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.

Over the past three weeks, we’ve had an opportunity to take a look at how new web technologies are impacting libraries, teaching and marketing in higher education. It’s been very imformative, and I hope that you’ve taken away as many good ideas and brainstorms as I have.

For this week of HigherEd BlogCon, we’ll take a closer look at the technology powering these new tools and examine the development and implementation process for bringing institutions into the 2.0 era. It’s a diverse set of topics, ranging from the nuts and bolts of podcasts to a session covering one of the hottest development tools, Ruby on Rails.

I’d like to take a moment to thank this week’s presenters. They have created some veryinteresting content and presentations. I’d also like to thank Karine Joly and Rob Pongsajapan for their help in coming up with a plan and theme for this week.

-Mike Richwalsky, Section Chair

>> Monday, April 24, 2006

Legal Education Podcasting Project

John Mayer
Executive Director
Elmer Masters
Director of Internet Development

Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction/CALI

>> Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Student To-Do List RSS Feed: Combining Audience and Task Navigation

Matthew Winkel
The College of New Jersey

>> Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Using Web Traffic with a Kaizen Methodology

Tiffany Vincent
Academic Web Services

>> Thursday, April 27, 2006

Know Enough to be Dangerous: Tools for Taking Control of HTML and CSS

Steve Lawson
Colorado College

Bringing Audio to a Visual Medium: Podcasting News and Events

CASE Online Speaker Series
2:00-3:30 ET (Paid registration required.)

>> Friday, April 28, 2006

The Fast Track to Agile Web Apps: Best Practices for Higher Ed Web Development on Rails

Jason Garber
Eastern Mennonite University