Students from Nevada State College and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas chat about their academic and technological habits at The Chronicle's Technology Forum.
Sarah Mihelic (holding microphone): "My dad is still into the whole book thing. He has not realized that the Internet kind of took the place of that. So we go to the library almost every Sunday." Photograph by Todd Bigelow.

Arden L. Bement, director of the National Science Foundation, says cyberinfrastructure will be at the heart of the next IT revolution.

Keeping up with information technology is a crucial aspect of university presidents' jobs, say James Martin and James E. Samels, of the Education Alliance.

Highlights of a panel on presidents' and IT officials' best practices and biggest concerns.

Gene I. Maeroff, of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Columbia University's Teachers College, and Robert Zemsky, chairman of the Learning Alliance for Higher Education, discuss whether e-learning has lived up to its potential.

What's the role of online archives in academe? Discussing the possibilities are Daniel Greenstein, of the California Digital Library of the University of California; Adam Smith, group business-product manager for the Google Book Search and Google Scholar programs; and Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Windows Live Premium Search.

Edward J. Maloney, of Georgetown University's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, urges academe to draw educational advances from technological ones.

Textual and oral cultures are interacting in interesting and sometimes counterintuitive ways, writes Luke Fernandez, of Weber State University.

Students should understand cybersecurity risks before they arrive at college, says Samuel C. McQuade III, of the Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Multidisciplinary Studies.

University and technology leaders convened at a forum organized by The Chronicle and Gartner to discuss the role of technology on teaching and learning.

We have become too complacent about the far-reaching effects of technology on our lives, says Vartan Gregorian.
Hear the full conference session in streaming audio.

What TiVo did for television, information technology needs to do for liberal-arts education, if it is to remain a vibrant part of society, says Ann Kirschner.

The digital age might force us, says Richard A. Detweiler, to re-examine and refine our goals for the liberal-arts experience.

Even the best professors can benefit from technology in helping students broaden their horizons, says Charles L. Currie.

• Q&A: Ann Kirschner, Richard A. Detweiler, and Charles L. Currie on the liberal arts and IT

Carol Twigg, an advocate of technology in education, and Cliff Stoll, an astronomer and teacher who is decidedly skeptical, debate the benefits of the wired classroom.
Hear the full conference session in streaming audio.

Students talk about their IT wishes and needs.
Hear the full conference session in streaming audio.

John Lawson, Tulane's CIO, discusses what went wrong -- and right -- with IT disaster plans during Hurricane Katrina.

• TIMELINE: Katrina and Tulane
• Q&A: John Lawson on disaster planning

Academic libraries are not going away, but they are changing.

• ANXIOUS TIMES: Librarians may be headed toward obsolescence or toward information utopia. But either way, says James G. Neal, the journey will be a chaotic one.
• DIFFERENT BYTES FOR DIFFERENT LIKES: Deanna Marcum predicts that libraries will adapt in various ways to technological challenges but that they’ll all need to work more collaboratively.
• Q&A: Deanna Marcum and James G. Neal on academic libraries and IT

How can CEO's and CIO's best help each other? Four of them weigh in.
Hear the full conference session in streaming audio.

Q&A: Ira H. Fuchs, Rosemary R. Haggett, and Burks Oakley on foundation support for technology projects

Professors, such as Maurice E. Schweitzer, an assistant professor at the U. of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, are finding new ways to lecture, to run lab sessions, and to interact with students. The Chronicle dispatched reporters to classrooms across the country to find some of the most promising or unusual methods of teaching with technology. Here's what they found:

• THESE LESSONS CLICK: Thanks to his students' remote-control devices, a biology instructor at the College of Lake County, Ill., can measure the class's comprehension instantly.
• C3PO 4 EE101: Electrical engineering students at Montana State University have a lot of knowledge to navigate, and so do their robots.
• PIXEL PERFECT: A University of Denver art-history professor exchanges the slide projector for more flexible digital technology.
• CUT! Education students at the University of Texas at Austin are learning to tell stories through laptop-produced videos.
• CRUDE BEHAVIOR: Computer simulation turns students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School into oil executives in a tense negotiation.
• AMERICAS ONLINE: Videoconferencing allows students at the University of Maryland and the Mexico City campus of the Monterrey Institute of Technology to model a joint business venture.
• FACE TO FACE: Thanks to video over IP, the Virginia Community College System can affordably offer an education course team-taught in several linked locations.
• A BUILDING TOOL: Three-dimensional software helps students at Carleton College design an environmentally friendly house.
• CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? Students in an online constitutional-law class from Concord University listen up and write back.
• PEN IN HAND: Tablet PC's allow an English professor at CUNY's College of Staten Island to mark up papers the old-fashioned way -- but in a new-fashioned way.

Commentary

Roy Rosenzweig says the abundant primary sources in digital archives need to be used wisely.

Janet H. Murray urges degree programs in digital design to incorporate humanistic approaches.

Howard Strauss suggests that IT personnel go slowly in introducing faculty members to courseware.

Steven D. Krause finds that new mindsets are as important as new technologies for successful class blogs.

Jennifer Summerville and John C. Fischetti offer strategies for confronting cyberbullies.

Patrick Allitt remains distinctly underwhelmed by technology in the classroom.

Chuck Powell says expectations have multiplied for course-management software, and so have the decisions to be made about it.

Luke Fernandez finds that IT management is a political process, and should be.