Chief Executive’s Report

This is my last report to ALT Members for this year and there is much that we have achieved over the last few months that we can be proud of:

Annual General Meeting and Annual Conference

This year’s Annual Conference in Warwick brought together many new and known faces as well as some notable firsts: for the first time, the video recordings of keynote and invited sessions were live on ALT’s YouTube channel on the day and often within hours; also for the first time, we welcomed over 100 participants from across FE to the conference; we generated over 10,000 tweets #altc and members voted for changing the legal status of the Association.

You can read conference blog posts in this newsletter and watch the videos including keynotes from Audrey Watters, Catherine Cronin and Jeff Heywood.

Important information about the AGM and changes to ALT’s legal structure is available here.

Policy and work with government

Trustees and I have continued our work to represent members in policy matters and we continue to actively contribute to the work of ETAG, the Education Technology Action Group with both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as well as the Department for Education. In liaison with other organisations and with members we are further working to support our community across FE in responding to the challenges set out in the FELTAG recommendations and the first annual ALT winter conference, with a focus on CPD forms part of that effort.

Connect with and join ALT #altc

As part of our strategic aim to improve communications and grow our community of members ALT committee members, Trustees and staff have done much work over the past year to create a more consistent visual identity online and in print, as well as improving communication via social media. There are now more ways to interact, connect with and join the Association than before. Look out for information coming your way and join in using #altc.

Changes to ALT’s staff team

There have been some changes to ALT’s staff team over the past year. In spring we welcomed Martin Hawksey as Chief innovation, Technology and Community Officer. His work on ocTEL, ALT’s first Mozilla Open Badges and the Annual Conference since are clear signs of how quickly Martin has established himself in his new role and we are delighted to have him on board.

Since the Annual Conference Allison Stevens, Communications and Support Officer, and Caroline Greves, who as Events Manager had overseen the Annual Conference for the past three years, moved on to new opportunities and we are extremely grateful for their contribution. Anna Davidge has now taken on the new role of Events and General Manager. While the resulting vacancy for communications and publications will be filled in the new year, we wish Anna well in her new role.

And finally… have your say and help shape what we do in 2015!

The ALT Annual Survey is now open for responses at http://go.alt.ac.uk/ALT-Survey-2014 and will close on Sunday, 15 January 2015.

Maren Deepwell
Chief Executive of ALT

If you enjoyed reading this article we invite you to 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