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Here is quick summary of the things I discovered or revisited in last half of the ALT-C Conference Karen Cator presented an interesting paper by video-cast to the assembly. Karen's focus in on mending a very fragmented school system - I'd argue a broken system - but others might argue a system with a strong independent and democratic tradition with a deep suspicion of anything led at national level. They now have a national educational tech... [read more]
It has taken me longer than I thought to get to reflecting on #altc2011, really as the winds of policy change have been blowing strongly in Scotland over last week or so.Association of Learning Technology members should have a look at our Cabinet Secretary and Minister for Education Mike Russell - leading from the the front on giving the educational system a shake and trying to put the whole debate on educational technology in schools and bey... [read more]
Just spent some useful time in a workshop with lots of colleagues looking at some of the challenges around the adoption of Open Educational Practices.Here is wee list we came up with Generally legal issues around publishing in open way are not recognised by institutions or individuals There are issues around current employment contracts - not clear to individuals or institutions around IP rights. Simple things like what happens when an academic ... [read more]
In a series of posts around our ALT-C symposium (The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Online), Frances Bell, Josie Fraser, Richard Hall and myself pose a range of issues for debate, provoking participants to reconsider the costs of participation online, openness, and the sharing of resources. Following on from my earlier post, which highlighted issues around the tyranny of authenticity, I’m now going to briefly explore ‘network whisp... [read more]
At this year’s ALT-C conference, I’ll be contributing to a symposium session along with Frances Bell, Josie Fraser and Richard Hall. In our session, The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Online, we will pose a range of issues for debate, provoking participants to reconsider the costs of participation online, openness, and the sharing of resources. I’ll be focusing practice-based scenarios based on the publishing and sharing of dig... [read more]
Last year I did quite a detailed post on the things I am looking for at the Association for Learning Technology Conference.http://www.joewilsons.net/2010/09/assessment-futures-new-ventures-and-alt.htmlFrom my original list from last yearExemplifying models of holistic assessment utilising range of different mediums.Exploring use of E-portfolios and their application across institutional boundaries - portfolio moving with learner.Describing and ex... [read more]
This blog will no longer be updated. Instead we will use the update features of our new web site at http://www.alt.ac.uk/ to provide updates about the ALT conference. To stay in touch with ALT and with the ALT conference, please set your RSS reader to pick up relevant feeds directly from the ALT web site. Thank you. Seb Schmoller
Subheading could be five years of teachmeets and the world is a better place but it has not changed. Five years ago some folks working in Scottish Education discovered a model for something called an "unconference " - a more spontaneous and crowd sourced way of organising and hosting a gathering of like minds. With a little light branding (see logo above) and a set of "rules" what started as an an annual event has almost become a moveme... [read more]
I would like to see Scottish Colleges and Schools plugged in more actively to the growing open educational resource movement. I have made the case a few times before. This info graphic says a lot more than words. Article is great too.
This week we've watched this clip every night - it cracks my kids up. We want to know where we can buy a talking dog ? We'd like to send him some bacon too !
Attribution:Image: 'One more from the Storr' http://www.flickr.com/photos/59562171@N00/88904665 and with thanks to Carol Walker for tour of http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net Spent a useful day at Open for Education in Edinburgh . Presented with a smorgasbord of practical ideas for delivering in the classroom. From the selection I attended I was as ever impressed by Craig Mill's work on opening up access for IT , Colin Maxwell's enthusiasm ... [read more]
Now the election is over it is great to see some things starting to move quite quickly again. One area is that of technologies for learning and the whole possible reprocurement of GLOW. Spotted today that the Technologies for Learning Website sprang back into life. All three of the new papers are worthy of discussion. I spotted too that Lesley Riddoch is asking well intentioned questions about what is needed in this space. The debate starting he... [read more]
Typing Shop, a photo by joecar80 on Flickr.I'm sure they will move on to other devices - but worth a pause for thought. These shops feature all around the world and help folks with form filling , reading and translation ..I'm not sure what the UK equivalent would be.. an internet cafe ? not sure they are quite as community orientated. Today, the last type writer manufacturer shuts up shop http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/861749-worlds-last-typewriter... [read more]
Liked this as a presentation and for way it handles some challenges.Still not certain there is enough learning around this being shared between workplace, HE , FE and Schools The 5 big mistakes in virtual education View more presentations from guiramirez
In a recent blog post I mentioned the impact of Twitter for me at ALT-C. Overall from my experience, Twitter has really added value to conferences I have attended and made them more joined up and much more a social affair. It has helped to build a real community, especially at ALT-C. I first went to ALT-C 2003 in Sheffield and to be honest found it quite a souless affair. I didn’t know many people and it was “quite hard” to get to know people wit... [read more]
