Designs on e-Learning 2013

We have secured key note speakers who will be featured the mornings of September 11th and 12th.

Dr. Roger McHaney

For opening our conversations,  Dr. Roger McHaney of Kansas State University, author of the recent book The New Digital Shoreline: How Web 2.0 and Millennials Are Revolutionizing Higher Education will kickoff our conference. As he recently wrote:

Professors and administrators are both excited and scared by the prospect of incorporating Web 2.0 ideas into their careers and teaching. I am NOT saying that new technologies should be used in all settings. In fact, just because these tools are out there doesn’t mean we should change for the sake of changing. The smart use of new technologies should result from the reformulation of our classes and job activities. Perhaps one of the worse approaches is to use these tools as a substitute for something that works well in its current form.

Roger McHaney is an expert on use of technology and the ways Web 2.0 and tech-savvy millennials are impacting higher education and learning. He also develops distance education teaching and learning techniques. His work has been published in top business and education journals and he is a frequent keynote speaker His areas of research include Web 2.0 in education and business, technologies used by millennials, discrete event simulation, education simulation systems, computer-mediated communication systems, and organizational computing. His ongoing research includes studies on how social media is impacting business and education, distance learning techniques, business applications in virtual worlds such as Second Life, messageboard language complexity, and development of online training simulations.

Dr. McHaney’s sane and humane approach to technology in instruction helps illuminate each individual’s walk with technology.

It is his dream to eventually be able to teach all his classes from his retreat on the shore of Lake Huron in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Dr. Carol Burch-Brown

Dr. Burch-Brown of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VT) will begin Thursday’s morning’s events. As her work is conceptually interdisciplinary, she works across several creative media, including drawing, hydrophonic recordings, photography, and video.  Trained as both a visual artist and a musician, her current projects connect sound and imagery using Max/MSP/Jitter and other forms of digital processing.  Much of her work for the past ten years has been engaged with new media and natural history, including projects exhibitions and performances related to evolutionary science  and, currently, Salt Marsh estuary habitats of the southeast Atlantic.  Burch-Brown’s work incorporates field and underwater recordings as well as video, photography, and installation. Burch-Brown has been the recipient of many grants and awards including the International Travel Supplement Grant for concert performance at the International Computer Music Conference 2010, Virginia Tech’s Creative Achievement Award, the Alternate ROOTS (Atlanta) Tour and Residency Program, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant and a Creative Achievement Award.