{"id":4332,"date":"2014-11-10T09:44:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T09:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsletter.alt.ac.uk\/?p=4332"},"modified":"2014-11-10T09:44:25","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T09:44:25","slug":"marvellous-monsters-thoughts-on-the-altc-2014-keynotes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/11\/marvellous-monsters-thoughts-on-the-altc-2014-keynotes\/","title":{"rendered":"Marvellous Monsters \u2013 thoughts on the #altc 2014 keynotes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t able to attend the ALT Conference this year, but what with the faultless online coverage and following the back channel on twitter, I think I caught more of the conference than I often do when I\u2019m actually there in person. I\u2019m pretty sure this is the first time I\u2019ve heard all three keynotes, and I\u2019m very glad I did, as they were all excellent. \u00a0Congratulations to the ALTC\u00a0committee for putting together such a thought provoking programme.<\/p>\n

Jeff Haywood\u2019s opening keynote,\u00a0Designing University Education for 2025<\/em>\u00a0began by focusing on the positivity of open education, while adding the caveat that<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWithout vision at policy level, at government and senior management level, the system will not transform.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He acknowledged that changing higher education takes time and needs both persistence and patience, and he concluded by calling for more modest, purposeful pilots and experiments with learning technology that are designed to scale. That final point seemed to resonate with many listeners and was tweeted many times on the conference hashtag. I could help thinking that this is exactly the kind of experimentation that the Jisc development programmes used to facilitate so successfully; we need such purposeful and experimental innovation now more than ever.<\/p>\n

Catherine Cronin\u2019s keynote\u00a0Navigating the Marvellous<\/em>\u00a0explored the potential of openness to bridge educational divides. Catherine framed education as a political and ethical act, urging us as educators to use our voice, and exhorting us to \u201cAlways speak, always vote.\u201d \u00a0A timely reminder, if ever there was one.<\/p>\n

Quoting the inimitable Jim Groom, Catherine reminded us that \u201copenness is an ethos not a license\u201d. Open means sharing and building community, however the restrictive nature of both space and technology can inhibit open practice; lecture theatres privilege the lecturers voice, and the privileged position of lecturers in VLEs works against building communities and mutuality.<\/p>\n

Taking her inspiration from Seamus Heaney\u2019s\u00a0Lightenings viii,\u00a0<\/em>Catherine explored the different formal and informal educational and social spaces we inhabit as learners and educators, asking<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHave you ever found yourself in a learning environment so strange you are unable to breathe? Many students have.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Open practices and the use of social media can enable us to cross educational boundaries, to overcome \u201cothering\u201d and to \u201cminimise the differential in power between educators and students\u201d.<\/p>\n

This latter point raised an important question for me and when I asked on twitter<\/p>\n

\"altc_2014\"<\/a><\/p>\n

a\u00a0lengthy discussion<\/a>\u00a0followed, with Helen Beetham arguing that while open practices may democratise participation they can not\u00a0extend equal participation if learning and digital capital is unequal. Furthermore, while online spaces can disguise or level some kinds of difference and otherness, surely they amplify others? David Kernohan also suggested that social media just holds a mirror up to existing power structures. \u00a0To my mind, this is one of the most important points Catherine raised in her thoughtful and astute keynote; there are a lot of issues that need further exploration here and I very much hope we can continue this debate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to know what to say about Audrey Watters keynote that could begin to do it justice. We were very lucky to have Audrey present a\u00a0keynote<\/a>\u00a0at the Cetis conference earlier this year and, if I\u2019m honest, I did wonder how she could top such an inspirational talk. It\u2019s fair to say that with\u00a0Ed-Tech, Frankenstein\u2019s Monster and Teacher Machines<\/em>\u00a0Audrey exceeded even her own high standards. Her talk was personal, inspirational and insightful and covered everything from her own grandfather, an alumni of Bletchley Park, Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace, Frankenstein\u2019s monster, the Luddites, Skinner and Rand, by way of fairytales, poetry, storytelling and pigeon-guided missiles. I\u2019m not even going to attempt to summarise the points Audrey raised, if you haven\u2019t heard it already, go and listen to her keynote yourself, it\u2019s worth an hour of anyone\u2019s time. After all, as Audrey reminded us, quoting Hannah Arendt<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cEducation is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lorna M Campbell
Centre for Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards (Cetis), University of Bolton<\/span><\/p><\/p>\n

If you enjoyed reading this article we invite you to\u00a0join the Association 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><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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. I wasn\u2019t able to attend the ALT Conference this year, but what with the faultless online coverage and following the back channel on twitter, I think I caught more of 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":[725,778,911],"class_list":["post-4332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conference-reviews","tag-altc","tag-conference-review","tag-lorna-m-campbell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4247,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/11\/giants-on-surfboards-personal-reflections-on-altc-2014\/","url_meta":{"origin":4332,"position":0},"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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Last year\u2019s conference was a bit of a personal highlight for me, but this year the team\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Conference reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Conference reviews","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/reviews\/conference-reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/10\/Audrey-Watters.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/10\/Audrey-Watters.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/10\/Audrey-Watters.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/10\/Audrey-Watters.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9577,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2021\/08\/final-altc21-keynote-speaker-announcement-dr-lou-mycroft\/","url_meta":{"origin":4332,"position":2},"title":"Final #altc21 Keynote Speaker Announcement – Dr Lou Mycroft","author":"Christina Vines","date":"3 August 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"This year\u2019s Annual Conference is spread over three days and packed with discussion panels, research and practice sessions as well as video posters and inspiring keynotes. 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