Conference 2009 >
Plenaries
| Learning & development: intellectual capital you can bank on!
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Tony Buzan, Author, Educationalist and the creator of Mind Mapping |
Credit crunch, financial downturn, falling sales, rising prices, budget cuts - are you concerned about how these will hit your bottom line? Imagine if you could improve the brain power of each one of your managers and employees, especially your own. In a marketplace where competition is fierce and it is increasingly difficult to maintain corporate flair and individuality, it is more important than ever to acquire learning skills that can affect your turnover in a positive way.
The current economic crises were caused, to a large extent, by inadequate learning and bankruptcy of thought. The prime asset of all businesses and organisations is intellectual capital and the currency of intellectual capital is multiple intelligences. This capital and this currency are the most valuable commodities on the planet. Past experience has shown that it is often the L&D budget which is the first to be cut in times of adversity.
However, those leaders who are wise enough to invest in them long term will discover that this 'business portfolio' will deliver a greater ROI than that from any other currency or stock. You have the choice of investing in a few gold bars, oil, stocks and shares, property, cars, stamps, antiques, or your brain. The choice is a 'no brainer'. Become an intellectual capitalist! |
| Learning and technology: success and strategy in a digital world
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George Siemens, Associate Director, R & D, Learning Technologies Centre |
Learning at work is changing. Once money and time constrained learning delivery to one of two places: the classroom or on the job. New ways of delivering learning content and the power of electronic networking now provide more opportunities for, and many different ways of, learning than ever before.
In this expanding world of learning, the 'course' is not dead. Its share of our learning time has just decreased. As the 'course' becomes less a key component of learning, our view of learning has enlarged from an industrial model of production to something that must be adaptive, and contextual.
In this keynote presentation, leading thinker George Siemens will examine the basis of the new world of learning, and will ask how organisations can use learning and technology initiatives to support organisational goals. Are we finally in an era when learning can demonstrate its value? This is a question that goes beyond simple measures of ROI. It is a matter of building structured links between the development of employees, supported by technology, and organisational goals. It promises a great deal to those capable of embracing it. |
| Learning for tomorrow: what a difference a decade makes
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Donald Clark, Board Member, Ufi
Charles Jennings, former Global Head of Learning Thomson Reuters
Jay Cross, CEO, The Internet Time Group |
For the first time we bring together on stage three of the great thinker / practitioners of the world of technology-supported learning to ask what - if anything - have we learnt over the past decade? And does it alter where we're going?
Charles Jennings, drawing on his experience as Global Head of Learning at Reuters and Thomson Reuters, will ask what lessons have we learnt at work over the past decade. Do we support learning and development any better now, or any differently, than we did in 1998? Has the boom in learning technologies blinded us to the need to understand how people learn and how to link that learning to performance?
Jay Cross, CEO of Internet Time Group, wants to celebrate how far we've come. For Jay, the first person to use the term 'e-learning' on the web and tireless promoter of the concept of 'informal learning', the past decade has liberated us from the tyranny of formal, structured learning, to appreciate that learning is a natural phenomenon to be supported, not led, by technologies and organisations.
Meanwhile, Donald Clark, Ufi board member, sends out a rallying cry to revolutionise learning using different language. We have, says Donald, allowed ourselves to be tied in knots by the constraints of training. It's time to re-define what learning means, and set ourselves free!
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