Updated 23/10/2009 with link to video of Jonathan Drori's "Being mighty: how mortals can make learning technology projects that cause real impact" Below you will find links to each of the three keynote speeches and to eight of the nine invited speaker sessions. All of them are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales license. As other assets become available we will link to them. Jonathan Drori - Direct... [read more]

The Videos and Elluminate Live! Session for the Keynote and Invited Speakers at ALT-C 2009 can now be accessed from http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2009/keynotes.html.
My pictures are up here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/josiefraser/sets/72157622339065464/ Haven't had time to title or tag then yet - please do feel free to help out by adding tags of names, events etc :) Also - if you spot a photo I've put up of you that you'd rather I took down, don't hesitate to let me know. Best, J
by Derek Morrison, 13 September 2009 Here is the second of the recordings of my interviews with contributors and some delegates at ALT-C 2009; this time a discussion with Seb Schmoller about ALT and his thoughts for its future (MP3,11.7MB, ~25 minutes). My apologies for the delay in posting this one but I wanted Seb to have a chance to listen to it first and, as we know, he has been a busy busy man :)
Dear colleagues who have agreed to 'report' ALT-C: Thanks for agreeing to write your impressions of the conference. I won't be there until Wednesday lunch-time but it would be great to meet up some time to discuss our approaches to this enjoyable (I hope) task, which I have agreed to coordinate. Can we meet at the ALT desk at 17:15 on Wednesday? Sorry this is impersonal - your details are somewhere in profoundest France... All the best - and enjo... [read more]
I was only at parts of ALT-C but enjoyed it enormously. The event was extremely well-organised and ran very smoothly in excellent venues. Once again a triumph for the hard-working and cheerful ALT staff and volunteers. Well done! PS I can't wait for the Liverpool ALT-C.. in two thousand and...?
If anyone cannot find our presentation please look for; http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/posts/edit/6302701 Thanks
as promised here is the slideset for the paper given today. thanks for the interest and Asher and I would love to hear your thoughts on our attempts to map the sociocultural profile of academic staff in relation to TEL. Tread softly in the mainstream faculty - value their fears and concerns, it will repay you - don't think they will go away...
Wednesday 9 September. Heres a link to the Agile Curriculum interactive poster. http://www.spicynodes.org/a/4504088a939a7514fbd782efb432a2db We would be very interested to receive further ideas about the challenges outlined here and good ways to make the outcomes of the projects usable for you. You can respond here or via Twitter using the tags #dcb09 and #cdd.
by Derek Morrison, 9 September 2009 Here is the fourth of my podcast offerings based on my interview with people attending ALT-C 2009. In this 17 minute podcast I've interviewed Heather Fry, Head of Learning and Teaching for HEFCE about the contrasting emphases of the 2005 and 2009 editions of the 'e' strategy and tried to glean some insights about current H'e' thinking from someone situated at the national policy level (7.8MB, MP3). Did I succee... [read more]
by Derek Morrison, 9 September 2009 Here is the third of my podcast offerings based on my interview with people attending ALT-C 2009. In this podcast we hear the perspectives and, I think, some valuable insights offered by a group of colleagues from the FE, Work-based learning, and Adult and Community Learning sector. As before this is the rush of the podcast (12MB, MP3). When I get some more time I may edit it down into "information objects" for... [read more]
There are always some things I now take with me when I attend ALT-C which I find useful. 6 way gang - instead of fighting people for the power sockets, you can immediately make five friends! Also useful when you are back in your hotel room (halls) and need to charge the laptop, the phone, the iPod, use the hairdryer, etc... Make sure it has been PAT tested! Coffee - I can't stand instant coffee, so I take some of those Coffee Bags you can buy or ... [read more]
Hedtek is demoing the Manchester Personal Learning Environment, mPLE, alongside the ALT-C conference. Please see http://bit.ly/mPLE-demo for details of times, locations, and an introduction to mPLE. Briefly, the demos are on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon, during the blue-row sessions in the conference timetable. Demos are in the Kilburn Building (NB not the Kilburn Room NB), next to the conference location. These are not official conference ev... [read more]
The following item can also be found on www.auricle.org. (by Derek Morrison, 8 September 2009) For ALT-C 2009, ALT's Seb Schmoller asked me and a few other long term 'e' commentators and bloggers attending or presenting at the conference if we would take part in a bit of an experiment by also assuming a 'journalistic' role (with editorial control remaining in our own hands). So to start the ball rolling, last night I interviewed the keynote speak... [read more]
Here are the slides for this paper, which looks at some of the tensions in object reuse. These may arise between the logical systems/hierarchical view/assumptions around the generic nature of content by resource managers, and the desire for creativity and personalisation of content by the individual delivering the course/module. Please come and listen or contact me after ALT-C if this research area interests you. Carmel
I'm interested in meeting up anyone using popular digital technologies such as Second Life, Facebook or Twitter (in fact any digital technologies, hardware or software, that have a widespread appeal) in teaching and learning - as opposed to those technologies that are just purely educational or institutional such as e-portfolios or VLEs. I'm interested because if people are using them for teaching and learning then there must also be people resea... [read more]

