Imagine a classroom with no textbooks, paper or pencils. Instead, students get all their assignments through online instruction and work is submitted via a palm-based, electronic notepad. This is what the classroom of the future may look like thanks to education technology. Education technology is achieved when everything that is done educationally is digitally connected for more efficient, customized instruction and a better managed school system.

Can Austin be a center for next generation education technology? What opportunities might exist for area businesses, school districts and classrooms to individualize and improve student learning and cut costs? What emerging issues do you need to know about? These questions and more will be addressed at the next Chamber-IBM Education Roundtable.

What: Chamber- IBM Education Roundtable
When: Friday, December 16, 7:30 to 9 a.m.
Where: Zachary Scott Theatre, 1510 Toomey Road

Panelists include Dr. Dan Updegrove, VP for Information Technology at UT-Austin and a WCIT panelist, and Dr. K.C. Cerny, CEO of Management Information Analysis. Other areas to be discussed include:

• What is the current size of the education technology market in Metro Austin, Texas and the United States?
• What are the implications for student learning, management efficiency and individualization?
• Can gaming, content, transactional software, operating systems and hardware meet? When? Is it worth the cost?

About the Chamber: The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce is the largest business organization in the five-county metro area—building a better community since 1877. It has more than 2,700 business, educational and non-profit organizations as members, of which 80 percent are small businesses. The Chamber is all about economic prosperity in Central Texas. Opportunity Austin—the Central Texas Business Initiative, is in its second year of the effort to create 72,000 new jobs and a regional economic impact of $14 billion. In the first year, 16,200 jobs were created.