I’m off to ALT-C next week, along with most of the UKs edtechs and learning technologists. I’ll be pretty busy, supporting the 4th annual ALT-C Edublogger meetup, helping host the Emerge reception & live radio broadcast, and contributing to the F-ALT fringe activities.
I’m really excited to be teaming up again with with Frances Bell, Helen Keegan and new girl Christina Costa to be delivering our second ALT-C slam workshop. Last years session explored what web 2.0 meant to participants, and went down really well. This year we’re trying to be even more reckless ambitious and inviting old and new friends from all over the world to pitch in to this years slam topic/competition, which is, in keeping with ALT-C’s over-arching theme, The Digital Divide.
What we hope to get out of the session is a wide ranging exploration of dimensions of the digital divide: To produce and collect short real-world and digital pieces on what the digital divide means to people, how it can be interpreted, and what it’s impacts are. In other words, what does the digital divide mean to you?
Obviously whole we’re hoping for a reasonably diverse bunch of participants on the day, there are going to be limits on the heterogeneity of a group of people at an ed tech conference in Leeds on any particular afternoon. So we’d really like to encourage other people to join in. We are looking for participants from all over the world to contribute to building a resource which is interesting, innovative, and engaging topics. We’d like to build a cross cultural snapshot mosaic of what the digital divide can mean and how it’s experienced.
The workshop will be running next Wednesday, 10 September 2008 at the University of Leeds, and participants will be creating and performing ‘slams’ around the digital divide theme – performance pieces which tackle issues in multiple ways. Checkout last years slams for some ideas of this experimental format, and this years wiki for more of an explanation.
We’ll be capturing and uploading content until midnight GMT on the 10th of September, and then giving everyone a chance to vote for their favorite slam, from those created and performed on the day and those contributed by educators across the globe.
We’re producing some sample slams for you to explore, and you can find information about how to upload your own contribution here.
So, interested in experimental, collaborative and distributed research processes? Thinking our session sounds like fun and might end up being a useful resource? Then join in!
1. Come along to our session! This time it’s scheduled at a reasonable hour 🙂
2. Create something for the wiki. You slam could be a picture, a slideshow, a podcast, a 90 second Flickr video – anything. Tell us one thing the digital divide means to you.
3. Already been working on the digital divide? Great! Repurpose something already up or just send us the link if it’s already in a fast, accessible format.
4. Checkout the entries once they’re up and vote for your favorite.
5. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
"If you, as an individual or small group, have got something to say about the Digital Divide between now and midnight Wednesday 10 September 2008 check converter, then you can create a slam, publish it here, comment on slam pages.
Then you can vote for your favourite between 11 and 14 September (deadline midnight GMT). We will announce the winners here and by message to members on Monday 15 September. That means that people from around the world can join in, not just those coming to our workshop. You can run your own workshop, or create your own slam, maybe with your friends. More details on how you can participate, just stick to our few simple guidelines."
There will be prizes! Probably not very good ones, but prizes nevertheless.
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