The 11th annual CATS Conference takes place March 26-28, 2008 at Sonoma State University.
The Community of Academic Technology Staff (CATS) conferences focus on the major themes, issues, topics, and technological and educational advances influencing the direction of academic technology. Conference goals include providing useful information and training about current and emerging technologies.
This year's theme is "Shared Knowledge Empowers." The three days will provide many networking opportunities to enable peers at difference campuses and institutions to collaborate and solve common problems.
CATS2008 Community Photo Album
CATS attendees will be sharing pictures they take at the conference via an album on the FLICKR site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cats2k8
If you have photos to add, here's your log in:
username: cats2k8
password: cats2008
Photogs: please tag your pictures "cats2k8" so that they will be searchable.
Alternatively, you can email your pictures directly into our account at should44wall <at> photos <dot> flickr <dot> com — use the subject as the photo title, and the email body becomes the description. You can add tags by adding a line like "tags: cats2008 meeting presentation."
To view conference pictures, you can log-in or search by "cats2k8."
LMS Information Day, March 25
On
Tuesday, March 25 the CSU Directors of Academic Technology (DAT) will be hosting a Learning Management System
(LMS) Information Day at Sonoma State. From 10:00am to 5:00pm, a variety of
LMS software and service providers will be invited to demonstrate their
softwares' capabilities, talk about their services, and answer
questions. These providers will be those selected as finalists in the
LMS Request for Proposal (RFP) process. Each vendor will have about
an hour and the schedule of vendors will be released when it is
available. Register at http://dat.cdl.edu/events/rsvp-form.
Extended Conference Schedule!
Never enough hours in the ordinary day, huh? Well, it's the same with CATS conference days! There's never enough time for the great sessions that CATS members present.
So, this year we are adding 2 concurrent session slots to the last day. The conference will officially close at 3:45 on March 28.
Plan your travel accordingly - you don't want to miss a single minute!
Wednesday, March 26 Keynote
Hierarchies of Knowledge — Who Are the Experts?
Is there really such a thing as the "wise" crowd? And if there is, can the information and knowledge it shares be trusted?
Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, offers his belief that open source knowledge systems on crowd-sourced websites like Wikipedia — in which he finds an absence of intellectual authority — give the user no way of determining the content's validity How does this affect teaching and learning? The CATS community? How do we confirm hierarchies of knowledge?
Get ready for an invigorating keynote about the concept of distributed knowledge!
A book-signing will be held during lunch on Wednesday, March 26.
General Sessions Webcasts
General Sessions were webcast by sponsor, Elluminate Inc. The sessions have been archived and Closed Captioning is available (click on the CC button in the top Elluminate toolbar). The sessions are:
Wednesday, March 26— 8:00 - 10:00 am
Opening and Keynote by Andrew Keen: "Hierarchies of Knowledge — Who Are the Experts?"
Wednesday, March 26 — 1:00 - 2:00 pm
CATS/ITAC/DAT/COLD Roundtable
Thursday, March 27 — 8:30 - 9:45 am
CATS Town Hall Meeting
If you need assistance, contact Elluminate’s help desk from http://www.elluminate.com/support/ or 866-388-8674 x2.
Mentor-Mentee Program
Some of the coolest conference attendees will be wearing Mentor and Mentee ribbons. Mentors are veteran CATS, and Mentees are new to the community. This program is designed to help new folks navigate the conference and to expedite their meeting other CATS, especially those that have similar jobs on other campuses.
Daniel Smith is pairing interested participants according to their areas of interest/specialty. The Conference Planning Teams hopes the pairs will continue their relationships after the conference. If you would like to participate, contact Daniel now or through the conference registration desk.
