Moodle Moot Philippines – reflections

8th May 2018 ElearningWorld Admin

The first Moodle Moot in the Philippines was simply wonderful !OK, so the things I wasn’t prepared for…

The weather ! 38 degrees every day and very humid … just walking a short distance was incredibly hot.
The traffic ! They say Manila has the worst traffic in South East Asia … I might just have to agree with that now.

The conference itself was superbly organised and run by Nephila Web – the Moodle Partner in the Philippines.

CEO Sheryl and her team did an amazing job, holding the event at the Hotel Manila (previously used by General MacArther, commander of the US forces in the World War II campaign).

There were a whole range of interesting keynotes and shorter presentations across the two days of the conference.

My keynote seemed to go down well (I always try hard to make these interesting and relevant!), and of course on the second day Martin Dougiamas appeared in person, and his keynote was inspiring for Moodle users as usual.

One of my personal highlights was a lawyer talking about personal data and privacy, which of course can be a rather dry subject. But he gave his presentation in a really accessible way, citing the recent Cambridge Analytica debacle, and lots of other examples of how our personal data is at risk, and given away too easily. It was without doubt the best presentation I have seem on this topic.

Delegates were from Universities, schools, and the private sector, and all seems to get something from the conference. I had lots of great conversations throughout the event, and learned all about the challenges for e-learning in the Philippines – perhaps the most daunting being the high cost and poor availability of internet access.

I enjoyed this Moot so much I may well return next year 🙂