Technology Profiles

April 18 symposium to highlight collaborative teaching and learning technologies

Faculty are invited to learn and share innovative uses of technology to enhance teaching, learning, and research at the 2009 Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology, to be held April 18, 2009 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, University Park. During the free event, faculty will present innovative uses of technology in courses to promote learning and help keep students engaged. This year’s theme is "Student Engagement and the Culture of Teaching and Learning."

David Wiley will provide the keynote address. Wiley is an internationally recognized expert in the area of reusable educational resources and has authored dozens of books, peer-reviewed journal articles, and magazine columns dealing with educationally effective uses of technology. Wiley believes that higher education needs to align itself with the changes in both society and its student base by innovating in the areas of openness, connectedness, participation, and personalization. Toward that goal, Wiley has been at the forefront of the Open Education Movement, championing for educational materials and resources to be offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses, such as a Creative Commons license, to remix, improve, and redistribute. He is the founder of OpenContent.org, which released the first open license for course content in 1998. He is also the recipient of the National Science Foundation's prestigious Young Researcher/CAREER award. Media outlets such as the New York Times, The Economist, the London Financial Times, and the Chronicle of Higher Education have covered his work.

danah boyd will speak during lunch. boyd is a fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society. At the Berkman Center, she is codirecting the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to work with companies and nonprofits to identify potential technical solutions for keeping children safe online. Her research focuses on how American youth use networked public spaces, including MySpace and Facebook, for sociable purposes. In January, boyd joined Microsoft Research New England, a Boston research lab that seeks to advance knowledge that will benefit the future of computing.

The day will also feature demonstrations of social networking Web sites and how to produce podcasts and vodcasts. A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. For more information and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The symposium is sponsored by Information Technology Services.