The 2005 NMC New England Regional Conference will be held October 5-7, 2005, on the campus of Yale University, in New Haven Connecticut. Our hosts will be the Yale Center for Media Initiatives.

The theme of the conference is "New Challenges, New Ideas," and two challenges in particular will serve as foci. The first is educational gaming -- How do we meet the expectations of technology-savvy digital natives for visually rich learning experiences and collaborative activities? The second is supporting research with technology -- how do we understand and meet the rapidly expanding needs of scholars for real-time knowledge sharing and dissemination tools, collaboration support, and high-quality visuals, simulations, and graphics?

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"Bit by Bit: Bringing the Digital Landscape into Focus"

Philip E. Long, CIO
Yale University

Three outstanding keynoters will share their perspectives and experiences, and a special selection of panel sessions will set the stage for in-depth dialog and discussions.

Marc Prensky will speak about the needs and expectations of the "Digital Natives" and advanced applications of games to learning. Through numerous examples, he will show specifically how games engage students, and how educators can employ and benefit from not only existing games but also the powerful educational principles behind them.

Julie Little, Director of the Educational Technology and Innovative Technology Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville will provide the luncheon keynote on Thursday. She will outline the possibilities when we begin to think systemically about applications of technology for research and begin to understand and meet the rapidly expanding needs of scholars for knowledge sharing and dissemination tools, collaboration support, and high-quality visuals, simulations, and graphics.

Philip Long, the CIO of Yale University, will examine where Yale and many other institutions are at the current moment in the "digital revolution," and strategies to focus the broad democratization of media production via technology into a coherent "digital landscape" that will best serve researchers, teachers and students, and educational administrators.

Download the Complete Conference Program