Handheld Learning 2008

London 3rd June 2008. The organisers of this years Handheld Learning Conference in October will give Teachers that attend free Nintendo DS systems with a copy of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training.

The conference, now in its fourth year, explores how technologies that are becoming common place in the lives of young people are also being used for powerful learning experiences both in and out of the school.

Graham Brown-Martin, founder of Handheld Learning, said,

Providing teachers with free Nintendo DS Lite’s is not intended to be a gimmick, we expect our delegates to use them during the conference and experience an environment that would typically not be allowed in a classrom.

The 3 day event, running from Oct 13th-15th, is the largest of its kind and brings together many of the world’s leading education experts, school leaders and policy makers as well as parents and children to explore the convergence between consumer electronics, entertainment software, educational technology and learning.

The opening day of the conference is free to the general public and features a range of activities including an exhibition, seminars, games and competitions followed by an awards party in the evening.

Speakers including popular science writer, Steven Johnson, social media scientist, danah boyd, former Xerox Corp chief scientist, John Seely Brown, writer, Marc Prensky, learning visionary, Stephen Heppell, Futurelab research director, Keri Facer, mobile learning guru, Mike Sharples and MIT’s chief learning architect, David Cavallo will join Andrew Pinder, CBE, chairman of Becta.

The event is supported by UK government agency, Becta, along with industry support from Nintendo and Apple.

Darren Gorton, Business Development Director for Nintendo, said

We are proud to be supporting this important event once again and look forward to hearing from the some of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of learning. With over 70 million DS units in peoples hands we are genuinely interested in the positive impact that they can have for self-improvement and collaborative learning.