Association for Learning Technology

Fortnightly news digest 196, issued 20 February 2010

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Table of Contents
1. Association news
2. Association events
3. News
4. Funding calls
5. Other events – some with close deadlines
6. Vacancies
7. Most recent issue of the ALT Journal – links to individual articles
8. *New* Most recent issue of ALT News Online – links to individual articles

1. Association news
1.1 Subscribing to ALT-ANNOUNCE - Staff of organisational and sponsoring 
members, alongside individual members of ALT, are entitled to subscribe 
to ALT-ANNOUNCE, the Jiscmail list we use to distribute this fortnightly 
Digest, the quarterly ALT News, and infrequent brief announcements about 
ALT. Please encourage relevant colleagues to subscribe. Please encourage 
relevant colleagues to subscribe from the simple form at 
http://www.alt.ac.uk/lists.html. In the case of staff of organisational 
and sponsoring members, provided the staff member joining has an email 
address consistent with the domain name of an organisational or 
sponsoring member of ALT, we will approve the subscription.

1.2 Multimedia Information & Technology (February 2010) has published a 
review of the 2009 ALT Conference. We have put an offprint of the 
article here: http://repository.alt.ac.uk/731/.

1.3 The Future of Higher Education: Beyond the Campus - a joint JISC, 
SURF, EDUCAUSE, and CAUDIT report. This January 2010 report - described 
as "a collaborative visioning of the future of higher education to 
explore issues common to our countries and memberships" - chimes with 
the themes of the 2010 ALT conference. It includes a six-page appendix 
covering the "underlying technologies": cloud computing; open 
educational resources; identity management; analytics; mobile devices; 
collaboration tools. Download it from the Educause web site at: 
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/PUB9008.pdf [20 pages, 100 kB PDF]

1.4 CMALT familiarisation workshops in Yorkshire and Humberside. As part 
of Yorkshire Forward’s Digital 20/20 initiative, colleagues living or 
working in Yorkshire and the Humber can currently register for CMALT for 
£47.50, reduced from the usual £95.00. With the help of CMALT holders in 
the region, we are running a series of free one hour familiarisation 
workshops:
* Sheffield, 25/2/2010, 16.30 – 17.30, Sero, Sheffield Technology Parks, 
Cooper Buildings, Arundel Street, Sheffield, S1 2NS - book at 
http://tinyurl.com/yztm4rk
* Sheffield, 4/3/2010, 12.30 – 13.30, Sheffield Teachers’ Centre, Carter 
Knowle Road, Sheffield S7 2EX - book at http://tinyurl.com/yztm4rk;
* York, 22/3/2010, York St John University – timing and booking 
arrangements to follow in the next Digest;
* Leeds, 23/3/2010, Leeds Metropolitan University – timing and booking 
arrangements to follow in the next Digest.
For more information about the Digital 20/20 scheme see 
http://tinyurl.com/yj2rflw [50 kB PDF], email [log in to unmask], or call 
ALT on 01865 484125.

1.5 ALT is a partner in the JISC Flexible Service Delivery Programme 
(FSD). A new JISC briefing paper, entitled "What is Flexible Service 
Delivery?" has been published. You can download it from the FSD web site 
at http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/flexible-service-delivery/.

1.6 “E-learning Authoring: The Shifting Landscape” is a new report by 
David Wilson, one of the presenters for the 17/2/2010 joint 
ALT/eLearning Network webinar on why E-learning projects go wrong. This 
may be of interest to members and is available from David's web site at 
http://tinyurl.com/yb4u3lv [720 kB PDF]. Meanwhile, the recording of the 
whole webinar and the presentations used by Rob Hubbard and by David 
Wilson are on the ALT Open Access Repository at http://tinyurl.com/ycbw8ky.

2. Association events
2.1 ALT-C 2010: “Into something rich and strange” – making sense of the 
sea-change. The 17th ALT annual conference will be held at University of 
Nottingham, UK, 7-9 September 2010. The Calls and Guidelines for 
proposals for inclusion in the conference programmes are at 
http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2010/papers.html. *The closing date for 
submissions has been extended to 1/3/2010.*

