aerial view of Western's campus at night, with golden lights surrounded by dark trees

Conference for managers of educational tech to be held April 22 to 24 in Bellingham

Jason Morris, an associate professor of industrial design at Western Washington University, will deliver the keynote speech at the Northwest MET conference for managers of educational technology in Bellingham April 22 to 24.

In his "Creativity, Education and Augmented Reality" presentation, Morris will discuss how he encourages innovation in the classroom by sparking creativity and rewarding risk-taking. He'll also present example projects from his classroom, including an exploration of augmented reality technologies.

The full program will include more than 20 presentations on educational technology, with additional speakers from the office of Academic Technology and User Services at Western, including David Hamiter, Robert Clark, Jennifer Dixey, Chris Powell and Kevin Dixey. Sessions include presentations on Western’s Student Technology Center, the Future of Video Conferencing and working with mobile applications in higher education. Program participants will be invited on a tour of technology facilities at Western and an evening presentation at the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention in downtown Bellingham.

NW/MET is a non-profit organization serving professionals in educational technology who work for schools of higher education throughout the northwest. Members are generally concerned with the use of technologies in higher education such as learning management systems, lecture capture systems, classroom technologies, mobile applications for learning, media accessibility, video and web conferencing, video streaming, multimedia development, computer lab management and the evaluation of new technologies. This is the first time that NW/MET has been hosted in Bellingham. The director-elect and program chair of NW/MET is John Farquhar, manager of multimedia and web development in ATUS at WWU.

The NW/MET 2012 conference is being held at the Lakeway Inn Conference Center in Bellingham. The registration deadline is April 5. More information can be found at the conference website at https://nwmet2012.wordpress.com/.