Keynote invitations don’t come much more fun that the one I was excited to accept for this week: the Open University’s annual conference for its community of associate lecturers and other staff. When I first got the email, I knew I made to make it happen because these are the people I love to work with most!
This conference, which attracts close to 500 participants and covers two days (in May and June respectively), is a rare opportunity for a very distributed workforce to come together around topic of common interest, which, inevitably, includes AI this year.
My keynote takes a big picture approach at learning and working and everything in between, and also zooms in on deeply practical approaches to using technology, from analogue to AI. The full title of the talk is Reclaiming the Pace of Digital Productivity in the Age of AI and you can view the full slide deck .
It gives me an opportunity to sign-post the work of some recent special guests that have featured on my podcast, starting with the Digital and AI Literacies work by Angela Gunder, which really inspired me:
These Dimensions of AI Literacies were remixed from the work of Doug Belshaw’s Essential Elements of Digital Literacies, whom I was fortunate to speak to recently as well:
Between these two conversations you’ll get a real flavour of what my keynote is all about. Angela and Doug are really worth listening to – and I am grateful that I was able to speak to them about their work which in turned inspired me when I was writing the keynote.
Lastly, looking ahead into the future of education, beyond AI even, I included some of the voices I discovered earlier this year when I was in Dublin, for Education after the algorithm: Co-designing critical and creative futures. The event was a symposium for thinking otherwise about critical AI and post-AI pedagogies of higher education as part of the Erasmus+ Hacking Innovative Pedagogies: Digital Learning Rewilded (opens in a new tab) project,c haired by Eamon Costello and featured a wonderful keynote by Helen Beetham.
I talked about walking, both literally and metaphorically, in my session Critical Cadence, and I hope to be able to share some of the hope and inspiration I gathered at this event with the audience in my keynote, offering some energy and joy at the business end of a very busy academic year.