Dame Professor Wendy Hall
Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, is one of the three ALT Ambassadors, and is a founder member of ALT. We congratulate Wendy on being made a Dame in the 2009 New Year Honours List for services to science and technology. Wendy has a particular interest in Web Science, which she describes with Kieron O'Hara in the May 2008 issue of ALT News at newsletter.alt.ac.uk/e_article001068553.cfm.  
 
Staffing changes
John Slater, who has been closely involved in ALT for many years, and who stood down as Honorary Treasurer last September, is working for ALT as a consultant pending the filling of the Director of Development post.
 
A note of thanks to Julie Voce
Julie stepped in as Editor of this issue of ALT News during Morag Munro’s current leave of absence. As you can see from the newsletter, Julie, with support from Kevin Donovan and Graham McElearney has produced a particularly wide-ranging and hopefully interesting issue.
 
Consultation responses
We contributed extensively to JISC’s internal consultation on the contents of Sir Ron Cooke’s (outgoing Chair of JISC) response to an invitation from John Denham (Secretary of State for Education) to provide written advice on “how we can become a world leader in HE e-learning over the next 10–15 years”. Sir Ron’s paper is available on the DIUS website at www.dius.gov.uk/policy/world_leader_e-learning.html.
 
Earlier this month we submitted a detailed response to the Communities and Local Government Department’s consultation on digital inclusion. The response is available on the ALT website at www.alt.ac.uk/documents.html.
 
ALT Research Symposium
In November we ran the first part of our first Research Symposium under the auspices of the ALT Research Committee. (The second part will take place in February.) Kevin Donovan’s report from the symposium is elsewhere in the newsletter, and we are grateful to Becta for financial support for the event.
 
ALT Conference 2009: "In dreams begins responsibility"– choice, evidence, and change
The calls for papers and abstracts for inclusion in the 2009 conference programme was issued before Christmas and closes on 16 February. You can access the calls from www.alt.ac.uk/altc2009/.
 
2009 Learning Technologist of the Year Award
Blackboard Inc. has kindly agreed to sponsor the 2009 Learning Technologist of the Year Award. The call for entries will be issued in February and announced widely. We will continue with the practice already established of making the award in team and individual categories.
 
Membership survey
Thanks to all readers who completed our membership survey, which closed on 16/1/2009, with our target of 200 responses easily exceeded. Our Membership Services Manager Maren Deepwell is analysing the data collected, and we expect to make significant changes to our membership services overall in the light of our findings. Highlights from the survey will be published in due course.
 
LSIS eCPD programme 
Last year we were asked to be a partner in the delivery of a major learning technology related staff and organisational development programme for the learning and skills sector, provided by BDP Learning and a consortium of sector partners, for the newly formed Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS). The launch conference for the eCPD programme, in which Events Manager Hayley Willis and Director of Operations Marion Samler are playing a major role, and which will have ten parallel workshop streams, and keynote speeches from Toni Fazaeli (Chief Executive of the Institute for Learning) and Roger McLure (Chief Executive of LSIS), will take place in London on 5 February. Print and video assets from the event will be available via the ALT website in due course.
 
Seb Schmoller
seb.schmoller@alt.ac.uk  14/1/2009