ALT is commissioning a small publication to highlight the best and worst of
using educational technology in teaching and learning.  The publication is
intended to be both helpful and humorous, the sort of publication which it
is easy to dip into and get a few good ideas, or to read on the bus and
laugh at some of the mistakes that you haven't made (or feel embarrassed
with the author of the ones you too have made).

The editors have some contributions to make, but as always there are far
more and better ideas in people's heads all round the world.  Do you have an
example of good or bad practice that you would be willing to share?  Do have
a funny anecdote on the use of learning technology which might brighten the
day of someone who is struggling with it?

We would love to hear your anecdotes of things that have worked well and
your horror stories so that others may learn from your examples.  We would
like examples from both teachers and from students who may have very
different views on the same topic

We are looking for anecdotes of up to about 1/4 side of A4 which illustrate
what works and what does

All stories will be credited or preserve your anonymity as you prefer.

The book will be published in time for ALT-C 2003 in September.

Storeis, anecdotes and comments should be sent to
[log in to unmask]

To illustrate the type of thing we are looking for some examples are
appended

How to make friends and influence people
==============================
I don't know if this story is true or not, but if it isn't true it ought to
be.

In 1983, when PCs were still fairly new, IBM invited the chief executives of
their 100 best clients to a conference in Switzerland.  This was one of
those very expensive impressive events, with plenty of food and drink
flowing and lots of freebies given to them as well.  All went very well, the
chief executives were duly impressed with the conference and IBM's plans and
flew home.

When they got home they looked through their freebies, and there was a
floppy disc (this is before the days of CDs) which was labelled "How to get
more out of your PC", so they thought this would be useful and inserted into
the drive clicked on setup.exe and lo they installed a virus into their
computer!

The moral of this tale is not that you should not accept freebies.


How to keep workloads (more) manageable
===============================
email is wonderful? email is the biggest timewaster since the googleblaster?
how can you get students to use email with you sensibly?

One lecturer gives his students the reading for the next week, and students
then email each other in groups of 2 or 3 with any queries that they have
resulting from the test.  If their partners cannot solve some of them then
they are passed to a teaching assistant (but one could equally well
broadcast them to the entire group).  Only if this does not provide answers
are they passed to the lecturer.

In this way the group are supporting each other and the lecturer is dealing
with the problems that the class really does need help with.


regards.

Tom.

Tom Franklin
TechLearn
Network Centre
Innovation Close
York
YO10 5ZF
phone:  0161 434 3454
email:  [log in to unmask]
URL:    http://www.techlearn.ac.uk
==========================