Pennsylvania Distance Learning Association Conference and North-East Learning Unconference

The Padla conference on Nov 13th 2013 was unique. It catered to industry, corporate and higher education folks in the North-East Tri-State area. I attended five sessions. The one that I learned a lot from was on Twitter. I liked it because I had always imagined Twitter to be a medium for the famous or even infamous. The argument in my mind was why would someone be interested in a random person's tweets. However, now that I have started tweeting I believe otherwise. It can be used as a social media instrument to increase awareness. It can also be used to enable students to build a community of learners or form groups based on their interests. A faculty member can add people in groups and create a class or community and request participants to tweet. Faculty might prefer to use twitter as an instrument to foster discussion in place of or maybe in addition to their LMS online discussion forums. I do look forward to the North-East unconference to know more about badges and gamification of knowledge.