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The student news site of Milwaukee Area Technical College

MATC Times

The student news site of Milwaukee Area Technical College

MATC Times

The student news site of Milwaukee Area Technical College

MATC Times

MATC 2.0 gives students a taste of emerging mobile technologies

    The MATC Academic Technology Committee held the Mobile Technology Day – Education Without Borders on April 11 from 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. in Room 605 at the Downtown Campus. Vendors, such as Apple, Cisco and Blackboard along with others, showed off their technology to help make school more mobile for students. Brian Carlson, a member of the Academic Technology Committee, said that this event has “the ability to get a taste of mobile technologies.” Breakout sessions were held in rooms M612 and M614 during the day by Apple, Cisco and Blackboard Mobile to give students and faculty a closer look on what their technologies could bring to the college. The breakout sessions with Apple dealt with the applications of their iPad in a college environment. The ability to purchase e-books and then draw and make notes inside them without affecting the actual book was the most noted feature, but there was also the ability to easily publish your own book with your own notes inside and the ability to download other teachers’ lectures. Cisco was more about connectivity between devices and talking to people easily, regardless of your location. Blackboard Mobile was talking about simply Blackboard on your mobile device, useful but currently limited to certain carriers.
    For more information about the iPad applications, visit: mountin.us. For more information about Cisco’s mobile technology, visit: cisco.com and visit their Collaboration section. Their mobile technology will be there among other technologies.
    The Academic Technology Committee plans to hold another Mobile Technology Day in the future which will focus on teachers who participated in the iPad pilot project. This project distributed iPads among the teachers to be used in their classes. This eventually will allow students to more easily listen to lectures in their own time.
    The committee also plans to make several other upgrades to their telepresence, or audio visual system, so that cross campus classes are much more interactive for the student and to set up hotspots for students to use near and around the campus. Kevin Rutkowski, a chairman of the committee, said “The younger generation is pushing for new technology.” as the committee looks
    to what’s next. The committee encourages people to
    attend their next Mobile Technology Day.

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