ALT-C this year once more brought the use of Twitter at conferences to the fore again and discussions on the value of the back channel. Last year in November danah boyd delivered a speech at the Web 2.0 Expo and according to her own words: From my perspective, I did a dreadful job at delivering my message. If you read the rest of her blog entry you realise that she was having a bad day. So that happens to us all. However what marked out danah’s b... [read more]
So I have spent a week in Nottingham at ALT-C that is in many ways a traditional academic style conference. We had keynotes and invited speakers, papers short and long, symposia with panels and workshops. The focus of ALT-C as I see it is very much about bringing together a community to share practice, network and move one’s own learning forward. I do enjoy the conference and learn a lot from it. It’s great to network, discuss, debate and share ... [read more]
Finally some overall reflections on the ALT-C conference. It has been a couple of years since I last attended and I noted a couple of emerging themes. Firstly more and more institutions are making their learning material available via open channels such as YouTube and iTunesU and this material is very much seen as beneficial in marketing the institution. Secondly there is growing use of distance learning techniques in commercial activity which is... [read more]
I wrote this post on an early morning train a few days ago, but didn’t get chance to publish with links until now – did consider writing a more up-to-date version, but decided against it as i wanted to capture/remember how I felt at the time… A 4am start the morning after the ALT-C Gala Dinner isn’t what i’d have hoped for (on the way to another event), but on the plus side it does mean there’s some time for bleary-eyed train reflection on what h... [read more]
So, a few days recovery, and my reflection on ALT-C 2010. For someone who works very much at the technical end of learning technology, it was refreshing to see such good usage of the backchannel (twitter, crowdvine, etc), although the pace was sometimes overwhelming – even for a near-digital native such as myself. Additionally, it was good to see some of the projects that have been attening ALT-C for the last few years, to come to their conclusio... [read more]
On my way to the final day of the ALT conference I was driving along the Derby Road at about 8.45 whan I heard a bang behind me. A white van had hit a post at the zebra crossing. People ran towards it, presumably to help. I was grateful that I had been in front of it as I imagined the hold-up to the rush hour traffic.Musing over this and the importance of timing. Right place, right time vs right place, wrong time. How consequences change accordin... [read more]
The ALT Conference is always a good conference to challenge your assumptions, make new discoveries and question your practice. This year’s conference was no exception, there was plenty to make you think, question, challenge and importantly learn from others. As with many conferences the discussions outside the sessions (either on the back channel or over coffee) are just as valuable as the content of the sessions themselves. However they can’t ex... [read more]
New wine, old bottles was possibly the key theme of ALT-C in that much of the discussion flowed around questioning the relevance and role of traditional delivery methods of education in the digital age. From Donald Clark’s dissing of the lecture format, which he puzzlingly delivered by giving a pretty good lecture (in the sense that it was entertaining, polemical, well illustrated, he didn’t read from a paper, he engaged the audience, and he swor... [read more]
Just for fun… I was going to do more with this, but my editing skills and lack of useful photographs, as well as not wanting to offend too many people, means that this is it!
Here are the results of the ALT-C 2010 Best Paper Award the Best Poster Awards, and of the 2010 ALT Learning Technologist of the Year Award.Winner of the Award for the ALT-C 2010 Best Proceedings Paper 0188 "An analysis of first-year business students’ mobile phones and their use for learning" Claire Bradley and Debbie Holley London Metropolitan University http://tinyurl.com/36vldzz - 1.3MB PDF of full paperWinner of the ALT-C 2010 Best Poster... [read more]
Sugata Mitra’s keynote on the second day of ALT was really inspiring. There’s quite a lot written on the Cloudworks site about this keynote so I’d suggest you take a look at this and also the TEDtalks video that is linked from this site, entitled Can children teach themselves. His keynote at ALT was entitled, ‘the hole in the wall, self organising systems in education’ and Sugata spoke about his work in India where he had installed numerous ... [read more]
One paper stood out for me as particularly interesting - it came out of a JISC study on user behaviour carried out at Middlesex University. The paper was entitled Electronic resource discovery systems: do they help or hinder when searching for academic materials and it was presented by Balbir S. Barn. This qualitative study examined students and researchers in economics and business studies, based at Cranfield University, LSE and Middlesex. The s... [read more]
I seemed to attend quite a number of sessions over the past 3 day in Nottingham about either open educational resources (OERs) or digital literacy. I deliberately chose these parallels as they both relate to my new project: DELILA. I’ll share a few thoughts from some of the sessions I went to. In terms of the keynotes, I arrived just as Donald Clark was starting his opening keynote so had to stand at the back. The Twitter stream suggested quite... [read more]
This year's Association for Learning Technologies Annual Conference alternated between highs and lows, controversy and comfort. Let me explain: One of the most controversial parts of the conference was the opening keynote, which I and many others have already reported on. I have heard just about every possible reaction to Donald Clark's speech, some mirroring the invective he unleashed, even the profanities. Enough said. Other (slightly less) con... [read more]
