Keynote 1 Sunday 2:30-3:30pm

Title: What is Learning when understanding is Visual?

Presenter: Walter Stewart walter@sgi.com

Designers of on-line learning must ensure that they are not engaged in designing tools and developing media for old models of comprehension. How is "insight" developed when "sight" is possible without recourse to alphabetic or numeric code. Are your systems of learning on-line the digital equivalent of cars that look like buggies? or aeroplanes that look like birds? Does the digital book or digital lecture have a future? Or are they a dinosauric last hurrah? Walter Stewart will ask questions that touch on on-line practice on the cusp between code as the means of discourse and shared experience in virtual space.

Biographical details:

Walter Stewart is Director of Global Marketing for the Research and Education sectors for Silicon Graphics Inc. He was formerly Manager of Market Development for Education and Research for SGI Canada. Walter works with his colleagues around the world expanding SGI's relationships with the research and education communities particularly in the areas of high performance computing, high performance visualization, and the use of broadband Internet and Web for learning.

Walter has taught and been an educational administrator in British Columbia, the central Arctic, Japan, and Ontario. He holds an honours degree in history from Simon Fraser University and a Masters Degree in Adult Education from the University of British Columbia. He speaks at conferences around the world often on the subject of learning in a digital world and has served on the boards of a number of organizations. He rejoices in the return of the age of the generalist.

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Keynote 2 Sunday 4-5pm

Title: Web and Enterprise Search - the Inktomi perspective

Presenter: Walter Underwood Senior Staff Engineer, Inktomi Corporation, http://www.inktomi.com/search

Search is at the core of making public and private sites usable. Knowing how Web search engines work will increase the visibility of a site, while providing effective search on your Web or Intranet site helps visitors quickly find relevant information, resulting in a better overall experience. Learn about Web and enterprise search technology, including its evolution, current challenges, and likely future features and directions.

Biographical details:

As a Senior Staff Engineer for the Inktomi Enterprise Search Group, Walter Underwood is responsible for multi-lingual search, XML support, API design, API versioning and automatic classification. With over 20 years of programming and development experience, he has designed and implemented a wide variety of Internet and collaboration technologies. This includes over 10 years of experience in distributed computing systems in the areas of search, collaboration, publishing, and communications. He founded Hewlett-Packard's corporate Intranet in 1986, and holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Rice University.

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Keynote 3 Monday 23rd 9-10am

Title: "How can the Web support Intellectual Life in a Democratic Society?"

Presenter: Phil Agre pagre@alpha.oac.ucla.edu

As the Web becomes ubiquitous, it becomes possible to project advanced digital library and museum services into every corner of daily life. And as the design space for these services grows, it will be necessary to return to a basic question: what, in a deep sense, are digital libraries and museums for? The answer, I propose, is that this new generation of institutions exists to support the intellectual life of a society. I will explore what an intellectual life is, how it relates to the rest of life, how the intellectual lives of individuals relate to the intellectual life of a whole society, and how the new electronic institutions can support it.

Biographic details:

Philip E. Agre is an Associate Professor of information studies at UCLA. He is the author of "Computation and Human Experience" (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and the coeditor of "Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape" and "Reinventing Technology, Rediscovering Community: Critical Studies in Computing as a Social Practice". His research concerns the role of emerging information technologies in institutional change. He edits an Internet mailing list called the Red Rock Eater News Service that distributes useful information on the social and political aspects of networking and computing to 5000 people in 60 countries.
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/

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Keynote 4 Monday 1-2pm

NOIE speaker - The Web and ecommerce Issues - details soon

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Keynote 5 Tuesday 24th 9-10am

Title: The key to successful and effective teaching in a Web-based, online environment: staff development.

Presenter: Ron Oliver r.oliver@cowan.edu.au

This presentation will consider the skills, knowledge and understandings associated with effective and successful Web-based, on-line teaching. As education moves rapidly to embrace the Web and
associated on-line technologies as a delivery medium for both on and off-campus learners, many changes are occurring to ways in which teachers are teaching and learners are learning. This presentation will showcase contemporary forms of on-line learning environments and the directions which these are taking. It will then explore the roles and responsibilities of the new breed of teacher/trainer in this Web-based, on-line world and the skills and expertise needed to be effective and successful. The talk will present strategies that can support the professional development of teachers and trainer and will explore outcomes from programs in which these strategies have been implemented. Finally it will consider the training/staff development implications that Web-based on-line program delivery presents for any educational institution or organisation.

Biographical details:

Ron Oliver is an Associate Professor in the School of Communications and Multimedia at Edith Cowan University. He has been involved in the field of computer education, multimedia and instructional technologies for many years. He is an active researcher and developer of learning technologies and has broad experience in the design, development and evaluation of multimedia and computer-based learning materials. Among his teaching duties, he is the Coordinator of the Graduate Certificate of On-Line Learning, a teaching qualification for on-line teachers across all education sectors.

His current interests and research involve the development and evaluation of on-line learning environments. In particular his research is exploring strategies associated with the design and
development of sustainable and scalable on-line learning settings. He is actively involved in this area in a number of projects at both the local and national levels.

In his professional activities, he is Editor of the Australian Journal of Educational Technology and Associate Editor of the Journal of Interactive Learning Research. He is a member of the Higher Education Advisory Group for EdNA. He has won a number of awards for his work including the 1997 Australian University Teaching Award for the use of multimedia in teaching.

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