The Sloan-C International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning begins Wednesday, May 7 and we are looking forward to an exciting event! The planning committee has a few details and reminders to share with you as an attendee at the conference in Carefree, AZ.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Carefree!

Hotel accommodations

If you have not made reservations at the Carefree Resort and Villas, this is your very last to chance to do so! Reservations can be made at: https://reservations.ihotelier.com/crs/g_reservation.cfm?groupID=41130&hotelID=13181

Opening dinner and Pre-Conference Workshops

If you haven't already purchased tickets for the opening night dinner or the pre-conference workshops, there's still time to do so! Dinner tickets are $40 and pre-conference workshops cost $50 for one or $75 for two. Both are available at:

https://secured.sloanconsortium.org/internationalsymposium-2008-new/login.cfm (you will be updating your registration and a new email receipt will be sent to you with the total event cost)

Virtual Symposium

You have full access to the virtual symposium during and after the in-person event. Find out more by clicking here:

http://www.emergingonlinelearningtechnology.org/virtual_syposium

Download the Program Before You Go

You can download the symposium from this page:

http://www.emergingonlinelearningtechnology.org/2008_program

Airport transportation

Discounted airport transportation to the Carefree Resort is available from Super Shuttle. To make reservations and receive the discounted rate of $28/each way visit:  

http://www.supershuttle.com/default.aspx?GC=X7NUF

Town cars are also available from the airport for $85/each way.

Taxis are available at the airport and typically run from $75 to $100++. 

Laptops/Second Life

The planning committee recommends that attendees bring their own laptops in order to participate in the virtual components of the event. 

There will be plenty of opportunities to experience the conference via Second Life while you are in Carefree. If you plan on attending a session in Second Life you will need to sign up for a free Second Life account in advance. You may do this, and also view hardware and software requirements at: www.secondlife.com. 

There will be a complimentary email lab available in the exhibit hall, however these computers will be for email only and will not be equipped to attend Second Life sessions. 

What to wear

Recommended attire for the conference is business-casual. The weather in Carefree is forecasted to be in the mid-80s and dry. 

If you plan on joining the morning "walk in the desert with experts", please remember to bring comfortable clothing, shoes and consider a hat and/or sunscreen. 

If you are presenting

All meeting rooms will be equipped with a standard laptop and LCD projector/screen. 

If your presentation requires specific software (i.e., Second Life or others) we recommend bringing your personal laptop to use with the projector. If you plan on using the symposium laptop, please bring your presentations on a jump or flash drive. AV support will be available if needed. 

Please remember to arrive in your meeting room promptly to open your presentation and begin the session on time!

Presenters who wish to develop a full article for the JALN are encouraged to submit a paper to the JALN (Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks). See www.sloan-c.org/publications/jaln/index.asp.   The JALN primarily publishes research articles with data.  Depending on papers received, we may be able to publish a special issue of JALN around topics that have been presented at the symposium.  Contact john.bourne [at] sloan-c [dot] org and provide an abstract of a paper, if you are interested in creating a full journal-length paper.

Share Your Presentation in the Conference Proceedings:

Sloan-C is tapping into social networks for this year’s symposium, even with our conference proceedings. We encourage you to follow the instructions below, but if you would like to avoid setting up an account on this website, please send your conference presentations to gail.sullivan [at] sloan-c [dot] org to be uploaded for you using Sloan-C’s main Slideshare account. Here is how to set your Slideshare account and submit your presentation slides:

1. Go to www.slideshare.net and set up a user account.
2. Submit your presentation using the upload features under the “My Slidespace” section of the website – formats accepted: PPT, PPS, POT, PDF, ODP. Be sure to save the description you’ve added, as well as the keywords you used, just in case there is an interruption in the service and you need to re-submit your presentation.
3. Go to the symposium event page @ http://www.slideshare.net/event/sloanc-symposium-emerging-technology-applications-for-online-learning
4. In the right hand column, click on “Add to my events” and when asked if you would like to join the event, click “Yes”.
5. In the middle column, click on the link that reads “slideshow finder”
6. Click on the “My Slideshows” Box and Select the presentation you’ve uploaded. (Please Note: If you have uploaded a presentation and it doesn’t appear here, it has been taking up to 10 minutes for some presentations to appear. Give it some time and then come back to post your presentation. If you have waited for a full 10 minutes, there may have been an interruption in the upload process and you may need to re-upload. While you wait, you can browse the other presentations that are already posted!)
7. When you click on the presentation you want to add to the event, the application will prefill the “post a slideshow” entry box. At this point, you can add comments to accompany your posting to this event in the box that says “Make a new post!”.
8. Once you have entered any relevant comments, you just need to click the ‘post’ button below the comment box.
9. In addition to these steps, we recommend that you select “I’m attending” to indicate that you are a conference attendee (it appears on the right-hand side of the event page).

Why do we it do it this way? Why don’t we just post them on our own website? While we have had strong traffic and participation on the Symposium website, we feel that posting the conference proceedings in a more public location, such as Slideshare, will help to share the valuable content of this event with a much larger and diverse community than we could reach on the Symposium website. We hope that you will join us in this effort in helping to improve online education by submitting your presentation(s) to Slideshare.