The 2nd conference of the Master’s Program in eLearning Pedagogy from Universidade Aberta, myMPEL2011, took place last friday, 21 October, in the new facilities at Tagus Park.

Organized by Lina Morgado, the master’s coordinator, and a very engaged and resourceful group of students from MPEL4, it proved, once again, a great opportunity for the community involved in the master’s - teachers, students from the several editions, people interested in the subject areas - to interact and learn from one another. It was also an amazing showcase of the work done by the students in the fourth edition, organized around a Pecha Kucha session that was, for the most part, awesome (with a couple pre-recorded presentations that don’t work so well in a live event). Reflecting on last year’s and this year’s conference, one of the best feelings I have is how this master’s is such an exciting environment for innovation and experimentation concerning online teaching and learning.

We had also major contributions from invited speakers: Pedro Caramez presented remotely, through Colibri, a compelling talk on LinkedIn; Luísa António got people excited about creative labs and innnovation rooms; Helena Lopes and Ana Boa-Ventura, from Media Shots, wowed us with digital storytelling for education; and Vitor Reis brought a very interesting perspective on the contributions of distance education in the training of firemen. The conference was streamed live and had a very active backchannel on Twitter (hashtag: #mympel), so we had a lot of people (including some of our students) following the conference all over the world.

It was an intense, rewarding day, both academically and also because of the opportunity to have some great informal exchanges with students and participants. Some of us teachers presented on topics related to the curricular units we teach.

I did a presentation on Open Educational Resources (PT). This and other resources can be found at http://www.scoop.it/t/mympel-2011/.