LTHEchat is delighted to be invited by Maren Deepwell, CEO of the Association of Learning Technology to host an ‘extra chat’ to coincide with #altc. Many of our #LTHEchat community will be familiar with this wonderful organisation and the annual conference.

As part of this year’s ALT conference, ALT Trustees James Clay and Sheila MacNeill will be joined by conference key note speaker Dr Bonnie Stewart for a special #altc themed tweet chat. Following Bonnie’s keynote from earlier in the day, the tweet chat will be focusing on notions of empowerment in digital spaces in relation to learning and teaching. How can/do we allow teachers and learners to be empowered by and through digital spaces and services? What are your successes and challenges in this area?
Join us at 4pm on Tuesday 5th September.

Bonnie Stewart is an educator and social media researcher fascinated by who we are when we’re online. An instructor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island, and Founder/Director of the media literacy initiative Antigonish 2.0, Bonnie is interested in the intersections of knowledge, technology, and identity. As Director of Edactive Technologies, Inc., Bonnie keynotes and consults about digital strategy, digital pedagogy, and community capacity-building around the world. She is currently lead researcher and writer of a ten-year Cultural Strategy for the province of PEI. Bonnie has been a teacher and facilitator for more than twenty years, and she enjoys few things more than a lively discussion. She does her best thinking out loud on Twitter as @bonstewart.

Sheila MacNeill is an Senior Lecturer in Digital Learning at Glasgow Caledonian University and Trustee of ALT. Sheila will become Chair of ALT during the 2017 conference. Sheila is currently part of the Academic Development Team at GCU working to develop effective pedagogical approaches through the use of digital technologies. Sheila is active on social media and regular blogger. You can find our more about her work and current thoughts on a range of education related issues on her blog and on Twitter as @sheilmcn

James Clay is a Senior Co-Design Manager at Jisc and has over twenty years experience working in education. He has been a teacher, a project director, an ILT manager and an IT director. He has managed a range of projects over the years in various roles, including mobile learning, e-books, IT infrastructure, learner analytics, copyright, institutional resources, VLEs and student records. On Twitter he can be found as @JamesClay

The tweets were curated as a storify which can be found here: https://storify.com/LTHEchat/a-summer-extra-lthechat-with-altc

Further opportunities

If you cannot make #altc this year you can join a Virtually Connecting Google Hangout and chat with some of the speakers at the conference. These include Bonnie Stewart and Donna Lanclos, Sian Baine, Peter Alston, Maren Deepwell, Peter Goodyear, Linda Creanor. Do follow @vconnecting for more info on future opportunities to virtual connect with educators across the globe.