end of day 2 alt-c

Time really does fly when you are enjoying yourself. Have enjoyed all my conversations here whether they were work or social. Am I detecting signs of the drawing together of techies, geeks, academics, technologists ( who may overlap the aforementioned categories!) uniting in a common purpose? I admin I'm an optimist but what a lovely bunch of people. Maybe austerity does bring out the best in us, let's hope so :)

ALT-C conference from a linguist perspective

A couple of matters mentioned at today's proceedings were red flags to me so they can't go unmentioned! Blackboard presentation: mention was made of the psychological impact of voice in provoking greater response. (Yes, people connect through their voices, I seem to remember being unable to ignore my childrens' cries! its a primal thing)
Assessment presentation: Physicist remarks that if you try to create algorithms for marking passages of human writing you could lose the will to live (LOL)

At last! are people getting it? Language is one of the most complex human phenomena (and the most unlikely, to quote Pinker) could it be EVEN more complex than Physics :)

journey to alt-c

Helpfully smooth journey to conference this morning. Highlights included getting my Chris Evans fix and singing along to "Build me up buttercup" God, my kids would be embarassed! But then I am probably one of the oldest geeks in town! Relieved to hear (several times)  that Donald Clark is 54 (or will be in Dec) He's setting the bar for growing old disgracefully, love it!! Certainly got everyone talking and tweeting...

la rentrée

Only had a week off but got so chilled that the thought of getting back to work is quite scary! So much to do, so many people to meet and plans to execute...deep breath!
Created first ever cloud http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/4545 ready for ALT-C 2010.

Hoping to find others who understand...

Today I showed my husband my abstract for my short paper to be delivered at ALT-C 2010. I don't blame him for not showing enthusiasm, to him my e-learning work is just another time consuming activity that distracts me from being more available to home and family. Some of my colleagues at work are also bemused by my desire to encourage online interaction and voice over the internet in language teaching. However, I am looking forward to meeting others who get it when I join the ALT-C in Nottingham in September. So excited about the possibility of finally finding my "niche" :)
Facebook page here

The Lousy Linguist: Robo-Linguists At Last!!

The Lousy Linguist: Robo-Linguists At Last!!

A week of breakthroughs

We now have a moodle, complete with suitable logos and a choice group of users. We also have a suite of social networking tools for the Language Centre (facebook, netvibes, youtube channel and of course twitter has been going for a little while)All of a sudden we're off!