Educational Technology Blog

Reflecting on ALT-C

Back at work after ALT-C and reviewing the conference…

I had some time free at the end to walk around the beautiful campus in Nottingham and admire the Millennium Garden and Lake. Spotted the coat of arms on the gates beside the lake – Knowledge Leads the City?.

I also had a quick look round the not so beautiful city. Unlike Marc I did not make it to Sherwood Forest.

The most interesting short paper was definitely “Digital Story Telling” by John Sandars . It was novel and gave me some ideas and reflect on and maybe apply in UCD. I enjoyed presentations on blogging particularly those from the Open University – Gill Kirkup’s survey revealed the gap (chasm?) between the plans of learning technologists and the understanding of most distance learners. The Learning Objects competition brought me back to my roots in content development. I’m glad to see that there is still a role for “professionally- generated content”.

Perhaps the best part was to meet and talk to colleagues, many of whom I met for the first time. Also meeting a Facebook friend in the real world. We, humans, are social creatures and it is hard to beat face to face contact for getting to know people.

I hope to get to ALT-C again but it probably will not be in 2008.

Add comment September 7th, 2007

Digital Storytelling by Medical Students

John Sandars of Leeds University showed how medical students are creating digital stories to help reflect on their home visits to patients. Students use images to build a story about their experiences. The images are not of the patients but symbols representing the students’ feelings and reflections on the home visit. For example, a picture of a cat could illustrate that the patient lived alone with a pet. A strength of this method is its simplicity. The stories are simply put together as images in PowerPoint.

For me, this was one of the most interesting presentations at ALT. I intend to explore its application in UCD

Add comment September 6th, 2007