The role, place and significance of technology in contemporary society and its educational environments has been central to the work of scholars, practitioners, students and managers.

The theme of ‘Balance, Fidelity, Mobility: Maintaining the Momentum?' expresses our intention that conference papers and presentations will provide the opportunity for exploring our future options for sustainability of our efforts, resources, people and the scholarship of educational technology.

Emerging issues for educational institutions as a result of the increased deployment of technology enriched environments include the concepts of:

• Balance – a dynamic construct across many interrelated issues such as Student Expectations/Demands; Staff Life/Work; Approaches to Pedagogy/Technology; Efficiency/Effectiveness; Cost/Benefit; On/Off campus environments.
  
• Fidelity – often difficult to achieve in modern educational environments where blended and distributed learning, telecommuting, work-integrated learning are commonplace. The scholarship of teaching and its place in contributing to scholarly practice and quality learning must explore the social, intellectual, emotional, physical and occupational dimensions of these issues.
  
• Mobility – the deployment of mobile devices in educational settings brings a plethora of emerging issues onto the horizon e.g. technological advances, internationalisation, boundaries and censorship, accessibility in its broadest sense and new continua for engagement in learning – what are/will be the impacts and considerations?

The conference is designed to acknowledge and recognise innovative exploration of the demands on people, society and environment in relation to future knowledge, developments and practices which contribute to the maintenance of an evolutionary momentum in the field of educational technology.

Consider:

• When did the momentum start?
• Is it possible to continue with the energy? – will something throw us off course?
• Will there be ‘gaps' in technological developments and the degree to what can be taken up in the learning environment. Is teaching and learning going to gain from the effort?
• Will these ‘gaps' narrow or widen
• Technological development
• Uptake
• Access
• Mobile devices
• Impact on Teaching & Learning – is it going to plateau, increase or decrease?
• Internationality – is it being considered in a way which contributes to “healthy” society?
• Deep learning – Is it an accident? What impediments? How does the access to information impact?
• Paper learning – Where has it gone? Are we environmentally friendly?
• What impact does commercial dialogue between technology creators and educators have and are we communicating well?
• Balance – work, study and life – how do our students maintain their momentum? How are our staff managing their transitions into emerging and converging fields?

It is customary in conference papers that authors address the conference theme and prepare their ideas to extend and develop the thinking and activity of the community of scholars and practitioners to whom such a theme is of importance. The breadth of this years theme has been deliberately sculpted to encompass evolving fields and research activity. It crosses the boundaries of the traditional areas of educational technology and seeks to enrich the debate and discussion about our visions and directions for education and its place in a “whole of life” context. The review panel scoring process will seek papers that align to the concepts of sustainability through a multidimensional view of wellness of society, environments and individuals.

We are seeking authors who are seeking to explore societal, political and technological evolution in critical ways with broad visionary interpretations and propositions.