The tension grows...

It's been a morning of tension. Several of the speakers were visibly nervous as they approached the daunting task of encapsulating the conference for a group of worldly wise tech savvy academics and practitioners. I for one was glad to be sat in the audience (I had Mark Stiles and Helen Keegan for company and camouflage...)

Michelle Selinger's keynote this morning set the scene for the ALT-C 2007 conference. The 'corporate backpacker' (Mike Sharples' description not mine) took a global perspective on e-learning, giving us all a break-neck world tour of e-learning initiatives. She talked about the tensions between informal vs formal learning, north vs south, schools vs higher education and cultures vs economies. There followed an insightful presentation covering the problems, solutions and caveats of implementing digital technologies in education. Perhaps Michelle's most memorable comment related to the imposition of technology expectations upon cultures that would not or could not countenance them. She named it 'technology dissonance' - and cited the example of university campuses in the Far East that would find videoconferencing unworkable when they only have 1 Mb of data coming into the campus.

The themes for ALT-C were also introduced, each with their own 'tensions'. Each can I think be summed up in a dichotomy... Designing learning spaces = formal vs informal; Large scale implementation = simplicity vs complexity; Internationalism = imperialism vs multiculturalism; and finally, the Social network generation = user-control vs institutional control.

The tension(s) will not ease... this conference will reveal them all, and leave us with more questions than answers I think....

ALT! .... I go there

I’m preparing to travel up to the ALT-C 2007 conference next week – it’s the Association for Learning Technology annual bash, held this year in the East Midlands Conference Centre, at the University of Nottingham. I’m editor of the Research Proceedings again this year, so all my hard work has already been put in – now all I have to do is attend, chair a few sessions, and hold a meeting for delegates in which I and my co-editors will discuss what makes a good conference paper (what does? Send your answers in please!). Oh, and there is of course the small issue of driving for 6 hours to get there - easy. The rest of the time I will be dropping in on the papers, demonstrations, workshops and lurking around the exhibitor stalls, trying to pick up new ideas, interesting tips and free pens. I’ll be meeting up again with old colleagues and friends (I am not prepared here to go into the difference), and also talk to some new colleagues and make new friends. I’m particularly interested in listening to the head of Google Research, Dr Peter Norvig, who will be providing the closing keynote address. I intend to blog from the event to keep apace of what is being said and done.

Me old mate Michelle Selinger will also be giving a keynote on the first day, and I have been asked by the Executive Programme Committee to act as her ‘minder’ for the conference – whatever that involves. Once thing anyone who knows Michelle will tell you, is that the last thing she needs is a ‘minder’. She’s quite capable of taking care of herself, but I guess I at least have to offer to play the role I have been given, until she tells me to sling my hook (probably within about 4.5 seconds). I will report back from the conference as time allows, and probably link into all the other ALT-C blogs that will no doubt pop up….

Calling an ALT to it

Such a relief... it's 01.30 in the morning and I have just finished writing the editorial of the Research Proceedings for ALT-C 2007 - the Association for Learning Technologies annual conference. I've been working closely with Nicola Whitton (Manchester Metropolitan University) who is my co-editor, to complete this in time for it to go to press in time for the conference. We have 18 very interesting and thought provoking papers this year, and putting it all together has been time consuming but very rewarding. It's no co-incidence that today is Independence DAY! Yeehaw!

ALT-C is the premier UK e-learning event and promises to be yet another success this September. This year we meet in Nottingham, at the East Midlands Conference Centre, and as of yesterday, over 380 delegates had already registered for the event. Keynote speakers include an old friend of mine, Michelle Selinger from Cisco, and Peter Norvig, who is the head of research at Google. There's still time for you to book your place, but be quick... Spaces are filling up fast - see you at ALT-C in September!