Imagine! was a conference organised by the OECD (CELE, Center for Effective Learning Environments and CERI, Center for Educational Research and Innovation), the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, and Vienna University of Technology. It presented radical visions for tomorrow's schools and discussed the key factors that make them work, ranging from innovative design solutions to financing and procurement strategies.

The conference took place at the wonderful Kuppelsaal at the Vienna University of Technology (which is a 3 min walk away from my office) September 20th - 22nd 2010. I liked the international and interdisciplinary line up (list of Speakers and Workshop Facilitators), most of the talks and panels were pretty interesting for me since they brought a lot of insights from teachers, planners and educational institutions around the world.

Christian Kühn asked me to co-facilitate the workshop"Expanding Virtually" together with David Istance from the OECD. The Workshop was about investigating non-physical (which i like better than virtual) learning environments:

We have been waiting for the virtual world to transform education for more than a decade. In reality, in most schools computers and digital white boards have been added to the existing infrastructure but what evidence have we seen of change? Has ICT been integrated into our existing styles of teaching and learning? Or are we still at the beginning of a revolution? What will the influence of new patterns of social interaction through ICT be on the program and layout of the buildings we use for education? Might we end up in a world without schools?

It was a new experience to host a workshop where most of the participants were A) older than me and B) teachers. The world cafe format implied a lot of rotation among the participants and turned out to be challenging for me since it was neccessary to introduce all new and visiting participants on the topic and the challenging scenario. Find a video of the workshop here.

I wished we had more time to dig deeper into the possibilities and challenges of digital learning environments, but I met people I am in touch since and left the conference with a lot of inspiration for theEducational Game we are currently working on.