2009 Symposium for the Future

October 27, 2009 - October 29, 2009
Online hosted by NMC

  The 2009 NMC Symposium for the Future, the fourteenth in the NMC’s Series of Virtual Symposia, will explore actual and potential applications of technology that could impact issues of global importance over the next five years and beyond

The NMC Symposium for the Future convenes an ongoing dialog among experts, practitioners, researchers, teachers, learners, artists, and others to explore the farthest edges of technology and its actual and potential impacts on issues of global significance.  The yearly Symposium is very forward looking, pushing the bounds of academic discourse, and tangibly seeking ways to address the challenges of our time and our world.

The Symposium grows from the NMC’s Emerging Technologies Initiative, which seeks to answer the question of how to keep abreast of emerging technologies that may be important to our collective work as educators. At the core of this initiative is a focus on emerging technologies and the ways they can be applied in the service of teaching, learning, research, and creative inquiry. A major goal is to stimulate systematic thinking and discussion of the real challenges that face our world and our society, and in particular, how emerging technologies might be applied to solve them.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Carlos Eduardo R.

Symposium Themes

As its name suggests, the Symposium looks toward the future: what might the world look like in five years? Ten? Further out? Technologies and practices that are just beginning to show promise in an educational or social context may well be commonplace in that time frame. The applicability of technology — whether established or emerging — to the social, environmental, and educational challenges we face today is a central theme of the Symposium. Projects that test the applicability of new ideas, research into new solutions for global problems, and demonstrations of cutting-edge tools are all part of this exploration of the future.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by alles-schlumpf

Proposals are encouraged on how emerging technologies might be applied to any of the following themes, but this list is not exhaustive and selections will not be limited to these categories:

• Sustainability (physical and natural resources; economic resources; educational resources)
• Renewable energy; clean energy
• Global warming and its impacts
• Ethics in the digital age
• Politics in a globally connected World
• Social issues

The NMC Symposium for the Future is intended to be an ongoing conversation, focused the applications of new technologies to global concerns and issues, and how they will shape the future of education.

An outgrowth of the NMC’s Emerging Technologies Initiative — the same initiative that drives the annual series of Horizon Reports — the Symposium will create an opportunity for exploration, a place to visit the future, and a forum for deep discussion of the range of possibilities that are open to educators, learners, and creatives in the digital age.

Symposium Venue

The NMC Series of Virtual Symposia, now in its seventh year, is an exploration of online communication tools. Each of the 13 Symposia held to date has taken advantage of the state of the art for online gatherings. The 14th Symposium will be convened in the NMC’s private virtual space, the Hakone Project. This virtual space is supported by the same technology that underlies the virtual world of Second Life™ but is located behind a firewall in a secure and private environment. While the events take place in a virtual world, the Symposium is not about virtual worlds.

Closed Captioning Service

NMC will be providing closed captioning services for this symposium. If you would like details on this service please contact Nancy Reeves at nancy@nmc.org or call 512-445-4200.

Registration

Online registration is available July 22, 2009 - October 16, 2009, closing at 11:59 PM Pacific Time of the end date. Late registration fees apply thereafter.