Addenda This document contains some general information on the conference, some late changes to the programme, some revised abstracts, and some detailed information on H1N1 (Swine ‘flu). Please read right to the end..... General Information Conference evaluation The conference feedback...
OUr Uni (Portsmouth) has just signed up for Google Apps for Education for students (not staff :(). They're getting email, docs, & sites. (Though not Reader, to a few people's dismay). Anyone else also got it? Want to meet up to discuss how it's going? (WE've had it for about 1 month, & so not much knowledge yet, other than what we can discover by experimenting)
Wondered if there are any ALT-C people going to Handheld Learning in London later in the year? I'm guessing there's a fair bit of overlap between these conferences. I tweeted to tell the conference organisers about Crowdvine and how well it's working here - and they tweeted back to say there's a special reg code althhl09 for ALT members who want to register for Handheld Learning: 20% off until 14th Sept.
Here are my slides (and a plug!) for the symposium with Cathy Gunn, Richard Hall and Mike Keppell on Thursday 10th at 9am in room 3.204 (abstract 0176). A late night at the conference dinner is no excuse not to attend! We look forward to an interesting debate.
Now there's a good question... that is 'What is an expert?' At what point would you call yourself or someone else an expert? Especially intriguing when we are dealing an emergent field where so much still has to be discovered. Is it an absolute or relative term for you?
One of ALT's key activities is producing responses to Government consultations. You can see a range of these at http://www.alt.ac.uk/documents.html. We are intending to respond to the Government's Consultation on Legislation to Address Illicit P2P File-Sharing, which closes on 29 September. http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page51696.html has links to the original June 2009 consultation document, and to a recent "update" that proposes a strong... [read more]
Join us for a glass of bubbly for the launch of The Design Studio and Managing Curriculum Change publication on Tuesday 8th September from 12:40 - 13:40 on the JISC Stand. Hope to see you all there!
Is the fact learners are more highly mobile (busy) than the fact that mobile learning requires a specific pedagogy . Is publishing novels in serial form to smartphone or even via sms no different than Dickens orginal serialisation of his work in bite sized chunks in a newspaper ?? The phrase I use whatever the age the tools are no less advanced theyre just different . Technology prediction is full of tyhe ones that we missed. The ones that got aw... [read more]

We will be making all keynote and most if not all invited speaker sessions available over the Web in real time, and as archived files, from http://elluminate.alt.ac.uk/. Those participating remotely in the keynote sessions will be able to submit questions...
It seems to me that there's a fascinating synergy between the sessions: 297 Active learning with Mobile and Web 2.0 technologies 288 Students and Mobile Devices: Choosing which Dream 286 The VLE is Dead I think it's something about the ownership, control and delivery of learning, in terms of philosophy, politics and practicality. I'd love as many people as people to take in all three events and hear their thoughts
I've totally forgotten which hall I booked into! I also seemed to be incapable of finding the login page that I used originally to book - which I presume would now show what I have booked (won't it??) Is there a way I can find it out, without having to trouble the organisers??

Over the last few days, the number of conference delegates active on our CrowdVine networking site has jumped past 300. We advise all conference participants to activate their CrowdVine accounts, and in particular to use http://altc2009.alt.ac.uk/calendar which contains the definitive...
I'd love to chat to anyone who is working with augmented reality applications, or anyone that is looking to develop on the Android platform?
We are looking for volunteers to cover this year's ALT conference for the ALT newsletter. You can view previous conference reviews from the following links: 2008 http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article001229588.cfm, 2007 http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article000928587.cfm, and 2006 http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article000679694.cfm. If you are interested then please contact morag.munro@dcu.ie.

Delegates details have been uploaded into CrowdVine, the networking site for ALT-C 2009. Delegates will now be able easily to create their accounts in CrowdVine, with ALT approval only needed if you decide to use an email address that is...