I’ve already written an overview and some thoughts on the ALTC keynotes, this post is an additional reflection on some of my personal highlights of the conference.
I was involved in three sessions this year; Wikipedia belongs in education with Wikimedia UK CEO Lucy Crompton-Reid and UoE Wikimedian in Residence Ewan McAndrew, Influential voices – developing a blogging service based on trust and openness with DLAM’s Karen Howie, and Supporting Creative Engagement and Open Education at the University of Edinburgh with LTW colleagues Charlie Farley and Stewart Cromar. All three sessions went really well, with lots of questions and engagement from the audience.
It’s always great to see that lightbulb moment when people start to understand the potential of using Wikipedia in the classroom to develop critical digital and information literacy skills. There was a lot of interest in (and a little envy of) UoE’s Academic Blogging Service and centrally supported WordPress platform, blogs.ed.ac.uk, so it was great to be able to share some of the open resources we’ve created along the way including policies, digital skills resources, podcasts, blog posts, open source code and the blogs themselves. And of course there was a lot of love for our creative engagement approaches and open resources including Board Game Jam and the lovely We have great stuff colouring book.
Stewart Cromar also did a gasta talk and poster on the colouring book and at one point I passed a delegate standing alone in the hallway quietly colouring in the poster. As I passed, I mentioned that she could take one of the colouring books and home with her. She nodded and smiled and carried on colouring. A lovely quite moment in a busy conference.
It was great to hear Charlie talking about the enduringly popular and infinitely adaptable 23 Things course, and what made it doubly special was that she was co-presenting with my old Cetis colleague R. John Robertson, who is now using the course with his students at Seattle Pacific University. I’ve been very lucky to work with both Charlie and John, and it’s lovely to see them collaborating like this.
Our Witchfinder General intern Emma Carroll presented a brilliant gasta talk on using Wikidata to geographically locate and visualise the different locations recorded within the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database. It’s an incredible piece of work and several delegates commented on how confidently Emma presented her project. You can see the outputs of Emma’s internship here https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk/about
Emma Carroll, CC BY NC 2.0, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
I really loved Kate Lindsay’s thoughtful presentation on KARE, a kind, accessible, respectful, ethical scaffolding system to support online education at University College of Estate Management. And I loved her Rosa Parks shirt.
Kate Lindsay, CC BY NC, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
I also really enjoyed Claudia Cox’s engaging and entertaining talk Here be Dragons: Dispelling Myths around BYOD Digital Examinations. Claudia surely wins the prize for best closing comment…
Claudia Cox “I came here to slay, I hope I did that today” *APPLAUSE* #altc pic.twitter.com/6OWDTsECgm
— Lorna M. Campbell (@LornaMCampbell) September 3, 2019
Sheila MacNeill and Keith Smyth gave a great talk on their conceptual framework for reimagining the digital university which aims to challenge neoliberalism through discursive, reflective digital pedagogy. We need this now more than ever.
Keith Smyth, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell
Sadly I missed Helen Beetham’s session Learning technology: a feminist space? but I heard it was really inspiring. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been able to hear Helen talk, we always seem to be programmed in the same slot! I also had to miss Laura Czerniewicz’s Online learning during university shut downs, so I’m very glad it was recorded. I’m looking forward to catching up with is as soon as I can.
The Learning Technologist of the Year Awards were truly inspiring as always. Lizzie Seymour, Learning Technology Officer, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland at Edinburgh Zoo was a very well deserved winner of the individual award, and I was really proud to see the University of Edinburgh’s Lecture Recording Team win the team award. So many people across the University were involved in this project so it was great to see their hard work recognised.
UoE Lecture Recording Team, CC BY NC, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
Without doubt though the highlight of the conference for me was Frances Bell‘s award of Honorary Life Membership of the Association for Learning Technology. Frances is a dear friend and an inspirational colleague who really embodies ALT’s core values of participation, openness, collaboration and independence, so it was a huge honour to be invited to present her with the award. Frances’ nomination was led by Catherine Cronin, who wasn’t able to be at the conference, so it gave me great pleasure to read out her words.
“What a joy to see Frances Bell – who exemplifies active, engaged and generous scholarship combined with an ethic of care –being recognised with this Honorary Life Membership Award by ALT.
As evidenced in her lifetime of work, Frances has combined her disciplinary expertise in Information Systems with historical and social justice perspectives to unflinchingly consider issues of equity in both higher education and wider society.
Uniquely, Frances sustains connections with people across higher education, local communities and creative networks in ways which help to bridge differences without ignoring them, and thus to enable understanding.
Within and beyond ALT, we all have much to thank her for.”
I confess I couldn’t look at Frances while I was reading Catherine’s words as it was such an emotional moment. I’m immensely proud of ALT for recognising Frances’ contribution to the community and for honouring her in this way.
Frances Bell, Honorary Life Member or ALT, CC BY NC, Chris Bull for Association for Learning Technology
And finally, huge thanks to Maren, Martin and the rest of the ALT team for organising another successful, warm and welcoming conference.
