March

Brainstorming 'texts' of the future

Consideration of the future of electronic books or ebooks by a top Virginia education administrator will kick off Brainstorm 2013, the second annual educational technology conference sponsored by James Madison University and the Virginia Society for Technology in Education.

Lan W. Neugent, assistant superintendent for technology at the Virginia Department of Education, will present "Building the Digital Future" to commence the conference devoted to learning about content creation and the digital future.

Saturday, March 23, 2013
Room 159, ISAT/CS Building
9-9:45 a.m.

Neugent has over 32 years of experience at the classroom, district and state level and frequently presents his perspective on educational technology issues to state and national groups.

Admission to Neugent's keynote address is open to the public free of charge. People planning to attend are asked to register at http://goo.gl/XtX7b and are encouraged to read "Out of Print," a report prepared by the State Educational Technology Directors Association. The report is available at http://www.setda.org/web/guest/outofprintreport.

The full conference will run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and is designed for K-12 educators to share and learn in hands-on sessions on such topics as augmented reality, visual literacy, app creation and the use of mobile devices as video recorders. Harrisonburg High School students will demonstrate robotics applications, including Big Blue Botics' Ultimate Ascent, the Frisbee disc-throwing machine and Sampsonator, the basketball-throwing robot test bot.

The Brainstorm conference is sponsored by the JMU College of Education Department of Learning, Technology and Leadership Education, Educational Technology master of education program in partnership with the Virginia Society for Technology in Education, JMU Outreach and Engagement and the JMU Center for Instructional Technology.

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March 20, 2013