2.2 Mobile Enabling Technologies: one day workshop, 25 March 2010, 
University of Bradford. Dr Christine Dearnley, Stuart Walker, John 
Fairhall, Jak Radice. This one day workshop will present the outcomes of 
two studies undertaken at the University of Bradford. The first study 
focused on establishing what advantages mobile devices can offer 
disabled students, as well as identifying the challenges that they face 
when using mobile technologies. The second study then built on these 
findings to explore the relationship between the desirability of mobile 
devices and the student’s engagement with mobile learning and 
assessment. The research methods in both studies proved to be innovative 
and the team involved will share their experiences at the workshop. £100 
ALT members, £155 non ALT members. 
http://www.alt.ac.uk/workshop_detail.php?e=348

2.3 Podcasting in Learning and Teaching: one day workshop, 14 April 
2010, Sheffield Hallam University. Graham McElearney of Sheffield 
University and Andrew Middleton of Sheffield Hallam University. The 
recent explosion in the popularity of podcasting provides exciting new 
possibilities for the development and delivery of learning resources. As 
well as placing a renewed focus on the use of audio as a medium for 
learning and teaching, it offers great flexibility in how learning 
resources can be created and used by staff and students alike, offering 
new opportunities for independent study and creativity within the 
curriculum. This timely workshop will provide an overview of podcasting 
and related technologies, will examine how the technologies can be used 
in a range of learning and teaching contexts, and provide hands on 
training in the production of podcasts, using the freely available 
Audacity software. £100 ALT members, £155 non ALT members. 
http://www.alt.ac.uk/workshop_detail.php?e=351

2.4 Uses of Twitter in Higher Education: one day workshop, 4 May 2010, 
National College at Nottingham. Matt Lingard - London School of 
Economics, Tony McNeill - Kingston University and Alan Cann - University 
of Leicester.   This workshop will provide an introduction to,the 
microblogging/social networking service Twitter, and its potential uses 
in teaching and learning. The first part of the workshop is organised in 
two strands:
* strand A for those who are new to Twitter and who have yet to create 
or use an account;
* strand B for those who have a Twitter account and who would like to 
extend their understanding of its possible uses.
After lunch, participants will be presented with two case studies of 
Twitter use. The workshop concludes with a discussion of Twitter's 
educational potential partially conducted via Twitter and using a 
workshop hashtag. A series of Twitter ‘quick sheets’, developed with the 
support of LearnHigher, will be distributed at the start of the 
workshop. £115 ALT members, £155 non ALT members. 
http://www.alt.ac.uk/workshop_detail.php?e=349

2.5 Other one day workshops for 2010 include: Building a Game in a Day, 
led by Scott Hewitt of Real Projects and Steve Harris of Anglia Ruskin 
University. Details to be announced in a future issue of the Digest.

3. News
3.1 The latest HEFCE news headlines are at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/

3.2 The latest JISC news headlines are at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news.aspx.

3.3 Learning Technology Unplugged - New podcast available - John Traxler 
talks about a new Special Interest Group, on ethics and the use of 
Web2.0 in Higher Education. http://ltunplugged.wordpress.com/ 
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LearningTechnologyUnpluggedPodcast. Or 
follow LTUnplugged on Twitter.

3.4 Canterbury Christ Church University is to run a national conference 
to disseminate details about the iBorrow Project, which is one of the 
second phase JISC Institutional Innovation Programme projects, see 
http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/iborrow/

4. Funding calls
4.1 Atlantis Programme - External Cooperation: EU-US cooperation in 
higher education and vocational training. Transatlantic Degree Consortia 
Projects / Excellence Mobility Projects / Policy Oriented Measures. Call 
closes on 8 April 2010. Go to http://tinyurl.com/y9ozeee.

5 Other events
5.1 Future Learningscapes:  a 21st Century Challenge". 7 July 2010, 
University of Greenwich, Maritime Greenwich Campus, London UK. 
http://www.gre.ac.uk/e-conference. Submission deadline: 16 April 2010

5.2 eLearning Africa 2010
5th International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and 
Training 26 – 28 May 2010, Mulungushi International Conference Center, 
Lusaka, Zambia http://www.elearning-africa.com

5.3 MoodleMoot UK 2010, 13 – 14 April 2010, Senate House, University of 
London's iconic Art Deco building, Russell Square, London. More 
information about the conference can be found at 
http://moodlemootuk2010.org.uk. The call for papers - encouraging 
submissions from all types of Moodle users and sectors is at 
http://moodlemootuk2010.org.uk/programme/call-for-papers/. Twitter: 
http://twitter.com/ulcc Hashtag: #mootuk10

5.4 Open Educational Resources 2010 (OER10). 22 – 24 March, Clare 
College, Cambridge: http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer10. Registration deadline: 
26 February.

