This year's ALT-C had it all from mining outfits to knitting to confessions of a selfish tweeter. I had a particular interest in the first keynote speaker of the first day Eric Mazur, who spoke about how students learn.
The easy part of teaching is the regurgitation of information, the hard part and the focus should be how this information is assimilated and connected with experience and knowledge in the students brain. Studies carried out showed that students are more asleep during lectures than they are when they are actually asleep! Students need the time and discipline to go away and reflect on what they have learnt and process this especially when what they are learning is different from they believe to be true (cognitive dissonance).
Eric Mazur's Keynote Speech: "Students are more asleep during lectures then when they are asleep"
And of course Plymouth College of Art were there to present our project to delegates. The issues arising from the JISC workshop 'Can you HEAR the first KIS' were interesting and it was only a shame that we didn't have more time to talk around this subject.
Elaine Garcia and Kerry Dungay about to present our project!
What did we take away from the ALT-C 2012? Interesting workshops on Mahara and ePortfolios which were particularly relevant to our project. It was an edifying insight into the culture of learning technology and the Twitter feed provided a better view of the opinions, thoughts and perspectives of those attending.
For those Harry Potter fans, I like to compare the Twitter feed to the magic time clock that Hermoine had that allowed her to go to several of her lessons at once. I could attend one seminar but also read about what was being said elsewhere.
PCA would like to extend thanks to the organisers and hope you enjoyed it as much as we did at #altc2012! Just remember next year to bring your knitting :0)
