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 The very first keynote presenter for the conference this year is Alan Amory from the University of Johannesburg. Alan has been to many EdMedia Conferences and you may have been to one of his excellent presentations if you’ve been to the conference before. He’s also served on the EdMedia Steering Committee for three years, retiring in 2007.

Alan’s work on games is well known, and has been quintessential reading for anyone researching the use of games in education. His most recent work in this area, a paper entitled “Game object model version II: A theoretical framework for educational game development”, published in ETR&D in 2007 is available online at http://www.springerlink.com/content/f3m21551up787t70/fulltext.html

Alan is also well known for his sometimes controversial views on political and economic influences on educational policy and developments. For example, his writing on Reusable Learning Objects (RLO) is both provocative and compelling. In 2005 he wrote a paper entitled “The false promise of reusable learning objects”, and even closer to home, in 2005 he urged attendees at EdMedia to ‘just say no’ to learning objects (Available from EdIT Library: http://www.editlib.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Reader.ViewAbstract&paper_id=20297). He wrote: “The RLO model is a natural progression of the commodification processes started with the conversion of intellectual activity into intellectual capital”.

 In a very recent article published in the South African Journal of Higher Education (entitled “It’s not about the tool, it’s about the idealogy”) he wrote: “The conceptualization, development, deployment and use of RLOs is ideologically driven and has little to do with contemporary ideas of learning and everything to do with fundamental and totalitarian ideologies of instruction”.

Most recently, he has been using activity theory as a lens through which to view the relationship between social collaboration, educational technology, and ideology.  In his EdMedia keynote address he will bring these various elements together to show that games, and those that write about games and education, are part of hegemonic systems of the past that are continuously perpetuated into our futures.

I have no doubt you will be entertained, challenged and enlightened by his presentation! And perhaps you would like to comment on his work here, or ask him a question before the conference!