5.5 Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development - Online staff 
development courses:
* Evaluating technology innovations in learning and teaching –
17 February - 19 March 2010;
* Engaging learning with social software, 3 March - 2 April 2010
Digital literacies, 10 March 2010;

To book a place visit: 
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsld/online/index.html


6. Vacancies

6.1 BPP College-Centre for Innovation and Programme Design Instructional 
Designer (x2)
Full Time	London
Salary: £35 000 per annum (12 month probation period)
Please submit a CV to Darren Gash, Head of Learning Technology: 
[log in to unmask]
Closing date: 28 February 2010

6.2 National STEM Centre
eLibrary Co-ordinator
Salary: £25,000 - £30,000 + final salary pension
Based: York
See: 
http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/news/opportunities-at-the-national-stem-centre
Closing date: 28 February 2010

7. Current Issue of the ALT Journal – links to individual articles The 
latest issue of the ALT Journal, Volume 17 Issue 2, can be accessed 
online from the links below. (If your organisation is a member of ALT, 
or if it has an online subscription to the Journal, *and* if its network 
is appropriately configured, then you should be able to click straight 
through to the individual articles. Note that all organisational and 
sponsoring members of ALT are entitled to online access to ALT-J for all 
their employees when logged into the network. If you cannot access the 
Journal online, this is something we may be able to help you fix).

Table of contents http://preview.tinyurl.com/n6b75z Editorial – “The 
agency of students, teachers and learning technologists” by Frances 
Bell. DOI: 10.1080/09687760903037109 http://preview.tinyurl.com/np3b8w

Article – “Students make a plan: understanding student agency in 
constraining conditions” by Laura Czerniewicz, Kevin Williams and Cheryl 
Brown. DOI: 10.1080/09687760903033058 http://preview.tinyurl.com/nu4kur

Article – “Using community development theory to improve student 
engagement in online discussion: a case study” by Elisabeth Skinner.
DOI: 10.1080/09687760902951599 http://preview.tinyurl.com/m7yl8b

Article – “Discontent with content analysis of online transcripts” by 
Judith Guevarra Enriquez. DOI: 10.1080/09687760903033066 
http://preview.tinyurl.com/lp48ln

Article – “The role of learning technologists in supporting e-research” 
by Susi Peacock, Ann Robertson, Sarah Williams and Maria Giatsi Clausen. 
DOI: 10.1080/09687760903033041 http://preview.tinyurl.com/lduw6w

Article – “Guidelines for supporting re-use of existing digital learning 
materials and methods in higher education” by Judith Schoonenboom, Henk 
Sligte and Eja Kliphuis. DOI: 10.1080/09687760903033074 
http://preview.tinyurl.com/nvarqh

Article – “Beyond podcasting: creative approaches to designing 
educational audio” by Andrew Middleton. DOI:10.1080/09687760903033082 
http://preview.tinyurl.com/noqlzm
Miscellany - Reviewers for volumes 15, 16 and 17.1, by Frances Bell and 
Rhona Sharpe.
DOI: 10.1080/09687760903069433 http://preview.tinyurl.com/n6997g

8. *New*. The most recent issue of ALT News Online: 15/1/2010 – links to 
individual articles

Google Wave in Education, by Alan Cann, Jo Badge, Dick Moore and Cameron 
Neylon - http://tinyurl.com/yzck6q2.

How to create a live online learning event by Phil Green - 
http://tinyurl.com/yzjz2cf.

JISC launches strategy for 2010-2012 by Malcolm Read - 
http://tinyurl.com/ygp6lrl.

Develop Me! Support Me! Engage (and retain) Me! by Becka Currant - 
http://tinyurl.com/yjjca9f.

Learning Technologies at the University of Oxford by Melissa Highton - 
http://tinyurl.com/yjm84la.

Interview with the University of Manchester's Faculty e-Learning 
Managers by Graham McElearney - http://tinyurl.com/yz8z5zh.

The impact of OpenLearn: making The Open University more "Open" by 
Patrick McAndrew and Andy Lane - http://tinyurl.com/yfjbla8.

Learning Pool, Sink or swim by Donald Clark - http://tinyurl.com/ygvpm8e.

How e-learning is being used in prisons to teach offenders practical 
work based skills (and help the environment!) by David Patterson, 
Gillian Broadhead and Peter Murphy - http://tinyurl.com/ycp7vsh.

3000 e-textbooks now live and free to FE colleges by Anna Vernon - 
http://tinyurl.com/yhbro9s.