Looking forward to this week’s Campus Technology 2011 Conference

“CT 2011” is this week in Boston – I hope I get to see some of you there!

I’m excited about this year’s Campus Technology conference for several reasons. In addition to the usual variety of Break Out Sessions, and Technology Seminars, there’s an opening keynote by Michael Wesch (known to many through his wonderful ”Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us” and “A Vision Of Students Today” YouTube videos).

To top it all off, I’m presenting this year - my session will be on Thursday (from 9:45 to 10:45), and is titled, “Using Popular Social Networking Tools In (and Out of) the Classroom”.

In this Break Out Session, I’ll be discussing …

• How blogging about various social networking tools and ways in which they are being used in education produced plenty of great examples of the instructional application of these technologies through reader comments.
• Many of the uses of Twitter and Facebook that readers shared in the aforementioned comments, as well other uses I’ve learned about and shared here.
• Tips on how to get started with Twitter, and with the use Facebook for class groups and for your own ‘teacher page’.
• Various resources to help educators learn more, and get off to a good start with their own efforts to use Facebook or Twitter in the course setting. Lastly, I’ll be introducing several education-specific social networking tools available on the Internet.

After the presentation, I’ll make the materials available here for download. At nearly an hour, this presentation is a lot of information, so I’m thinking about repurposing some of this content and publishing it in smaller chunks (hmm … perhaps a “Facebook (or Twitter) in the Classroom” online workshop could work out nicely?)

Last year’s conference was my first, and I enjoyed it immensely. I shared some of what I learned in some of the sessions and seminars in this post. I also wrote “Steven Laster’s 8 Factors for Successful IT Management“, after being inspired by the Harvard CIO’s mid-conference keynote. I’m really looking forward to sharing some of the exciting and innovative uses of technology that I’ll be hearing about this week.

If any of you happen to be attending, I hope you’ll stop by my presentation (or just stop me in the hall if you happen to recognize me) and say hello!