Chief Executive’s Report

It’s August and in less than a month ALT’s annual conference will bring together a big part of our community in Warwick. Yet while conference preparations are certainly going full steam ahead, there is much going on elsewhere in the Association that I want to draw your attention to:

Safeguarding ALT’s future and AGM 2014

Trustees have written to all members about proposed changes to the legal structure of ALT which have the aim of strengthening the Association’s ability to deliver its mission and strategic aims in the future. ALT is an unincorporated registered charity (Charity number 1063519) governed by its Central  Executive Committee (the Trustees) in accordance with its constitution. The change that is being  proposed is for ALT to move from being an unincorporated registered charity to a charitable incorporated organisation – association model (CIO-AM) with a newly registered charity number. More information.

Trustees invite all members to attend an open webinar session about the proposed changes. The webinar will take place at 12 noon (BST) on 12 August 2014 and can be accessed here.

More ways to get involved in ALT

There are currently a number of opportunities for members to get involved in ALT, including a call for expressions of interest to join the editorial team of this newsletter and to join ALT’s Operational Committees. There is also an early call for the 2016 conference co-chairs open until the end of September. Look out for further opportunities over the coming weeks and months.

Call for Editors of ALT Online Newsletter
Deadline for expressions of interest: 17.00 BST Friday 29 August

Call for Expressions of Interest to join ALT’s Operational Committees
Deadline for expressions of interest: 17.00 BST Friday 22 August

Early call for expressions of interest in Chairing the 2016 ALT Conference
Deadline for expressions of interest: 17.00 BST Tuesday 30 September

Connect with the community and ALT

Over the past year we have expanded the ways in which we communicate and support our members networking online, the work being led by the Communications and Publications Committee and Allison Stevens, Communications Officer. If you aren’t already aware, you can follow ALT on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Flickr. You can also subscribe to ALT’s YouTube channel.

ocTEL 2014 – the open course in Technology Enhanced Learning

At the end of June ocTEL 2014 came to a close. Here I want to acknowledge what our community of authors, tutors, presenters and participants have built together, supported by Martin Hawksey, ALT’s Chief Innovation, Technology and Community Officer. ocTEL 2014 has reached 1000+ people from 50 countries, contributing a total of 5,600+ tweets, 1,600+ badges, close to 1000 forum posts and hundreds of blog posts over 6 weeks. This is a real achievement and the feedback already collected has been very positive and valuable. There will be a session about ocTEL at the annual conference in September where you can find out more.

ALT’s annual conference 2014 #altc

1-3 September, University of Warwick, UK

Together with the ALT staff team and all the members involved in the organisation, I look forward to this year’s annual conference – now just a few weeks away. An exciting three days have been planned and more information about each day and the programme overall is available here. Or read what this year’s Co-Chairs are looking forward to here.

If you haven’t yet registered to attend, it’s not too late: register for altc2014

Maren Deepwell
Chief Executive, ALT
maren.deepwell@alt.ac.uk

If you enjoyed reading this article we invite you join the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) as an individual member, and to encourage your own organisation to join ALT as an organisational or sponsoring member.