Midwest Regional Conference and Teaching and Learning

The 2008 Midwest Regional Conference, "New Directions in Higher Ed IT: Navigating the Course While Still Drawing the Map," will be held March 17–19 in Chicago. View the program and register by February 19 to save money with low early-bird rates.

The conference will focus on these topic areas:

The call for proposals is now open for the Midwest Regional Conference 2008, "New Directions in Higher Ed IT: Navigating the Course While Still Drawing the Map," March 17–19 at the InterContinental Chicago Hotel in Chicago. The program for this leading event in higher education IT will follow these tracks:

• Collaborate from Where You Are
• IT Agility for a Constantly Changing Environment
• IT Infrastructure: Adding Value and Helping Organizations Achieve Their Strategic Objectives
• Technology to Support Learning
• Corporate and Campus Solutions

Submit a presentation proposal. The deadline for submissions is November 5, 2007.

I'm a big, BIG believer of integrating psychology and cognitive science into our any substantative discussions on usability (aka human-computer interaction), social software, and above all, into topics on learning and memory ... the fact is, I get scared when resources don't include explicit references to empirical data found in these fields.

Now and then, the topic of humor emerges, and a presentation from Peter Jonas addressed just that. It was wildly entertaining and while the professor doesn't have a background in Cognitive Science/Psychology, much of what he discussed was rooted in the discipline. I tried to get a recording of the presentation, but unfortunately some glitches imparied my ability to get a quality archive of the session. Hopefully we'll get a chance to try again at another conference. This was definately a fun presentation.

My cognitive psych professor also did some research on humor and its connection to memory. I'm going to forward him a link to this blog entry and try to entice him to comment and share some of what he found.

Until then, enjoy our coverage of our other sessions!

Cheers,

Matt