There's an insidious movement afoot that I think needs addressing. It has to do with the propensity for academics to re-define terms contextually. We see it all the time in academic writing when the author includes a paragraph early in a paper wherein the terms used in the article are defined using phrases like "for the purposes of this paper the authors define TermX as ..."

When those definitions conform to a recognized reality which may not be well established in the field, this practice serves to enhance the understanding of readers who may be unfamiliar with certain constructs. When those definitions serve to re-define that reality, the practice runs the risk of re-defining important ideas out of existence by substituting an alternate reality for an existing one.

2007 AWARDS SCHEDULE

List of awards, winners, and date/time of presentation

General Session #2 Thursday, 8 am, Royal Ballroom
(ECT sponsored session, Marc Prensky, keynote speaker)

Introduce interns
Jennifer Banas, Northern Illinois (summer 2007)
Convention 2007
Strohbehn -- ChanMin Kim, Florida State University
Cochran -- Matt Barclay, Utah State University
Brian Beabout, Penn State University
Craig Shepherd, University of Georgia
Brian Belland, Purdue
Fehti Inan, University of Memphis

Mentor Endowment Scholarships
Brian Beabout, Penn State University
Simeon Gwayi, Virginia Tech

If you're blogging about the convention, may I suggest we use AECT2007 as the tag?

We'll set up an aggregator to pull in your commentary.

Likewise, if you want to blog a session, just append the session ID. The tag for this evening's keynote opener from Stephen Downes would be AECT2007-18-RA.

If the session ID seems a bit cryptic, it's just a time zone and room indicator. All the ID's follow the same pattern:

First digit is day: 1 = Wednesday, 2 = Thursday, 3 = Friday, 4 = Saturday

Second digit is sequence number of the time slot: 1 is first slot, 2 is second, etc. The lunch slot is 4 so anything with a number higher than 4 is afternoon.

We've got "Extra Editions" of the schedule. There have been a lot of changes and last minute adjustments. I'm expecting to get those from Larry Vernon tomorrow, along with a list of the various award winners and when the awards will be presented from Pat.

Be advised that The Book had a few problems in the summary lists but the actually event listings were generated from the databaouse about 4 weeks ago. Any changes to the schedule caused by last minute changes will not be reflected. The myAECT function of the web site is live at the moment and you should be able to check on the current schedule information from any web browser.

The registration desk should be open today.

Connectivity tips:
- If you "buy the wire" in your room, it's $10 a day, but there's a T-Mobile hotspot available as well and that's just $10 a day, too. The advantage to the T-Mobile is that you can access it wirelessly and use it whereever there's a T-Mobile hotspot. Donal and I have been trying to get a handle on where those hotspots are here, but still don't have a good map.

- Relying on free AECT wireless connectivity is probably going to be frustrating.

- We've been told that all the presenter podiums will have a wired connection to the web. I'm not sure what that will mean in terms of thru put.