ALT Learning Technologist of the Year Awards - interviews and judging

The Learning Technologist of the Year Awards are a great experience for the participants, winners and judges. It is worth entering yourself, your team or a colleague who deserves recognition for work and achievements in the field of learning technology.

ALT receives a high number of entries for the individual and team awards all of whom are carrying out exciting and often innovative practices. Therefore you need to 'show off' about what you do - this is often easier if someone else has nominated you - but in the interview make the most of your achievements. Entrants come from all sectors - universities, colleges,  schools, charities - so which ever sector you work in, you can be considered.

The judging panel ask a series of questions about what you do - really what we would like to say is 'Tell us about the fantastic things you do?' All of those short listed are of a high standard and could 'do the job' of Learning Technologist of the Year. The time available for each interview is quite short at 25 minutes, including a presentation so plan to show evidence and impact - show how how your practice affects learners, peers, your institution, the community etc.

The panel are always very friendly and encouraging. You can attend in person or online eg Skype. Once the decisions have been made then the successful candidates are notified but it remains confidential until September. The awards are presented at the ALT conference which is a great occasion.

Future of Technology in Education conference #fote13

Last Friday I attended the FoTE conference which was enjoyable and interesting. I attended in 2011 but didn't make it last year so was pleased to be able to shuffle work and travel and life to get there this time.
It is hosted by ULCC at Senate House, Uni of London. It's a beautiful building and has great memories for me as I used to spend hours in the library there in the 80s when I did my first degree at Kings College.




I like the event because it is for Learning Technologists and academics / teachers / educationalists who are involved and knowledgeable about learning technologies - it's not for the general overviewers but at the same time not cliquey. Also there is always a good back channel discussion via twitter.
The first speaker was Nicola Millard who is a futurologist. She was brilliant and engaging and talking about customers which is what I'm interested in. I do like an inspirational key note speaker to kick off an event, someone with an interesting take on the situation and with an appealing delivery. She talked about making things easy and effortless for customers and different sorts of effort such as cognitive effort. She mentioned email and that it would die out due to other channels being easier - not sure that I agree with that sweeping statement.....
A great point that she made was that you need 4 things in order to work - coffee, cake, connectivity and company. I agree entirely although would substitute tea for coffee. I think this idea is something library people should think about embracing - what sort of space is needed for you and for library users?
The next speaker was Alicia Wise from Elsevier who talked about Open Access. It was an interesting talk and quite difficult as the audience, I expect, are predominantly in favour of OA and see publishers as a barrier to it. But it was good to see them as part of the discussion.
The third speaker was Gwen Noteborn from Maastricht Uni talking about Webcasts in education: Mythbusters! It was ok and interesting but maybe covering old ground to some extent.
After the coffee break was the Fireside Chat with a real virtual fire in the background.
FOTE13 Fireside Speakers:
Yousuf Khan (Chair), Chief Information Officer, Hult International Business School
Adrian Ellison, Director of Information Technology, University of West London
Cathy Walsh, Principal and CEO, Barking & Dagenham College
Heidi Fraser-Krauss, Head of IT Services, University of York
Richard Maccabee, Head of ICT, University of London
There was some discussion around the idea that technology changes but working practices don't often change in order to develop along side. Again 'easiness' of using technology was mentioned - I agree in part, it has to accessible and available but I'm not sure it has to be simple - some of the appeal of technology is that it is challenging and complex - it can change the world, that is why it is enthralling.




After lunch Lindsay Jordan delivered a great presentation including a blue outfit and a piano. She talked about why people drop out of courses. Sustained learning needs motivation, organisation, self discipline - can we get these in an online environment? Possibly? She advocated face to face communication rather than email....again I would say it depends on the situation and the interaction.




Next presentation was by Martin King and was about diversity and connectivity - lots of interesting stuff.
Next presentation was from Kevin
Ashley from the Digital Curation Centre. He talked about the data deluge and the problem that we have is that the amount of data is outstripping the technology we have to store it.
After the coffee break, the final two presentations were about Moocs. Matt Yee-King and Marco Gillies talked about the Mooc that they created and delivered at Goldsmiths. It was a great insight into the practicalities of scaling up an online course and some of the issues and solutions they had encountered. This included changing deadlines which is easy for small cohorts but not for large numbers. Also the problems of negative comments on discussion forums - even if 1% make one comment, this can be large number of complaints.
The last presentation was by Diana Laurillard entitled The pedagogies for large-scale student guidance. The data from Moocs suggest that the majority of participants already have a degree or higher degree. This suggests that it is not for undergraduate study but for CPD. The drop out rates are high but registration is not the same as signing up. When scaling up the numbers involved in courses for Moocs, other factors have to be considered such as admin and support. Support costs are not going to go down but technology can innovate pedagogy. There needs to be investment in teacher innovation to make best use of resources and improve student outcomes.
All in all, it was a great day with lots of ideas to take away and reflect on. It's good to spend a day immersed in learning technology, listening and talking to people.








On the way back to the station I managed a very brief (10min) visit to the British Library - just time to stand and stare.

Digital Artefact

This is my digital artefact

It is a video of a series of wordles which are visualisations of the words that make up the themes and ideas of the EDC MOOC course.

 They show the perspective from the 'course' side, the 'YOU' side and

compare with the 'participant', the 'ME' side. 
The themes, each of which represent a week of the course, move from technology at the beginning of the course to human and education at the end.

The density of the words and colours used is a reflection of the complexities involved in being part of a MOOC and trying to make sense of the learning experience.

It's ALL too much - social media and technology

It seems fair to say that by now we all agree that there is more 'information' out there than we know what to do with.  Millions of websites, more than a billion internet users, 150+ million blogs, billions of videos and images and billions of emails every day,
http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/
On the plus side, it is possible to find some information about anything although whether it is true or of any use is another story.  But it is impossible to even imagine how it all fits together into a coherent mass and the truth is that it doesn't.  The information is not in any order but swirls around constantly being shifted by the next person sharing or recycling or adding to it and passing it on.
Last week I read three or four posts around this topic, about the phenomenon of social media and social networking some of which were prompted by the recent introduction of Google+.  One was 'Losing interest in social media: there is no there there' 
http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2011/07/30/losing-interest-in-social-media-there-is-no-there-there/
and another by simfin  'Google+ ? I don’t think so 'http://simfin.wordpress.com/more/google-i-dont-think-so/ both of which make the point that people only want and need a certain number of social networks to engage with if they are to have any meaning.  

Aleks Krotoski Friendship: why social networks are too crowded to get close http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/aleks-krotoski-web-network-friendship explains how she thinks that social networks are changing and becoming less appealing perhaps by having too many connections.

The final post was regarding email and how, in order to keep email valid and to ensure the recipient interacts with the email, we should keep them brief or seek out other forms of communication.

Realistically If there is too much information being generated, it is not going to be possible to change that situation - and indeed why should we, the whole ethos of publishing on the web is that it is free and open and people should be able to do so (as long as they abide by ethical considerations).  It is nice to share photos and communicate easily and pass on good practice.

So the only solution is to build up your own defences and protection in order to limit yet exploit social media and networking to your own needs.  This should be a positive experience that benefits others as well as yourself but copes with 'information overload'. 

The difficult part is that I'm not quite sure how to do it.  I have to admit that I'm the sort of person who sleeps with their iPhone on the bedside table, that leans out of bed on a morning to check emails, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the news before facing the day.  Luckily I do lots of other things too but I don't want to become disenchanted with all this technology which will surely happen without a plan.......