{"id":4291,"date":"2014-11-10T09:43:57","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T09:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsletter.alt.ac.uk\/?p=4291"},"modified":"2014-11-10T09:43:57","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T09:43:57","slug":"navigating-the-marvellous-and-the-monsters-personal-reflections-of-altc-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/11\/navigating-the-marvellous-and-the-monsters-personal-reflections-of-altc-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating the marvellous and the monsters: personal reflections of ~#altc 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: this article is one of a series of personal reviews of the\u00a02014 ALT Annual\u00a0Conference which provide different perspectives on the conference.<\/em><\/p>\n

Early last month I attended the 2014 ALT Annual Conference. Last year\u2019s conference was a bit of a personal highlight for me, but this year the team at ALT and all the co-chairs pulled off another great event,including two of the best keynotes I have been to in a long time from Catherine Cronin and Audrey Watters.<\/p>\n

Both Audrey and Catherine highlighted the need for engagement to ensure the authentic voices, stories and experiences (from all of the education sector, not just ed tech) voices are heard and ensure that new noisy narratives (particularly from certain commercial sectors) don\u2019t become the defacto history and more worryingly, future of education.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff<\/a>
Visual notes from Jeff Haywood keynote – Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC_BY sheilmcn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Audrey wove together an inspiring narrative (including references to Ada Lovelace, Roald Dahl, Luddites, Mary Shelly, Byron, F B Skinner to name but a few) about the creation of monsters, lost histories and control. She reminded us that we can control the development of technological monsters through our combined efforts to inspire love technology and education. Catherine reminded us of the inherent ethical and political nature of education and how openness, online spaces and new forms of identity can empower us to make our voices heard. However, within this marvellous new open world there are power struggles too.<\/p>\n

\"Catherine<\/a>
Visual notes from Catherine Cronin keynote – Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC_BY sheilmcn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We may laugh at the idea of teaching machines, but in our drive for ever increasing personalised, mobile access to education, content vendors and governments are often (knowingly and\/or unwittingly) all too willing to ignore the narrative from educators and buy into a behaviourist, watch video -> click through -> mcq-> (pay for) certificate = learning solution.<\/p>\n

Helen Beetham made a very good point after Audrey\u2019s talk that in the UK we do have a different narrative \u2013 particularly around the student engagement agenda within HE which is different from our North American cousins. But we are not immune, as the FELTAG discussions (particularly around % of online content) and stories illustrated.<\/p>\n

\"Audrey<\/a>
Visual Notes from Audrey Watters keynote – Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. CC_BY sheilmcn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were many, many great stories shared over the three days of the conference. John Traxler reminded us of the danger of assuming our developed, western global ideologies, learning theories and learning designs don\u2019t automagically meet the needs of many emerging cultures (in particular Africa). David Kernohan provided an entertaining yet mindful tale of how the heady days of open and social collaboration may well be at an end, as big business, governments and employers (included HEIs) start to close down, commercialie and control access and impose censorship.<\/p>\n

Conferences like ALT are a great way for our community to strengthen and share our own \u201cfolklore\u201d and build our collective narrative around the positive impact of technology within learning and teaching. We need to keep sharing our stories openly, and ensure our narrative, folklore, collective knowledge and wisdom is developed and shared as widely as possible. Roll on #altc\u00a02015.<\/p>\n

Republished with permission from\u00a0http:\/\/howsheilaseesit.wordpress.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sheila MacNeill
Glasgow Caledonian University<\/span><\/p>\n

If you enjoyed reading this article we invite you to join the\u00a0Association for Learning Technology (ALT)<\/a>\u00a0as an individual member, and to encourage your own organisation to join ALT as an organisational or sponsoring member<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Editor\u2019s note: this article is one of a series of personal reviews of the\u00a02014 ALT Annual\u00a0Conference which provide different perspectives on the conference. Early last month I attended the 2014 ALT Annual Conference. Last year\u2019s conference was a bit of a personal highlight for me, but this year the team at ALT and all the […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[725,778,994],"class_list":["post-4291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-reviews","tag-altc","tag-conference-review","tag-sheila-macneill"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4332,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/11\/marvellous-monsters-thoughts-on-the-altc-2014-keynotes\/","url_meta":{"origin":4291,"position":0},"title":"Marvellous Monsters \u2013 thoughts on the #altc 2014 keynotes","author":"ALT","date":"10 November 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Editor\u2019s note: this article is one of a series of personal reviews of the 2014 ALT Annual\u00a0Conference which provide different perspectives on the conference. 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ALT and our members organise this conference to help educators, researchers,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ALT news"","block_context":{"text":"ALT news","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/alt-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wave","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/02\/RidingGiants.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4397,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/12\/chief-executives-report-9\/","url_meta":{"origin":4291,"position":2},"title":"Chief Executive’s Report","author":"ALT","date":"9 December 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Chief Executive's Reports"","block_context":{"text":"Chief Executive's Reports","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/reports\/chief-executives-reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/12\/CB_030914_ALTC_WED_049.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/12\/CB_030914_ALTC_WED_049.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/12\/CB_030914_ALTC_WED_049.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/12\/CB_030914_ALTC_WED_049.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/12\/CB_030914_ALTC_WED_049.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4075,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/07\/altc2014-for-the-community-by-the-community\/","url_meta":{"origin":4291,"position":3},"title":"altc2014: for the community, by the community","author":"ALT","date":"23 July 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The ALT conference provides an annual opportunity for the ALT community to come together, either in person or online, to discuss and explore new approaches to learning and teaching, technological developments, implementation experiences, and recent research into technology enhanced learning.\u00a0 It is a conference that has evolved over 21 years,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ALT news"","block_context":{"text":"ALT news","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/alt-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/02\/RidingGiants.jpg?fit=291%2C258&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4247,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/11\/giants-on-surfboards-personal-reflections-on-altc-2014\/","url_meta":{"origin":4291,"position":4},"title":"Giants on Surfboards: personal reflections on #altc 2014","author":"ALT","date":"10 November 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Editor\u2019s note: this article is one of a series of personal reviews of the 2014 ALT Annual\u00a0Conference which provide different perspectives on the conference. 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