Many educators – myself included – find emerging technologies exciting. When there’s something new available, we want to play with it and test it out in a class setting. However, enthusiasm for exploring a new technology can at times overshadow or obscure ethical concerns. In this session, I will share some of these ethical issues (e.g., privacy; technology access; extraneous cognitive load issues), providing brief case examples and solutions, and raise the larger issues of whether we should develop forward-thinking policies to guide educators in this area and whose responsibility it might be (students, instructors, administrators, or all three) to ensure ethical use of emerging technologies in educational settings.

University orientations typically involve a long day – or days – of presentations and tours. The people who are being oriented are often passive participants, listening to talks about people, facilities, and opportunities while sitting in a lecture hall or similar location. In this presentation, we share one department’s technology-based enhancement to orientation. Rather than have our new students sit in a room for yet another hour, listening to key points about our program and facilities, in 2012 we opted to engage them in a collaborative, exploratory QR-code based game that incorporated videos of key people and explanations of major resources situated directly within their physical spaces. We will present the game framework, a demo of how it worked, and the augmented reality walkthrough of facilities that has been developed for the 2013 iteration along with results of a post-activity evaluation.

Taehyeong Lim is a doctoral student in the Instructional Systems Program at Florida State University.
His research interests include mobile augmented reality and multimedia design principles for small screens.

Sungwoong Lee is a doctoral candidate in the Instructional Systems Program at Florida State University. His research interests include game-based learning and augmented reality.

Shuang Hao is a doctoral candidate in the Instructional Systems Program at Florida State University. Her research interests include mobile learning and technology-assisted learning scaffolds.

Vanessa Dennen is an Associate Professor of Instructional Systems at Florida State University where she researches learning and knowledge management in networked and mobile settings. She recently co-edited (with Jennifer B. Myers) a book, Virtual Professional Development and Informal Learning in Online Environments, and (with Stefan Hrastinski) a special issue of The Internet and Higher Education on Social Media in Higher Education. She is currently finishing a book on using social media to support active learning.

“How many identities does your institution have in facebook, twitter, linked in and other public locations on the internet? Professors and students repeatedly create social media sites branded with their current institution. It may be for a class or for social reasons, but continually social media sites are created outside of institutional administrative and IT control. That faculty and students create in social media is a good thing in the era of the Read/Write Web. However, institutions must develop social media strategies and policies.
Institutions are at risk when a professor or a student sets up a class
in facebook (think ADA Compliance!)

The formal part of the presentation will review why an institutional social media strategy and policy is necessary and what basic elements comprise a good one. It is important to understand why faculty and students want to work outside the formal tools offered by the institution. (ie . 1) LMS is organized top down. But students need to have the authority to access and control their own learning environment.
2) Faculty want an agile, facile environment. 3) Most importantly, social media is where the students are.)”

As Vice President of Academic Initiatives and Community Engagement for NJEDge.Net, the New Jersey Research and Education Network, Sheri Prupis’ continuing contribution is providing leadership for fostering a shared vision for the effective use of technology. She is instrumental in developing and implementing strategic plans involving the integration of computing systems, services and resources into educational missions.

Sheri Prupis is responsible for all aspects of academic computing activities and initiatives of the NJEDdge.Net community.   She spearheads EDge.Networks and administers their activities.  Under her supervision she chairs all NJEDge events such as webinar, training, seminars and most importantly program planning of the three major events for the consortium:  Faculty Showcase in the spring, the Luncheon at the shore in the summer and the NJEDge.Net  Annual Conference in the fall.  In her tenure Sheri has expanded NJEDge’s distinction through interaction with the community and the promotion of the mission in the state and national educational
forum.

In addition to thirty years of teaching experience at the higher education level, including nearly half of them using teaching and learning technology tools, Sheri holds an MA in Sociology from New York University and recently completed a Graduate Certificate Program in Educational Technologies focusing on Online Pedagogies from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

She teaches college-level Introduction to Sociology, Sociology of Education, Statistics and Research Methods using Learning Management Systems, social media and collaboration tools for all her courses, regardless of their venue. An example of one of her units can be found at: http://introtosociology.weebly.com/unit-3-culture.html.

Speaking engagements, presentations and teaching have always been an important part of her professional work.  She has presented papers at conferences such as EDUCAUSE, WCET/WICHE, Internet2, The Quilt, Seminars in Academic Computing and Academic Computing Machinery (ACM) / SIGUCCS (Special Interest Group for University and College Computing Services) and is an invited speaker at institutions throughout the northeast.

She enjoys working in education and making contributions that support the educational missions of New Jersey’s learning institutions.

Catherine Alexander holds degrees from three of New Jersey’s finest institutions of higher education. She came well prepared to Montclair State University (MSU) in the Fall of 2009 to earn a PhD, Environmental Management. She already held an Associates in the Arts and Sciences from Ocean County College, two Baccalaureate degrees, Chemical Biology from Stevens Institute of Technology and Plant Science/Agricultural Science regarding soil fertility as it pertains to organic agriculture production from Cook College, Rutgers University, and a Master of Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Groundwater and Soil Pollution Control, again from STEVENS.  She has professionally engaged in environmental management issues in the private and public sectors, seeking to bridge the human ecological interface with resilient, sustainable designs and practices. Catherine has provided a well-received and approved dissertation proposal that focuses on urban agriculture and its potential for contributing to local and global food security, with related ecological resiliencies and best management practices that provide added value toward sustainability. She has also developed, taught, and continues to teach a four-credit Introduction to Marine Sciences lecture and laboratory course that engages undergraduate science and non-science majors at MSU, utilizing Etechnologies, including a comprehensive Etextbook and Google Earth development that provides hands on virtual research with related terrestrial and oceanic data layers. She is here today to provide us with a broad overview of this course regarding its associated Etechnologies.