Educational Technology Day 2014 will provide a display of vendors from a wide range of technology-based subjects, and will feature companies and presentations with advancements in 3-D technology.
The event will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 27 in Emerson Suites and Campus Center. David Weil, director of Enterprise Application Services in Information Technology Services, said students are welcome to attend the event, and attendees from outside the college are required to register. The event is expected to attract about 600 people from outside the college and about 800 students, faculty and staff, he said.
The event has three portions: vendor showcase, seminars and the college showcase. Weil said about 55 regional and national vendors will have booths set up displaying their products and innovations. Seminars are 50-minute presentations by vendors, faculty and students held throughout the Campus Center. The college showcase is an opportunity for professors to display how they are using technology in the classroom.
Vendors like Apple, Brocade, Dell, Epson, FileMaker, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and Verizon Wireless will show their products, which include 3-D printers, 3-D gaming, wearable devices like Google Glass, networks, software, laptops, tablets, cloud computing and flipped classrooms.
“It’s about bringing technology to campus that is not quite here yet or people don’t have an opportunity to see it every day,” Weil said.
Wade Pickren, director of the Center for Faculty Excellence and Sponsored Research, said the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium Track, a specific series of the seminars offered, will provide the attendees with workshops that focus on effective classroom technology.
“These tools aren’t being used just because they’re cool tools,” Pickren said. “They help lift student engagement, they make it possible to do some different things in the classroom that couldn’t be done before.”
Anthony Adornato, assistant professor in the Department of Journalism, said he will be teaching a session using classroom technologies to complement in-class learning on the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium Track. This generation of students are “digital natives,” but don’t know how to use technology to complement their coursework and in the classrooms, he said.
Adornato said current students are the next leaders and innovators in fields like journalism, health care and business, so being able to utilize new advancements in technology will be essential for the future.
“I think it’s key to get that experience here and be ahead of the curve, so when you’re out in the real world, you’re seen as an innovator, you’re not afraid to experience these gadgets and take risks,” Adornato said.
