e-Learning Stuff

At ALT-C this year I interviewed Steve as part of ALT Live Beta and he interviewed me….

With James Clay and Steve Wheeler.

This is the 81st e-Learning Stuff Podcast, In conversation

Download the podcast in mp3 format: In conversation

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I really enjoyed this talk by Jimmy Wales at LWF11.

Jimmy Wales is the US Internet entrepreneur and wiki pioneer best known as the founder of Wikipedia. “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge” Jimmy asks us in this talk and discusses how Wikipedia has grown, the impact it has made and the people who contribute to its creation. Jimmy discusses future directions and plans for Wikipedia and Wikia, Inc. Presented January 11th 2011.

I mentioned this recently in the final ALT-C Keynote.

I am writing some more reflective stuff on ALT-C, but wanted to post this about FE at ALT-C.

There has been a fair bit of coverage of day one of ALT-C by FE Week, a new publication for FE. Article and page spread.

Details of the winners of Learning Technologist of the Year 2011, would be nice to see some FE winners next year, so why not enter.

Blogs about ALT-C, a feed of blogs about ALT-C, this will expand as more people reflect on the conference.

I enjoyed ALT-C again this year. As well as going to keynotes and sessions I also spent a bit of time streaming live video with my experiment ALT Live Beta and here are some thoughts from Steve Wheeler.

Met a fair few people from FE, congrats to Claire Donlan from Middlesborough College who is now vice-chair of ALT.

Well done to Ellen Lessner who blogged about the event on behalf of LSIS TEN.

Was nice to meet Kieran from Sheffield College, Jo from Blackpool & Flyde College and Mel from Milton Keynes College. Good to see many old friends too, like Phil from Aberdeen College. Also met loads of people from HE, local and far away, good to meet Thom Cochrane from Auckland who I have known for many years, who incidentally won the best proceedings paper award.

ALT-C has so much to offer the FE sector.

Now I know (as you do, as do the others from FE who attended) that the first week in September can be busy for FE.

What I would like you to do, is look back over the week and ask yourself, how busy were you doing ILT stuff, and how much stuff were you doing that could have been done by others?

Could you have been not in college for one day perhaps?

Now is the time to decide if you can get out of college next year for ALT-C 2012. Talk to your manager now about what you actually did and how you wouldn’t really be missed if you attended probably the only and best learning technology conference currently happening.

I know how challenging it can be to get out of college for the four days of ALT-C, I know because I do it. Luckily I have a great team behind me. I did check my e-mail when I was away and to be honest there wasn’t much there as people were busy back at the college!.

If your place gets manic and people get all panicky, I would ask why are we always surprised by the fact that students arrive in September and as a result things get busy.

It’s not as though it happens every year is it…. oh!

This has been an experiment I have been thinking about doing for a while now, and I emphasise this is an experiment, hence the beta moniker. I have no idea if this will work as planned or is something that people will engage with.

Amplification of conferences is something that has been happening for a while and I have discussed at length in a previous blog post.

In that post I talked about my social media experience of the ALT Conferences I had attended since 2003. I said that ALT-C 2007 was a bit of a sea change and the first of the ALT Conferences that social media really started to amplify the conference beyond the walls of the physical conference. Amplification can take many forms and Brian’s post about providing an Amplified Event Service is well worth reading.

There are many people who can not make ALT-C for a variety of reasons, sometimes no funding is available, many people interested in the conference don’t live in the UK so making it more difficult to get funding and from my own sector, the first week in September for FE Colleges is the busiest one of the year, so very few FE people can attend the conference in person. For these people amplification of a conference can allow them to “attend” and engage. For some the end result will be that they enjoy the experience and attend the conference the following year.

In the past at ALT-C, though we have had the live streams of the keynotes and invited speakers, most amplification has been textual through Twitter and blogs. A few people used Flickr to share photographs and back in 2009 we did live stream “The VLE is Dead” to a remote audience, however using wireless and no remote microphone meant that the final half of the session, the discussion was either difficult to hear and at one point the stream failed!

However it did make me think about doing something more at ALT-C than twittering and writing blog posts. The inspiration was the experiments on live streaming I had done via my mobile phone at the JISC Conference and a MoLeNET Conference and also the live presentations I had done as part of the MoLeNET programme. Experiences of the JISC Online Conferences had also demonstrated the value of video and audio for amplification in addition to textual stuff.

