We are members of the English Department's Instructional Technology Committee. One of our missions is to share what we know about using technology to teach and to learn.  We are not pollyannish in our view of technology.  The Internet’s diversions can have a dark, even worse, a useless side.  On the other hand, Luddites are welcome here, although not likely to show up, so perhaps my invitation is insincere.  If anything, this website recognizes the realpolitik of technology.  It is a done deal in our lives and resistance is futile.  That doesn't mean we adopt tech willy-nilly.  Technology should first augment what works well for us.  Translated:  if it doesn't make your teaching life better, then the tool is irrelevant. 

This conference seeks to focus your notion of what we mean by technology.  Would a good chair at work be a technology worth writing about?  Would magnetic paper for creating a business card for your students to put on their refrigerator be a worthwhile topic?  Maybe, but if that one is too socially intimate, then how about taking a cell phone picture (or even better have students take pictures) of your whiteboard/blackboard after a particularly inspired class?  How about the cool writing desk at Levenger's?  Never been to Levenger's?  Go there.  A student needs to find an expert really quickly, but you don't have the time to help.  Send them to Ask Metafilter. All of these might come up in the course of our May 4 program, but we will definitely speak to more pedestrian topics like how to use Blackboard with greater tech aplomb, commenting on student papers with audio, using your browser as the first line in teaching students how to research (as well as revolutionizing your own research), and… well, I guess, you need to explore this site a bit more to find out.

Of course, there is also the free, tech-related swag. 

More importantly, this program welcomes you to join in the fray, to become a part of the lively conversation that we hear among our students in Cherry Hall's corridors, but that we aren't always privy to.  You can register and become a member of the tribe who seeks to make their teaching, scholarship, and personal learning 'better,' no matter how we might define that slippery word.  OK, you can swing the champagne bottle now.