Next-Gen.edu and You

• By Katherine Grayson
• 04/01/08

Think this last generation of digital natives has been tough to keep up with? The next surge might blow you away.

Where can you go to find out not just about emerging web, immersive, and intelligent classroom technologies, but also about the next wave of these tools and the leadership capabilities you will need to usher them in?

This summer, on the waterfront in beautiful Boston, MA, savvy academic technology leaders, campus technologists, and academicians looking to get up-to-speed quickly will be doing just that at the Campus Technology 2008 Conference and Expo, Welcome to Next-Gen.Edu!

This year, our entire conference is focused on all the tools, skills, strategies, and tactics that will be essential to the new higher pedagogy in 2008 and beyond. We'll offer you hot-button sessions like: "The Digital Commons: Blogs, Wikis, and More for the Next- Gen Campus," "10 Web 2.0 Tech- Enhanced Strategies to Engage Your Learners," "Worldware and the New Personal Learning Environments," and "Using Second Life to 'Road Test' Tech Space Planning."

Also new this year are our "technology walk-throughs" with the campus pros deploying and using exciting new products right now. (You told us you wanted to know all about how the newest tools and technologies work, and we heard you!) You'll get "inside" the tools, in sessions such as: "IT as a Service: Google Apps for Education," "When 'Thunder' Hit Our Campus," "From Social to Semantic Web: Blogs and Wikis to Mashups and Tagging," "Microsoft Popfly: Web 2.0 in the IT Classroom," and "Boosting Innovation and Collaboration With Apple Technologies."

And the inside track on innovation doesn't stop there. This summer, in conjunction with our first formal Campus Technology Innovators Awards event at the conference, we'll also be debuting our "Innovate With the Campus Technology Innovators" track, which offers campus presentations around award-winning innovations in these areas and others: "Web 2.0 and High-Touch Recruitment," "Organizational Transformation Through IT as a Service," "Podcasting as Educational Inspiration," "Mandatory Cell Phone Programs to Boost Pedagogy," "Total Class Access for the Next-Gen Working Student," and "Social and Community Networking."

Of course, we've got outstanding keynotes and plenaries (including a controversial issues "shootout"), intensive pre-conference workshops, a standout field trip to MIT's remarkable iCampus initiative (comprising Technology Enabled Active Learning, iLabs, and Spoken Lecture Processing), and-as always at Campus Technology conferences- peer networking opportunities everywhere. Our program emphasis on dynamic panel discussions and interactive presentations continues for you- no "talking heads" here!

So join us July 28-31 to learn, share, and prepare for next-gen campus wonders in the collegial, inspiring CT2008 conference environment. Register today here. We'll see you there!

-Katherine Grayson, Editor-In-Chief
What have you seen and heard? Send to: [email protected].