Hard drive home

Well, it's all over for another year, including the shouting. My hard drive is full and now I'm heading off on another hard drive ... home, along with all the other weary but contented delegates. We have just heard the final ALT-C 2007 keynote speech, from Google Head of Research Peter Norvig. It was I think, a fitting end to a very good conference. Peter is a thoroughly nice guy, and totally unassuming, considering his collossal achievements. Yesterday I spent time talking to him as we walked down the hill from the Law and Science building between sessions. He was interested in hearing from me about the state of play of learning technology in the UK. I told him that it wasn't so much a discipline as a field of disparate activities that is still in the process of evolving into a discipline. I suggested to him that events like ALT-C can act as rallying points for technologists, software developer, managers, academics and corporate bods. Without the organisation of ALT we would have no hope of creating a discrete discipline known as 'Learning Technology'. He nodded sagely.

Peter's talk I thought was a little tentative at first, given that he admitted to being less than au fait with the state of British learning technology. Resplendent in his colourful robot motif Hawaiin shirt, Peter used a number of historical illustrations such as the apprentice model of learning, and Gutenburg's printing press as he crafted his story. There was extensive use of the work of that wonderful old fossil Benjamin Bloom which he used as a frequent scratching post. If he had referred to Orlando Bloom he might have got more response. Peter began to warm to his theme though when he reached the point where he could talk about something that was as familiar to him as Silicon Valley. The Google innovations he showed were familiar already to most of the delegates, but he warned us that we could 'outsmart' ourselves if we used the wrong tools.

There is no doubt about it. Although Peter Norvig refers to the dark ages a lot, he is a luminary in the world of computer software engineering. He negotiated a gaggle of tricky questions from a knowledgeable audience with consumate ease, and a liberal dose of dry wit. And we warmed to him too. Was Wikipedia threatening Google's pre-eminence? he was asked. Not at all, he replied - Google sends about one third of all its traffic to Wikipedia, he said. Touche! Peter Norvig's keynote can be viewed in full and on demand, courtesy of Elluminate.