The sun certainly shone down on the 250 delegates who attended our 8th Annual Conference last week as we basked in the tropical 30 degree heat of... Loughborough! The full main conference programme of research, primary, secondary and SEN seminars was complemented this year by parallel mini-conferences focusing on our Digital D&T, Food in Schools and Health and Safety programmes and we welcomed over 20 suppliers to our conference exhibition.

The keynote speeches (Powerpoint and Keynote files available below) were, as always, very well attended. Professor Stephanie Atkinson discussed the challenges facing D&T teachers and the importance of designing; David Prest OBE explored the rationale for D&T within the primary curriculum; Professor Patricia Murphy outlined recent research trends in D&T; James Averdieck described how he developed his highly successful Gü puds business and Jonathan Akwue detailed the characteristics of Generation Y – the iPod and Google generations. These Keynote and Powerpoint files are available below, the other seminar and research seminar presentations will be available in the Members Resource Vault shortly.

All the research papers which have been presented at D&T Association Conference 2009 can be searched and freely downloaded directly from Loughborough University archive.

Powerpoint (40Mb .zip), Quicktime (200Mb .zip) and PDF versions of Jonathon Akwue's presentation are available. Please be aware that the transition between formats is not 100% stable so some issues with slide transitions and image sizes will be present.

Throughout the two and a half days delegates were able to engage in a diverse range of discussions, network with D&T colleagues from both the UK and overseas, from as far afield as Iceland and Canada, and participate in practical hands-on activities. These included the particularly challenging post-conference dinner hat-making activity...

Thanks to all who attended and made it such a lively and stimulating event – and we look forward to seeing you again next year.

Photos from the three days HERE