the attendees discussed issues of
challenges and benefits of incorporating educational technologies into our
classrooms and looked for similarities internationally in any classroom. We found time was the major challenge for
early adopters and getting buy in from students to try new ways to enhance
learning. We produced an asset and
registered the document under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
and shared the results of our findings freely with the conference participants.
In all, the ICICTE
2015 conference was a worthwhile experience visually, academically, personally,
and I look forward to making contributions to the ICICTE proceedings in the future.
