Given we’re doing quite a bit of work with this segment I figured this was going to be a pretty cool day talking to a lot of great people who are doing wonderful things with students who don’t have the opportunity to learn like some of us – and I was right.

The event was very well run and even though I’m not directly involved in Education I thought the speaker line up was first class – the opening address by Professor Ron McCallum was first class and one of the most entertaining speeches I’ve heard in many years of attending conferences.

I was surprised (and a little disappointed) that there wasn’t a greater use of tools like Twitter and Facebook at the event, particularly given the technology focus. I would have thought speakers on technology like Gerry Kennedy, or the reps from Microsoft and Apple would have been encouraging use of these tools.

We had a really busy day with literally hundreds of attendees wanting information about Livescribe. The attendees kept us on our toes by throwing many different types of ‘Can it help if…’ scenarios at us. A common theme was how Livescribe can help students participate and remain relatively independent in the classroom.

I was pleased to meet a number of our existing customers – and we owe them big thanks as they often hung around our stand talking to prospective customers – there is no power greater than an existing customer talking enthusiastically about your product.

Newcastle is the next stop tomorrow. We’ll be Twittering again, sharing photos, and talking to as many people as we can. If you’re coming to the Newcastle event, please stop by.

UK’s Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies are seeking submissions from the education and learning community around what tools we’ve found are our favourite and/or most useful.

To my amazement as I scan the top 100 entries, Livescribe doesn’t get a mention, so clearly we need to mobilise the crowd and ensure Livescribe Pulse Smartpen makes the list – I believe it deserves to be on the list so I’m going to do my bit to make sure others nominate Livescribe

Following the instructions set down by Jane Hart this blog post serves as my submission of my top 10 tools (in no special order of importance):

1. Livescribe Pulse Smartpen 2GB
2. iPhone
3. Microsoft OneNote
4. Confluence from Atlassian
5. Facebook
6. Mzinga Social Learning Suite
7. Google Reader
8. Slideshare
9. iGoogle
10. WordPress

One thing that caught my attention was that the organiser has included informal learning – social learning. We started to really get into this space via our partners at Smart Selling and through some dialogue with luminaries like Denise Wood of Uni of SA and David Wilkins during his Mzinga days – we’ll publish some thoughts shortly on his idea of the XYZ axis of learning.

Whilst I’m not sure which of the 25 categories Livescribe would fit into – I’d really like to see the Smartpen make the list. Make sure you check out the Slideshare presentation on her site also.

With the recent addition of pencasts to the functionality in the Livescribe Smartpen and the existing capability to share Livescribe content into Facebook,  Livescribe is becoming an important tool for educators and students alike.

There are many ways Livescribe can aide borderless social learning. For example, students studying say Japanese in Australian schools might create Pencasts of a lesson tutorial and using Facebook could have this assessed by their peers in Kobe – this is a two way street – so students in Kobe can practice articulating English words and share these Pencasts with Australian students who can then provide feedback and help.

I can see schools encouraging students to create borderless study groups so that a subject or lesson topic could be worked on by students located around the world. So we take this idea of Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon breaking down faculty barriers and apply that on an international scale – why should learning be limited to known borders?

If you work in education or are interested in this subject – we’d love to hear from you

The Flip Notepads are priced at $27 (inc GST) for a pack of 4

These pocket sized flip notebooks come in a pack of 4 for AUD 27 inc GST

The Paperblanks Hand Tooled Mini Wrap journals are priced at $27ea (inc GST).

This small and elegant journal is sold individually for AUD 27 inc GST.

Important Notice about Availability.

We only have a limited quantity of the new pads at the moment. If you are interested in the new products please place and order and we’ll hold your back order for priority filling once further stocks become available. If you don’t want to place an order now, please use the comments section of this blog post, or contact us via:

• Our website
• Our Twitter account
• or send us a message via Facebook (note our nice new vanity URL!)

As I’ve commented before, these products are high quality and are a perfect addition to the paper products range.

As I’ve already heard from many of you via phone and email, I’ll address the key questions right up front:

1. When will they be available – I’ll have more info on this in the next 24-48 hours. We need to get stock from the US and also China so it’s not as simple as saying “this date”
2. How much are the new products – we expect to have pricing confirmed in the next week also. As you’re no doubt aware bringing printed products into Australia is not a simple process due to our Customs laws.
3. What colours and styles will be available – this is a tricky one. I’ll know more by next week as we get a handle on what stock is available and how quickly we can get it into the country. As we’ve done in the past we’re likely to focus on a limited selection and then build this as we start to understand what you’d like us to carry.

I’ve had the opportunity to view these products first hand and I have to say they are of exceptional quality. We’ll have these products loaded into our store in the next few days and we’ll start taking pre-orders once we have a confirmed date of availability.

As always, if you have any questions, please comment here, or visit us on Twitter or Facebook.

Our user name is Smartpen

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Search for Smartpen on Facebook. We look forward to having you as a friend.