Harnessing Images, Text and Sound for Education
Researchers and educators from Canada and the United States who are interested in the use of multimedia in education in a cultural context will be on the University of Prince Edward Island campus from June 25 to 27 to take part in a conference called 'Harnessing Images, Text and Sound for Education in the Context of Culture, Multimedia, Technology and Cognition' (HITS for Education: CMTC).
Participants will share ideas, information, and methods on the uses of audio-visual and text-based technology. By the end of the conference, they aim to have developed a set of guidelines and best practices that will assist others to make appropriate choices in this rapidly growing educational field.
'Electronic multimedia technology provides an abundance of choices for educators,' says UPEI psychology professor Dr. Annabel Cohen, co-chair of the conference with Dr. Udo Krautwurst, Department of Sociology. 'Their choices however are based, very often, on intuition and familiarity rather than on empirically or theoretically based guidelines.'
The keynote speakers are Ichiro Fujinaga and Ellen Rose. Dr. Fujinaga is an Associate Professor in Music Technology at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. The title of his presentation is 'Distributed digital music libraries: If you can do music you can do anything.' Dr. Ellen Rose holds the McCain-Aliant Telecom Professorship in Multimedia and Instructional Design at the University of New Brunswick. She will address the topic 'Multimedia learning in this age of interruption.'
The conference will feature more than 20 presentations addressing education from the perspective of four interconnected areas: culture, multimedia, technology, and cognition. It takes place in McDougall Hall, UPEI and is open to interested professionals or laypersons interested in the role of electronic media in education. Registration for the entire event costs $200, including meals. The student and part-time faculty rate is $75. More information is available at http://vre.upei.ca/cmtc or by contacting Maria Powell at (902) 566-6023 or mpowell@upei.ca. UPEI student volunteers are also welcome to assist and attend.
The conference is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and arose through a tri-university collaboration funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation led by the University of Prince Edward Island, partnering with the University of New Brunswick and l'Université de Moncton.
