A Hoot at the Moot

What makes a great conference? The location? The speakers? The chance to network? The quality and variety of the food and drink? Or simply coming away with the sense of being part of a vibrant no-fail community of teachers? In our mash-up world, no one factor makes or breaks a conference but for me the 2010 MoodleMoot in Melbourne ticked an awful lot of boxes!

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First the setting. Melbourne is a fantastic city and one that I had been looking forward to visiting for a long time. Whilst there I took in a fantastic game of Aussie Rules Footy between Geelong and Hawthorn (70,000 punters moved into and out of the MCG with the absolute minimum of fuss in contrast to virtually every sports ground in the UK). And there ample chance to enjoy what Melbourne is rightly famous for - great food, good shopping, a city whose transport infrastructure works and for whom sport and quality leisure time matters a great deal.

And in the new Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Australia’s second city has a remarkable facility for global conferences. The quality of the food and ease of movement around a vast complex was superb. Tutor2u has found some excellent conference venues in recent years (I love the setting at the British Library and we return there in 2011!) but this was a conference venue on a different level.

The MoodleMoot brought together over 450 teachers, developers and technicians involved in or interested in using the Moodle learning management system as a way of delivering online courses. There were some superb key-note sessions, the highlight for me was a talk by Dr Curtis Bonk from Indiana State University and one of the world’s acknowledged experts in understanding what is driving emerging technologies in learning. His 2009 book The World is Open was waiting for me in my letterbox when i got back to the UK!

Martin Dougiamas, Founder and Lead Developer of Moodle was also on hand throughout the conference to explain the exciting progress being made with Moodle 2.0 which is within touching distance of a full release.

Some of the break-out sessions were excellent. The best (as with the UK Moodle Moot in April) offered clear insights into how Moodle can be used in practice and the exciting ways in which teachers are harnessing the power of social media tools such as Twitter, You Tube, Mahara and other bits of software. Moodle is highly flexible and open to being joined up with 3rd party programs that enhance the learning experience.

From an extended programme of talks and presentations I picked out several from Julian Ridden from Pukunui Technology as among my favourites. And Michelle Moore’s talk on teaching with Moodle was a joy to listen to - one of the very best I have heard in many years of conference going! Michelle is at Remote Learner in the United States. Sessions from Francis Kneebone (Embedding with new media) and Oliver Bayerlein from Nanzan University in Japan (More than one right, three false: enhancing multiple choice questions) also hit the mark for me!

David Parkin - renowned player and coach in the world of Australian Rules gave a passionate and remarkable final talk. All I can say is that if I was on his team and losing badly ahead of the final quarter I wouldn’t want to be in his dressing room!

The Moot provided a great chance to meet many of the people I have been conversing with online and also to put faces to the names of those who make the Twitter back-channel such a great feature of modern-day conferences.

Keeping a four day conference running so smoothly and maintaining the energy and enthusiasm of the delegates is no easy task. So special thanks are due to Steve Watt, Allan Christie, Phil Marriott, Mark Dreschler and others from NetSpot. I might not be able to make the 2011 Moot in Sydney (now that would be fun!) but I will happily follow the fantastic twitter back-channel from a comfortable chair somewhere else.