The eLearning Alliance is pleased to announce that John Connell will be giving a keynote speech at this years Learning Essentials event on 31st October.

In John Connell, we have an educationist with wide experience across all education sectors, and founder of the ‘I Am Learner’ international education consultancy. He counts UNESCO, European Schoolnet, Promethean, the Maitri Trust, Skills Development Scotland and Pearson amongst his recent clients.

Many of you may know John from when he led the design, procurement and initial implementation of the Scottish Schools Digital Network project, now known as Glow.  Following this project, John was an education business strategist for Cisco, working across Emerging Markets, including Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia.  He's advised governments, universities, NGOs and other bodies on the potential of networked learning in education.

At Learning Essentials, John will speak about the conjunction of education and technology, sharing his views on how new technologies are impacting our learning environment, and how the reality of the learning revolution is that it is happening slowly, piecemeal, sometimes imperceptibly, around us, but its ultimate repercussions are likely to be deeper, broader and more thoroughgoing than even many of the enthusiasts are anticipating.

John will share how the critical factor in this slow but deep revolution is the fact that technology is changing education from the inside out. While the tools and platforms and systems being externally imposed on schools, colleges, universities and workplaces all play their parts in the 'revolution', the most profound effects are really arising out of the changes that digital and networking technologies have wrought in the way that people can now learn, in the re-shaping of traditional relationships between teacher and learner, and in the shifting of the locus of control over learning from the institution and the teacher to the learner.

John will use his experience of education across the world to provoke some thinking on the nature of this gradual and global revolution in learning.

Learning Essentials 2014 takes place at West Lothian College on 31st October.  The cost for Alliance Members to attend the days event is only £99.

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