1. Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers With Technology (PT3)

Advances in software, hardware, and internet technologies in the past decade have created many new opportunities to enhance learning for students of all levels. Yet, how well prepared are the teachers to take advantage of these new opportunities? This track is designed to explore the preparation of teachers at the K-16 level for teaching with technology.

Examples of suitable projects for presentation in this track might include:

• projects from schools of education targeting K-12 teacher preparation
• innovative faculty development ideas
• new technologies that are being used by collaborating groups of teachers

2. Learning Outcomes: Raising The Bar With Technology

Does technology improve learning outcomes? Administrators ask if their technology investments are cost effective and add value to the education process. Assessment to determine a level of achievement is mandated. How can you measure the effectiveness of technology in a class? Many times, technology allows you to teach in a different way and students learn new concepts and skills. How do you measure if students' learning outcomes have improved? Does your use of the expanding technologies advance the "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (Chickering, AAHE Bulletin, March 1987, http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html?

• How technology has allowed your students to learn new concepts or skills more easily or at early stages in the curriculum.
• How technology has improved methods of evaluation of student learning.
• How technology has improved feedback during a course for improving their learning outcomes.
• Systematic changes through a departmental curriculum or across disciplines that improve learning outcomes through the use of technology.
• The use of Course Management systems to advance the "Seven Principles of Good Practice."
• How the use of technology has improved student skills essential for mastery of your discipline, e.g. critical thinking, problem solving, information processing, communication, teamwork, language development.

3. Information Literacy And Research

Information literacy can be defined as the point where individuals engaged in research have the skills necessary to identify a specific information need and combine it with the ability to locate, retrieve, evaluate and effectively present critical and relevant solutions to a given problem or task.
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The abundance and complexity of online academic information resources and their individual proprietary interfaces have created new challenges for anyone engaged in teaching, learning or academic research. Current trends of subject coverage and information product aggregations have increased user access to a broader and deeper pool of online materials.

This overwhelming access to information has also brought with it a new and modern anxiety. Teachers, learners and information providers have all experienced great pedagogical changes. Balancing the power, depth and complexity of the new search tools with the needs and attitudes of researchers accessing online information is the task at hand. Information literacy calls for a renewed partnership between library faculty and classroom faculty, and IT professionals working together, engaged in teaching library, research and computer skills as a commonplace experience.

Sample Track Topics:

• Strategies for the Integration of the Information Literacy into Current Curriculum
• Librarian and Classroom Faculty Partnership/Collaboration
• Defining Primary Information Literacy Skill Sets for Research
• Preparing for Information Literacy Accreditations Standards
• Information Literacy Issues in Distance Learning Environments
• Identifying Literacy Issues in Distance Learning Environments
• Identifying Plagiarism of Online Information Sources
• Libraries as Centers of Teaching and Learning

4. Emerging Technologies

The bold technological innovations of a few years ago like wireless networking, digital video, email, presentation software, and distance learning management systems are now accepted as routine tools for the modern teacher. What are the new devices, software products, and operating systems that are now coming into use or projected, and how will they contribute to education?

5. Building Bridges Among Educators At All Levels

Divisions among so-called levels of education have their uses -- growing minds have different needs at different times. Yet educators at all levels need to share methods, including technologies, and experiences. Bridges must be built to link primary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate education, and these with lifelong learning beyond or within academia. Such intercommunication helps educators focus on common goals and can ease transitions for students at all levels. This track welcomes papers, panels and posters that describe practices and/or programs for facilitating cooperation among educators at the various stages of education. Descriptions outrearch efforts by the University to community schools are encouraged.

6. Centers For Learning And Teaching

The concept of a Learning and Teaching Center, where faculty can help other faculty to improve the learning and teaching activities within their courses, has come ubiquitous across the SUNY system and the nation. These faculty development efforts range from modest operations to help faculty learn to use new teaching technologies, to complex organizations focused on all aspects of faculty development from classroom pedagogy, to distance education and writing grants in support of educational innovation.

This track is designed to create a forum through which the SUNY Centers for Learning and Teaching can share their best practices. Examples of suitable presentations might include:

• Innovative new programs to support technology in the classroom
• Collaborations between faculty and support staff
• Student-centered approaches to learning and teaching
• Creative faculty development programs.

Problem-based learning
Distance Learning in the Health Sciences - Synchronous and Asynchronous
PDA's and handhelds in professional training
Informatics Education for Physicians and other Health Care professionals
Course Evaluation and Assessment
Technology Innovations in Health Care Education
Course management and other web-based tools in Health Sciences and Medical Education
Technology, life-long learning and the Health professional
Images, streaming media, atlases, the visible human, virtual reality, simulations, and all those other high maintenance technologies that make health sciences education "special."

8. Policy

Proposals that address a strategic plan that focuses on using technologies on their campuses. Proposals that address policies addressing the use of technology within the classroom and research environments. Submissions on governance recommendatons and union initiatives surrounding distance education within SUNY should be supported. Papers on department chair challenges in acquiring technologies for instruction and scholarship. Preferences will be given to those proposals that highlight the seamless integration of technology into the teaching, learning, and research processes.

Examples of topics that may fit within this track:

• President's Panel - How to deal with budget constraints vs. strategic initiatives surrounding use of technologies on campus?
• Academic VPs/Provosts Panels - How to manage a learner centered, assessment driven, technology rich academic environment?
• What are the challenges facing faculty when applying for promotion in this technology rich environment?
• Governance Panel - How are technologies affecting the governance process?
• Union Panel - The challenges in writing a contract that addresses distance education?
• Department Chairs - How to effect change in the learning process when it involves using technologies?
• All - Integrating technology into the classroom - "Who Pays?"