ALT-C 2011 retrospective

The ALT-C conference held at Leeds University this September was memorable for a number of reasons. Many of these are compiled into a very readable account in this month's ALT Online Newsletter by Julie Voce, who is also co-chair for ALT-C 2012 Manchester. Julie has done an excellent job capturing the essence and the highlights of the conference, which includes blogged summaries of all the keynote speeches, James Clay's successful ALT-C Live Beta TV streaming experiment, the Learning Technologist of the Year awards (Plymouth University's own Oliver Quinlan was one of the winners this year), and high profile paper sessions, all embellished by evocative images from the conference. It's a must read if you were a delegate and wish to revisit those few days in Yorkshire, but also take a look if you are contemplating attending next year's event.

Image by ALT


ALT-C 2011 retrospective by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Turning up the volume

We have enjoyed an interesting, intense and invigorating few days at the ALT-C event in Leeds this week. It was wonderful to encounter face to face so many people who I have previously got to know on Twitter. The days were filled with papers and demonstrations, symposia and workshops, some excellent, some thought provoking, and a few that could perhaps do with a little more development.... 


There were some interesting new features at ALT-C this year too. A fair amount of my time was taken up working with James Clay and Darren Moon (LSE) on the live streaming TV channel ALT-C Live Beta, which I helped to present. Throughout the conference, a small studio was used to interview delegates, speakers and guests, and James occasionally foraged among the crowd during the breaks to capture some of the vox pop ambience of the conference. The results of these hours of live video will be available on demand very soon on YouTube for all to revisit. For now you can view some of the interviews on this site. ALT-C Live Beta was an experiment that I feel worked extremely well and one that I hope can be a feature at future events. The content from the interviews in particular is rich and varied, and worth a revisit, and I am sure it has already been instrumental in amplifying the conference. Congratulations to James and Darren for adding an extra new dimension to the conference, and thank you both for involving me.

On the final day of ALT-C, in the first session I was pleasantly surprised to see a room full of delegates attending my own future pedagogy session. On the morning after the Conference Gala Dinner - commonly referred to as 'the graveyard slot', you are lucky to have half a dozen resilient punters present. On this occasion, surprisingly, every chair was taken. Three papers were presented, and a lively discussion ensued. Below is my own slide presentation on group blogging, entitled Learning Together Online.

Learning together online

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Turning up the volume by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.