I must confess I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with ALT-C. Whilst there are lots of interesting people to meet and much to talk about, there is an awful lot of twaddle and people admiring their navels. For example, there was a really rather pointless session on 'the VLE is dead' - all a bit playgroundy IMHO - let's get on with what we're doing rather than throwing stones at each other because of the technology we're using. That only leads to this. As Seymour Papert said, "If there is a why, any how will do."
There was a great keynote to kick of the conference by Michael Wesch, which I guess will be online at some point. The Chair then spoilt it a bit, in classic ALT style, by appearing to only take questions from people he knew. That seems to happen every time I come to ALT-C. I wonder if it's a policy or more an indication that ALT has an 'in' crowd so it's all about who you know?
Hmmm...... this seems like a bit of a moan. However, I am looking forward to tomorrow's sessions on QR Codes , the 'Visitor-Resident' principle and using Appreciative Inquiry with ePortfolios.
4 comments:
Time to make a difference Chris, why not volunteer for next year's programme committee to make a difference by being part of the organising group.
I quite liked the Death of the VLE "debate" (bun fight?) [and I just spend most of the morning watching the video recording -- the live stream lost sound]. But perhaps that's because it reinforced my own prejudices -- and I'm not telling which side of the fence I was sitting on!
Of course last time I went to ALT-C (it was at Loughborough I think) Blackboard and whether you could really use it for learning object exchange was the topic du jour. I haven't been back!
Not that I'm not desperate to be one of the chosen ones!
Recordings of the keynotes are here http://elluminate.alt.ac.uk/recordings.html but it's not immediately obvious (unless you're a digital native) how to access them. Hint, you need to know the conference dates, which you will of course unless you weren't at the confence!
Glad it's not just me who feels like that ;-)
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