Digital arts and humanities festival on the UNC campus...

The Institute for the Arts and Humanities of UNC-Chapel Hill will present, for the first time, a digital arts and humanities festival on the UNC campus. The festival will celebrate collaborations among humanities, arts and technology, including their application to education. The festival, to be held Feb 16-20, is open to the public.

As part of the festival, the UNC School of Education is organizing sessions for K-12 teachers that translate festival topics into classroom-friendly ideas for integrating technology and teaching. Hands-on workshops will feature technologies such as Voice Thread, wikis, and handheld devices. Faculty and doctoral students from UNC and N.C. State will facilitate these sessions.

CHAT will draw together the region's diverse digital resources in performances, discussions, demonstrations and workshops. Festival events will explore ways in which digital technologies are changing how we learn, think, know, teach and express ourselves, both as individuals and as communities.

The URL for the festival is available at: www.chatfestival2010.com

I encourage you to visit the site to review the amazing list of presenters and diversity of topics.

The festival is providing registration at no-charge to all K-12 educators.

Best,

Björn Hennings

















The Intersection: Education, Collaboration, Entrepreneurship
February 16-20, 2010, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities will present a large-scale digital arts and
humanities festival on the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus. With three leading research
universities, a supercomputing center and a cluster of cutting-edge technology companies all closely located
here in the Triangle, UNC sits at an intersection of opportunity. The festival is an occasion to bring to light
existing collaborations between researchers in our region, to inspire new collaborations across the state, and to
reach out to all corners of North Carolina to share some of the valuable resources CHAT will spotlight.

Why digital arts and humanities? Students, teachers, politicians and community members can see and
participate in visual art exhibitions and music, dance and dramatic performances that use technology; they can
use a touch-screen or a mouse to manipulate interactive maps and storyboards; and regularly make use of
computerized archival systems, all in a very real way.

In times of economic adversity, in particular, technology can be a powerful tool for building and connecting
communities, for sharing or gaining knowledge. UNC will embrace this festival as an opportunity to use
technology to reach out to North Carolina’s K-12 teachers by offering a series of hands-on workshops and
translational sessions in technology topics. We recognize that times are tough, and budgets are tight. This is
one, small way that UNC can give back. These teaching clinics will offer teachers a hands-on experience, led by
technology experts, on ways to incorporate accessible technological tools into the classroom.

The Festival: Art, Performance and Collaboration
The Institute already has created exciting micro-level partnerships through faculty working groups that comprise
faculty and technologists from UNC, Duke, N.C. State and the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). These
faculty working groups will present their projects during the festival—an exciting array of projects that
demonstrate the opportunities for innovative, collaborative arts and humanities work enabled by technology.
To promote discussion during the festival, the Institute is partnering at UNC with the School of Law, Kenan-Flagler
Business School, the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the School of Information and Library
Science to select and bring in keynote speakers on current issues in digital arts and humanities.
Technology in the classroom is an issue that extends beyond the University. As part of the festival, the School of
Education will partner to offer sessions for K-12 educators that translate festival topics into classroom-friendly
ideas for integrating technology and teaching. Faculty members, doctoral students, and local educators will
engage K-12 educators in roundtable discussions. These discussions will occur over lunch February 17, 18, and
19. Hands-on workshops are also planned for K-12 educators. Classroom teachers, technology specialists, and
administrators are invited to participate in these events.

Multimedia performances and panel discussions that include visiting artists, faculty, technology professionals,
students and audience members will round out the festival. The CHAT festival will be an opportunity for local and
national communities to witness and participate in ongoing digital arts and humanities projects by artists,
performers, scholars and technologists.

Visit WWW.CHATFESTIVAL2010.COM for information and to register.

Institute for the Arts and Humanities
www.chatfestival2010.com







CHAT Festival Registration Information
K-12 Educators





FAQs:

Who needs to register for the CHAT festival?
• Anyone who would like to participate in the festival events, including keynotes, panel
discussions, exhibitions, performances or workshops throughout the week will need to register.
Your registration entitles you to festival access throughout the week; you do not need to
register separately for each day. Registration also covers the cost of lunch each day. The only
program events not directly tied to registration are the STREB performances sponsored by
Carolina Performing Arts, which incur a separate fee, and the Festival on the Hill events
sponsored by the UNC Music Department, which are traditionally free of charge.

Where do I go to register?
• To link to our online registration program, please visit the CHAT festival website,
www.chatfestival2010.com. Once you are on the registration site, please register under the
classification: Speakers and Special Guests.

How much will it cost to register?
• As a K-12 educator, you are entitled to free festival registration. However, you will still need to
complete the online registration process using the validation code: FestTeacher, which will
ensure your registration is free of charge.

Can I register all attendees from my organization at once?
• Unfortunately, due to the data capture we are looking for, each person will need to register
separately.

Why is there a mandated registration for the festival?
• In researching other events of this scale and discussing options with event experts both in and
out of academia, the CHAT festival team has opted to institute a registration process for all
attendees. It is important to us that we have the ability to communicate easily with all
participants leading up to the festival, be able to track demographic information, and have the
ability to perform follow up surveys after the conclusion of the festival. Additionally, being able
to track registration numbers leading up to the festival will ensure that we can accommodate
our participants in the campus spaces we have reserved, and make adjustments as necessary.

Please contact Jeanine Simmons at 843-5464 or jeanine.simmons@unc.edu if you have any questions
about registration, or problems utilizing the registration system.


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****************************************************
Björn Hennings, Director
Carolina Center for Educational Excellence
School of Education
UNC-Chapel Hill
9201 Seawell School Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
phone: (919) 843-2874
fax: (919) 843-3580
email: hennings@unc.edu
internet: http://www.unc.edu/ccee/