ElearningWorld.org

For the online learning world

Conferences

The New Normal?

I think I have to change the focus of my monthly column here at ElearningWorld. I was always the conference guy; I love going to conferences, networking, meeting people. Online Conferences – not as much. In 2020, I had huge plans, made a big conference calendar, but as it turns out, I haven’t attended anything.

Is this the new normal? Has everything gone online? I guess it had to. I mean, I’m pretty paranoid about the entire global pandemic thing, and our family has pretty much confined itself to my little town, and in fact, my little yard as much as possible. My employer – and specifically my team leader and manager – has been very responsive to work from home, so I’ve been lucky in that respect.

A cartoon from BusinessIllustrator.com, making the point that COVID-19 leads digital transformation.
It’s funny because it’s true. Credit: BusinessIllustrator.com

It’s amazing how this pandemic has been a driver for tech adoption. I’ve had many friends tell me how quickly their employer went from work at home is not possible to please stay home and work from there. And while we have been shopping online for years, we never regularly shopping for everyday items, like groceries, online. Now we wonder why we hadn’t.

There is an answer of course; change. Change is a pain. Why change if you don’t have to? Why take the chance of screwing around with home delivery – you might as well run to the shops like every other time. Why take the chance of letting your employees work from home – you don’t know if your employees will be working or goofing off all day. Even when it’s not hard, change is still a pain in the rear end.

Even the Australian Government has been driven to digital transformation by 2020. I’ll try to avoid political comment, but amazingly the Liberal Government has changed their tune and is looking to expand the NBN (National Broadband Network) by extending their Fibre to the Node model.

Has COVID-19 led the digital transformation at your employment? As Learning Designers, EdTech practitioners and Moodlers is the silver lining been that your work has been placed in the spotlight? And are you going crazy stuck in a self or government-imposed lockdown?

Well, if you are going a bit stir-crazy, you can always virtually attend a MoodleMoot. Next week is MoodleMoot UK & IE, from September 28th to 30th. And the week after, October 6th to 8th, is MoodleMoot US. And of course, every first Tuesday of the month is the regular monthly ELearningWorld Zoom Call.

Image by Junjira Konsang from Pixabay.

Scott Huntley
Latest posts by Scott Huntley (see all)

Scott Huntley

Kenneth "Scott" Huntley is an Instructional Designer with Transport for NSW and WordPress instructor with The Parramatta College. Scott is a Canadian (Nova Scotian) Expat living in the Southern Highlands of Australia. Scott is a Moodle enthusiast and an Internet of Things hobbyist.

Add a reply or comment...