HigherEd BlogCon 2006 has ended. Our thanks again to our section chairs and presenters for an enlightening look at major issues and opportunities posed to higher education by the rapid move to “social computing.”

In the end, we posted 41 screencasts, podcasts and papers by 51 presenters. More than 12,000 visitors attended the month-long event on the Web, and an additional 1300 attended the two teleconferences hosted by CASE.

We now begin a process of evaluation and planning for HigherEd BlogCon 2007.

Among our questions:

– What key issues emerged that clearly merit further exploration?

– What steps might we take to increase the amount of direct interaction among presenters and attendees?

– How should next year’s event be organized?

To support a discussion of these issues, we’ve created a page in the HigherEd BlogCon wiki where all are invited to share ideas and observations. That’s at http://higheredblogcon.editme.com/.

Also, we’re inviting all section chairs and presenters to join a live online discussion the subject Friday, May 5th at 1 p.m. EDT.

If you’d like to participate in a long-running discussion of this topic with full access to the full transcript, please contact Dan Forbush at dan.forbush@profnet.com and he’ll add you to the BlogCon chat area as a member.

If you’d like to participate only in Friday’s live chat, you may join as a guest at https://blogcon.campfirenow.com/24c45.

Many thanks to those of you who have written to tell us about your new media resources or applications. Today we are highlighting a few of these on this page. Feel free to share more applications by leaving a comment below.

Communications and Alumni

• Advanced Organizational Communication is a team blog by Walter Carl’s class at Northeastern University. This semester, the class is collaborating with John Cass from Backbone Media to better understand the reasons, conditions and factors it takes to make a successful corporate blog. Student involvement consists of helping to design questions for the interview protocol, conducting interviews with corporate bloggers, transcribing the interviews, performing a thematic analysis of the interviews, and contributing posts to the class blog that articulate the initial findings and what they learned from the project. Blog and description submitted by Dr.Walter J. Carl.
• “What’s hAPPening!” is the blog of the Appalachian Alumni Association (Appalachian State University) consisting of links to news articles, photos, alumni profiles, campus news and other information relevant to our alumni base. Submitted by Rob Robertson.

Library and Information Resources

• The FLICC/FEDLINK Environmental Scan wiki is a collaborative project to describe external trends and issues that could affect FLICC/FEDLINK’s strategic planning. We describe, annotate and link to societal, information use, library, publishing and government library trends that will help set the stage for a Business Plan being created by FLICC/FEDLINK, a Library of Congress-sponsored consortium of federal library and information centers (http://www.loc.gov/flicc/). Site and description submitted by Cindy Boeke.

Teaching and Learning

• The collegiate education experience becoming increasingly reliant on technology. Yet our high schools and universities have failed to educate their students with the means to take full advantage of the tools available. College v2 aims to arm students with the tricks, tips, and knowledge to put them ahead of the pack. College v2 will also post an occasional news story or photograph that will help you in you everyday life. My aim is to help you take over the world, or at least get out of taking 18 credits alive, and intact. Site and description submitted by Sean Blanda.
• Jason Heath, bass instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and Trinity Intenational University, maintains Jason Heath’s Bass Page, a blog for players and enthusiasts of the double bass and electric bass as a way to communicate with both both personal students and for the Chicago bass community in general, providing double bass concert news, lesson schedules, recommended repertoire, lesson summaries and assignments, and the like.
• Skate of the Web highlights new tools for learning by Dr. Antonio Vantaggiato at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón.