Today, was day one of the 2017 ALT Winter Conference (#altc) and I was supposed to chair the 10:00 am session “The Great Sussex Podblast” to have been delivered by Pete Sparx, George Robinson and Tab Betts from Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) at the University of Sussex. Unfortunately, problems with the Conference Webcasting platform (Blackboard Collaborate Ultra) and it’s back up (Blackboard Collaborate Classic) meant that the session had to be cancelled.

Though signed up to the EdX Course in good time, I’ve only just today, already half-way through week 2, gotten around to exploring the resources and activities for Week 1 of George Siemens’ and David Wiley’s (or is the attribution the other way round) open course on an Introduction to Open Education (hashtag #OpenEdMOOC). On first viewing, the structure is interesting. The course is available as an xMOOC (with the possibility of an optional certification) on the EdX platform.

#LTHEchat is another ongoing twitter chat that takes place one hour every week during University term time (on Wednesdays at 8:00 UK time). The purpose is to discuss various issues around Higher Education. The event was launched by Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) of Sheffield Hallam University and Chrissi Nerantzi (@chrissinerantzi) of Manchester Metropolitan University in October 2014. Since 2015/2016 the event has been organised by a rotating team of volunteers who run it for a semester.

As part of my maintaining my professional registration as a Chartered Engineer (C.Eng.), I am now required to record and reflect on my CPD and have my training records for 2016 audited by the IET. This has meant going back through my calendar and trying to recall all the CPD events and activities that I was involved with for the last 18 months so that I can populate my historic data and then hopefully continue to record events in more real time thereafter.

In this article published by Turning Technologies - makers of audience response system TurningPoint, clickers and ResponseWare - Professor of Chemistry Education at the University of East Anglia and National Teaching Fellow Simon Lancaster (@S_J_lancaster) discusses how he is encouraging his colleagues to use Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) to engage students in lecture theatres. Here is a video of Simon’s keynote from the 2015 Sheffield Hallam University Learning and Teaching Conference in which he expands on and demonstrates these ideas.

On March first, Prof Sally Brown, recognised expert in Assessment and Feedback for HE, delivered a Webinar on Getting Started with Assessment and Feedback as part of the Transforming Assessment series. The recording of the seminar, both as a Blackboard Collaborate session and on YouTube is now available and well worth watching as part of your CPD. The link to the seminar page provides access to the many resources for beginners in HE assessment mentioned in the Webinar.

Back in January for its fifth run is the excellent Bring Your Own Device for Learning (#BYOD4L) online CPD-fest. Covering the 5Cs, Connecting, Communicating, Curating, Collaborating and Creating, this “course” aims to share great ideas and build communities. Concentrating on portable educational technology that you can use with yourself, your colleagues and your students, you’re guaranteed to discover something that will enable you and them to be more effective. And at the same time you’ll find yourself becoming part of a growing community of like-minded souls.

There are some interesting events coming up over the next two months. In Swansea, the library team will again be running 7 Days of Twitter #SU7DoT. This time over the period 2nd-12th December. See the announcement and sign up here!. The team at Regent’s University London will again be running 12 Apps of Christmas (#12AoC) starting on 1st December on the Blackboard Open Learning Platform. They won’t be alone! The Association for Learning Technology will be running the third ALT Winter Conference (#altc) online from 6-8 December.

I attended the first run of FutureLearn MOOC #FLble1 Blended Learning Essentials: Getting Started last year. Because of other commitments, I couldn’t take part in the first run of the second part #FLble2 Blended Learning Essentials: Embedding Practice but it looks like I have another chance in the re-run that starts 3 October. https://twitter.com/cpjobling/status/778548535130226688 Highly recommended! If you missed it, the team leaders Diana Laurillard and Neil Morris gave a talk on the Blended Learning Essentials courses on Future Learn at the 2016 Alt Conference.

I am humbled at being made the 5th recipient of the prestigious #LTHEChat Golden Tweeter Award for [my] continuous commitment, valuable contributions and creative energy to the weekly LTHEchat as both a member of the community and as a volunteer member in two organising teams, from January to June 2016. My thanks to the LTHEChat community for this recognition! Comments: My CPD in 2016: Part 2 #LTHEChat – Fresh and Crispy - Jun 1, 2017