University Business - August 2007 - (Page 64)

Arizona State University’s Adrian Sannier explains how partnerships with firms such as Google, Dell, and Apple benefit the school. EduComm attendees heard the latest strategies and tips in nearly 40 sessions devoted to higher education topics, and a dozen sessions for the K-12 sector. Report from HE MOOD WAS BUOYANT IN ANAHEIM AT the fourth annual EduComm conference in June. During a three-day program, attendees were eager to pick up the latest tips and techniques to take back to their campuses, as well as get a peek at the newest products from A/V and IT vendors. EduComm attendees also enjoyed keynote presentations from Alan Kay and David Pogue. Kay, a pioneering ﬁgure in many of the ways we interact with technology, warned that the current state of teaching and learning was sorely lacking, and that there was so much more that could be done. He called ours an “air guitar nation,” one in which there is a lot of activity in the name of education, but that activity is merely going through the motions and not resulting in real learning. But complacency doesn’t have to be the order of the day, and Kay inspired the audience with enlightening classroom exercises throughout his presentation to demonstrate that real teaching—for real results—is hard but rewarding work. Pogue, who is well known for his New York Times technology columns and television appearances, discussed new technologies that he believes will play a role in education in coming years. An accomplished musician and composer, Pogue also entertained the audience with popular song parodies based on technology themes. Videos of both keynotes can be viewed online at www.universitybusiness.com/educomm. T One of those sessions was “Strategic Alliances: Technology’s Role in the New American University,” presented by Adrian Sannier, University Technology Oﬃcer at Arizona State University. College enrollment is booming, Sannier said, yet higher ed technology is not keeping pace. “This higher education system we have now is not oriented for a country of 300 million, especially if those 300 million people have uneven academic preparation when they come in,” he said. “It’s just a question of how many people are we going to leave on the cutting room ﬂoor.” If we’re going to maintain our current standard of living, he said, there needs to be some dramatic changes in higher education. The ﬂip side of that coin is that as enrollments grow, colleges and universities must scale what they oﬀer to accommodate the ASU chose outside vendors to provide many of its tech services. inﬂux of students. But how do we make this scale happen without completely destroying the academic experience? Technology is the obvious answer, but Sannier said the technology currently found in most institutions might not ﬁt the bill. Universities were once pioneers in technology, blazing the trail for the development of IT and networks. Yet something happened in the 90s, and that something was the dot-com boom. “Consumer technology has advanced far faster than enterprise technology, the opposite of what it used to be,” he said. The consumer market has a ﬂexibility to experiment with new technologies, a ﬂexibility that universitybusiness.com Sessions As in years past EduComm featured a broad mix of sessions covering A/V and IT topics, as well as the addition this year of sessions dealing with the emerging ﬁeld of Web 2.0 applications. 64 | August 2007 http://www.universitybusiness.com/educomm http://www.universitybusiness.com/educomm http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - August 2007

Contents
College Index
Company Index
Advisory Board
Editor's Note
People Watch
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Admissions
On the Hill
Future Shock
Independent Outlook
Facility Focus
Wanted: Foreign Students
Service With a Star
Beneficial Benefits
Addition By Subtraction
Report from EduComm 2007
Report Card
Internet Technology
What's New
Calendar of Events
Direct Connect
End Note

University Business - August 2007