LEARNING TECHNOLOGIST OF THE YEAR AWARD 2008:Association for Learning Technology announces winners

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) September 17, 2008 -- The Association for Learning Technology announced the winners of the annual Learning Technologist of the Year Awards at its prestigious annual conference. www.alt.ac.uk/altc2008. The awards were presented by David Cavallo, Chief Learning Architect for One Laptop per Child, at an event attended by Ian Pearson, Minister of State for Science and Innovation (10 September 2008).

This is the second year that the Association for Learning Technology (http://www.alt.ac.uk) has run the awards, which celebrate and reward excellent practice and outstanding achievement in the learning technology field - the broad range of communication, information and related technologies that can be used to support learning, teaching, and assessment. The award is this year sponsored by learning and ICT solutions specialist, Tribal Group (www.tribalgroup.co.uk).

The 2 winning and 3 commended entries shared prizes totalling £3,800.

Winner, Individual Award

Josie Fraser won the Individual Award for her wide-ranging, influential, and sustained contribution in the learning technology field. She said, “Winning the Individual Award for the 2008 Learning Technologist of the Year is a huge honour. It represents a fantastic opportunity for me to raise not only my own professional profile as an edtech, and even more importantly to celebrate the amazing organisations, teams and individuals I've been fortunate enough to work with to produce some world class projects. My work for Childnet, producing the DCSF's Cyberbullying Guidance, and research on Young People and Social Networking Services for Becta, the continuing development of the Emerge community for JISC, and the International Edublog Awards programme are all initiatives which I am hugely proud of and have involved working with teams of people who are amazing. I feel incredibly lucky to work in such a dynamic, vibrant and above all community focused international sector.”

Winner – Team Award

The Learning Technology Group at Lancaster University was awarded the Team Award for successfully providing and integrated learning technology service that has had a major and beneficial impact on students and staff across the whole university. Accepting the award, Dr. Richard A. Ranker said, “Winning this award will bring some well-deserved recognition to the team. They have been providing world-class business-essential tools for use in teaching and learning, but too often receive no recognition of it. This external validation and selection as the best learning technology team in the UK will let them -- and our staff and students -- know they are appreciated. I believe their introduction of two new applications this past September while still updating and improving our other three main applications is a major accomplishment for this team of seven FTE, most of whom are on fixed-term contracts.”

Commended - Individu

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