Emerging technologies help link the physical to the digital

Published Wednesday 14 December 2011

Introducing and explaining emerging technologies, the event was aimed at e-learning practitioners, managers and educational technologists.

Steve’s session focused on ways to link physical resources to digital ones through the use of mobile devices.

Demonstrating the use of technologies, such as QR codes, augmented reality and near field communication (NFC), Steve aimed to demystify some of the concepts around them.

While these technologies are conceptually and technically simple, fairly familiar and becoming mainstream, the user experience of them is not always a good one, Steve said.

We helped attendees understand some of the possible frustrations and limitations of these technologies and provided practical guidance on how to use them effectively in education settings.

Collaborative learning to benefit from digital mapping

Chris ran a session on the potential of location-based technologies and digital mapping, exploring some of the more exciting features of Google Maps and Google Earth.

Digital mapping technologies are well on their way to becoming part of common practice, Chris said.

When these are combined with the social web applications all sorts of collaborative learning opportunities become possible.

We used these tools to look at how we can understand ‘place’ better by sharing common experiences and using maps to analyse data.

Engaging and interesting discussions

The event was very well received by the attendees with 90% rating it as ‘excellent’ in their feedback.

Both Netskills speakers were very engaging and put forward points for interesting discussions, one of the attendees commented.

Another one praised the interactivity and time dedicated to exploring and 'playing' with the technologies.

I was really impressed with the day - clearly a lot work had gone into preparing resources and making the activities as interactive as possible.

You can read more about the topics of the day on Steve’s blog:

Find out more: http://sboneham.com/blog/2011/12/linking-physical-to-digital/