It’s been a funny old week … I’ve been on annual leave this week, my aim was to spend some time with the kids before they go back to school next week and recharge my batteries following our superb online summer summit #altcSummit last week … unfortunately having broken a couple of teeth during lockdown has meant that I have had a fair bit of dental misery this week so have been pretty much nursing my wounds (literally) and feeling sorry for myself most of the week rather than actually recharging … hey ho … that’s the way the cookie crumbles …
Anyhow, being on leave meant that I missed the actual one year anniversary of my move to ALT on 1st September 2019 last year but I thought it would be interesting (to say the least) to reflect back over the last 12months.
September 2019
I left my old position as a Senior Academic Developer at Swansea University in August 2019. Two weeks after that we moved house after spending 18months living in temporary accommodation while we tried to find a new home.
My first day working for ALT was spent working at the Annual Conference in Edinburgh. The conference theme for that was Data, Dialogue and Doing . I did a combination of things at the conference from checking all the rooms were set up and running smoothly to Chairing sessions and manning the front desk. I also got to hangout and chat to loads of members at our Membership Stand. The conference was absolutely buzzing. Little did we know then that it would be our last face to face conference at ALT for a little while. As ever we had a great social programme for the conference and I made the most of taking part in some of that although I remember being absolutely knackered at the conference for most of it !
November saw me heading to London for two exciting things. Anyone who knows me will know I don’t travel all that well by public transport and usually end up getting lost. I’m fine driving places when I am in charge of stuff but having to negotiate trains and eek …the underground is a real headache for me. However, having travelled up twice in the space of a couple of weeks and managed to get to both the places I was aiming to get was a real milestone for me.
a) I was invited in November to be part of a panel at Wonkfest 2019 entitled ‘ What is the future of the profession for learning technologists ?’. This was hugely exciting and scary at the same time. Only having a few months in the role I wondered if I would have sufficient credibility to speak as part of the panel, but it actually went ok.
b) I attended my first meeting of the ALT Board of Trustees in London.
December brought our annual winter conference at ALT which is always held online.
As it turns out that was a handy thing to have experience in when the world changed a few months later.
I was part of the organising team for the #Socmedhe19 Social Media in Higher Education Conference held at Edgehill in December 2019 and also presented at it along with fab buddies Kiu, Suz and Sue.
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