One of the things though I find with existing ideas on amplification is that they focus on the core content of the conference and miss all the stuff that happens outside the sessions. The chat and discussions people have over coffee. I have been at events that have had a fantastic Twitter stream that gets suddenly cut off as everyone has coffee or lunch. The delegates at the event are continuing to discuss and converse, however it all goes silent for the remote audience!

So at ALT-C 2011 I am trying a new idea in order to capture, create and engage in that “silent” online time. Probably the best way to describe what ALT Live Beta is, is if you have ever watched Glastonbury or T4 on the Beach on the television, as well as the “front stage” stuff, they also have a room back stage where they chat, discuss and interview the people who have just been on stage. ALT Live Beta is a live internet video stream of the “back stage” of ALT-C 2011.

Me and Darren Moon (from LSE) will be hosting, broadcasting and doing all the technical stuff. We will be based in the exhibition area at the conference, we have a little booth to act as a studio. We will be streaming live from 8:30 – 6:00 on Tuesday and Wednesday and 8:30 to 1:00 on Thursday. Though you might want to tune in on Monday afternoon as we set up the equipment and do some final testing.

The video stream will be embedded into this page.

If you have an Android phone then there is a Justin.TV and one for iPad and iPhone. You may need to search for “jamesclay” or go to www.justin.tv/jamesclay/ to watch the stream on your mobile device.

With interviews, chat, commentary, guests, discussion and more, ALT Live Beta will be bringing you the best of ALT-C 2011 and lots of back stage conversations live over the internet.

Now we also want to bring in remote participants and I will be using Skype to do this, so if you are interested in participating remotely please e-mail me with your Skype name. You will need to sign a release form which I will send to you.

If you are attending the conference we do need delegates to come and be part of the broadcast. We want to give you an opportunity to talk about what you are getting from the conference, your views on the keynotes, the invited speakers, the papers, the workshops and all the other sessions. Come and discuss your session with remote participants or continue the discussion that didn’t happen because you ran out of time. Without the contributions from delegates, presenters and speakers this may not work as we want it to.

Recorded highlights from ALT Live Beta will be made available later on the ALT YouTube Channel.

Photo source.

Second call for proposals

The 18th international conference of the Association for Learning Technology will be held at the University of Leeds, UK, 6-8 September 2011.

Abstract submission system live

Conference co-chairs

John Cook, Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning at the Learning Technology Research Institute, London Metropolitan University.

Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University.

Whether you’ve been involved in ALT for years, are new to the learning technology domain, or are an experienced researcher or presenter from other fields with innovation to report, please take the time to review the call and guidelines documents below. With your help we can make the 2011 ALT Conference a truly outstanding, influential, and enjoyable event.

Categories of submissions

We welcome submissions of two broad types:

1. An abstract of up to 350 words describing either a Demonstration (30 minutes), Short Presentation (ePoster + 6 mins), Short Paper (20
minutes), Symposium (60 minutes or occasionally 80 minutes), or a Workshop (60 minutes). All abstracts will appear in the Conference
Introduction and Abstracts.

2. A full Proceedings Paper of up to 5000 words, for publication in the peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings of ALT-C 2011, together with a 350 word abstract (taken from the paper), and a 200 word presentation overview which will appear in the Conference Introduction and Abstracts and online.

Calls and Guidelines

Provided below are links to comprehensive documents on the ALT Open Access Repository for you to download and/or refer to prior to writing or submitting a proposal, and for you to make us of during the subsequent editing process if your proposal is successful. Please read
the relevant documents carefully.

Call and Guidelines for Proceedings Papers
Proceedings Paper Template
Call and Guidelines for Short Papers, Short Presentations (ePosters), Symposia, Workshops and Demonstrations

Further information.

Key dates

Submissions close on 21 February 2011
Presenters’ registration deadline 27 June 2011
Earlybird registration deadline 4 July 2011
Registrations close on 12 August 2011

Outstanding and Best Proceedings Paper Awards

All presented proceedings papers are considered by ALT for an Outstanding Proceedings Paper Award. To receive this award, the judges
had to agree with the statement “This paper presents work that strongly advances the field of learning technology”. [If there is no agreement on the words "strongly advances" then the judges may make a Best Proceedings Paper Award.]

Best Short Presentation Awards

All accepted short presentations are eligible for the Best Short Presentation Awards, one voted for by the conference delegates and the
other subject to a wider online voting community.

Download a copy of the first edition of the flyer for the conference from the main conference web site.