Over the last few days I have been in Nottingham talking at two conferences. Tuesday to Thursday I’ve been at the Association for Learning Technology’s Conference (ALTc) which is a massive, full on, education led conference, showcasing a gigantic range of educational technology practice. The theme this year was ‘Building a Culture of Learning’ and there was a lot of MOOC activity (someone even had that MOOC Squad t-shirt from my previous post!), in fact that was why I was there, we launched the special interest group on MOOCs yesterday.
The MOOC SIG has over 60 people signed up before the conference and we have circulated the sign up page since then so it will be interesting to see how many more people add themselves to the list. There are 10 committee members, not all of whom could attend but they remain active members regardless. Mark Morley (who wasn’t there) sent me a link to a group Diigo account and Helen Whitehead (who was there) came along and participated at the launch. Prezi for Launch here
The launch went well and was well attended considering it was 9am, the morning after their 20th Anniversary Gala dinner! We had a great discussion and got some valuable input from those present. We invited the SIG members to sign into our website and contribute to various themes that we’d identified. So it will be good to see how that works out. We have lots of work to do, but we have a great team, all of us raring to go and actively participating so that should be interesting.
ALTc is always very full on and you always feel like you don’t see everything you should. But I was lucky to be able to be there as part of something and met up with some great people. Mira Vogel, James Little, and Helen Whitehead on the SIG, Olaojo Aiyegbayo who is creating iPad Coffee Clubs at Huddersfield (based on the Southampton ones) Hilary Griffiths from Bristol (who I’d met at the QAQE SIG conference at Hertfordshire Uni last Friday!) and many more.
ALTc finished after Stephen Downes crazy keynote which covered networks, Lolcats, Frank Zappa and two in one shampoo ( I kid you not) I then raced over to the RAISE Conference at the other Nottingham Conference Centre to meet up with Southampton colleagues and students. I’m presenting the Digichamps there with Katie Spires (Digichamp). Julie Wintrup is there with Kelly Wakefield along with three Curriculum Innovation Students to present their paper. The RAISE conference is all about Student Engagement and so having a paper accepted there about the Digichamps was excellent.
I’ve just relayed the facts here because I wanted to get something written down amongst the mayhem, and its only 5.30am which is way too early to be writing anything, but I have to grab the moments I have 🙂 More when I can
Double Digit Education 