As Paul Simon once declared: 'Gee, but it's great to be back home.' I'm glad not to have to worry about paying £5 each morning before 09.00 so my car could avoid the 'clamp', climbing 5 flights of steps to get back to my shoe box of a room in the Henry Price Building, at the University of Leeds, worrying if I have any shower water, trying to find a power socket to recharge my laptop battery, etc... But ALT-C this year, to echo the sentiments of one Thomas Franklin, was probably the best I have attended. Here are my own personal highlights:
An excellent opening keynote speech by Hans Rosling left the audience buzzing, and seemed to inspire just about everyone I talked to. His incisive wit and insightful perspectives on world economic, social and health trends, his use of eye catching software and memorable madcap antics, his masterful melding together of all these elements with e-learning to produce something that was meaningful and resonant with all delegates, was one of the highlights of the conference. The ad hoc, disorganised, crazy and yet totally relevant and (b)leading edge debates, discussions, conversations and fiery toe-to-toe stand up arguments of the ALT Fringe (F-ALT), were unmissable. In fact I feel a little sorry for those who couldn't be there because they had to be witnessed to be believed. The F-ALT badges were much in evidence everywhere I looked, yet there were only 40 in the limited edition. Coupled with this, another highlight was taking part in the live radio podcast of Sounds of the Bazaar, hosted by Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser. Several workshops, including James Clay's "It's a Web 2.0 World out there..." and Frances Bell et al's "Digital Divide Slam" were enjoyable on every dimension, and some very interesting and valuable artefacts were created which will serve the Educommunity for some months to come. Our own humble contribution on the digital gender divide "It's not for girls", is already a popular YouTube video and it's less than 24 hours old.
Crowdvine triumphed as the online success story of the conference, and at the close of the event, 441 members had registered and created profiles (there were a total of 700 delegates this year). Crowdvine was used prior to the conference, and during it, to enable delegates to connect, converse, share and compare. And talking of online resources - if the photos in this blog post are not enough for you there is a veritable treaure chest of images on the Twemes ALT-C Site, and also even more in the personal Flickr photstreams of James Clay, Sam Easterby-Smith, Helen Keegan, Josie Fraser, Emma Duke-Williams and Cristina Costa, and my own to name just a few.The final highlight for me was the Gala Dinner held at Yorkshire County Cricket Ground - Headingly. The iconic surroundings, delightful and passionate company of so many delegates, and the almost immaculate presentation of the 5 course dinner by the young people from the catering colleges, were... well, unforgettable. The organisation of the event was, as ever, superb, efficient and friendly, so our thanks must go out to Seb, Marion, Mark and the ALT team for their almost hurculean efforts to hold everything together. The programme committee must also take their share of the limelight. Here's to next year's event, which will have a tough act to follow...
The weather here yesterday in Leeds was appalling. It poured down from the start of the day until the evening, but were our spirits dampened? No they were not, because we enjoyed an excellent first day here at ALT-C 2008. The day started with a rousing keynote speech from Professor Hans Rosling, who soared to new heights when he suddenly decided to climb a step ladder half way through his speech. Mark van Harmelen (ALT Director of Development) rushed to grab the ladded to steady the speaker, and through his white knuckle anxiety, we could all see the health and saftey risks and potential litigation flashing through his mind (photo from Helen Keegan's Flickr stream). Hans was safe however, and proceeded to wow the assembled delegates with a virtuoso performance, and opened our eyes to demographic statistics of birth and death rates, economic rises and declines and carbon emissions across the globe, using a new piece of graphic animated software he and his son had developed. Known as Gap Minder, it reveals statistics in a way never before seen, except perhaps in a more simplistic way by the likes of visual search engines such as Quintura.
In a style reminiscent of that other great Scandinavian, Victor Borge, Hans Rosling made some pithy omments that had the audience both laughing and questioning their previous take on life. Encyclopedia Brittanica, he said, is read by people who believe it to be true. Wikipedia is read by people who know it is not true, and that is its value. The main global trend now, he declared, is convergence. And still the gems kept coming - 'TV stations use graphics and animation to brand rather than to inform, he told us'. 'Ignorance is the best friend of the teacher'. And finally.... 'there is no digital divide - only a continuum'. For those who missed this most excellent keynote, the video on demand is now available on Elluminate here. Now for day two of ALT-C....
I'm off up to Birmingham tomorrow, to meet with the rest of the Programme Committee for ALT-C 2008. Next year's ALT Conference will take place between 9-11 September at the University of Leeds. It's already shaping up to be a good conference, with keynote speakers including:- David Cavallo, Chief Learning Architect for One Laptop per Child, and Head of the Future of Learning Research Group at MIT Media Lab;
- Dr Itiel Dror, Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Southampton;
- Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and Director of the Gapminder Foundation.
You can download a flyer for the conference here. Tomorrow, we will begin to choose the theme speakers for the event, and go through the protocols for reviewing papers, workshops, etc. I hope the train ride back home will be more comfortable than last year - got back to Plymouth, collapsed with chest pains and ended up in hospital! (Between you and me, I think the buffet car may have had something to do with it....). I had to take a month off work, which I couldn't afford to do this time... I'm off to speak at ICODL in Athens on Wednesday where I will meet up again with my old friend Michael Moore, and when I'm back from that conference, I have a day off (which I will need to spend in Oxford, on the ALT-J Editorial Board meeting). The very next day I'm flying out to Berlin to speak at Online Educa. Too much flying about. I'm tired just thinking about it.
As Paul Simon once declared: 'Gee, but it's great to be back home.' I'm glad not to have to worry about paying £5 each morning before 09.00 so my car could avoid the 'clamp', climbing 5 flights of steps to get back to my shoe box of a room in the Henry Price Building, at the University of Leeds, worrying if I have any shower water, trying to find a power socket to recharge my laptop battery, etc... But ALT-C this year, to echo the sentiments of one Thomas Franklin, was probably the best I have attended. Here are my own personal highlights:
An excellent opening keynote speech by Hans Rosling left the audience buzzing, and seemed to inspire just about everyone I talked to. His incisive wit and insightful perspectives on world economic, social and health trends, his use of eye catching software and memorable madcap antics, his masterful melding together of all these elements with e-learning to produce something that was meaningful and resonant with all delegates, was one of the highlights of the conference. 
Crowdvine triumphed as the online success story of the conference, and at the close of the event, 441 members had registered and created profiles (there were a total of 700 delegates this year). Crowdvine was used prior to the conference, and during it, to enable delegates to connect, converse, share and compare. And talking of online resources - if the photos in this blog post are not enough for you there is a veritable treaure chest of images on the Twemes ALT-C Site, and also even more in the personal Flickr photstreams of James Clay, Sam Easterby-Smith, Helen Keegan, Josie Fraser, Emma Duke-Williams and Cristina Costa, and my own to name just a few.
