We are pleased and excited to announce the 2005 Ocotillo Retreat to be held May 17 at South Mountain Community College. To some degree, we all feel "Lost in Technology" but we have features built into this retreat so you can find your way. This year, the event will be a large technology extravganza open to anyone from Maricopa interested in any kind of technology that supports learning, student services, or just how we do our business.

We will have a special morning general session Open-Access Publishing in Education - Building Communities and Sharing Knowledge. Our invited speaker Richard Baraniuk will share the exciting Connexions Project from Rice University and what it took to be a successful tool for sharing and reusing instructional resources. The bulk of the day will be a series of ongoing demos in the Technology Center and breakout sessions in the computer classrooms where you can see first hand how your colleagues are using a wide range of technology.

We are also fortunate to have New Media Consortium CEO Larry Johnson. Over lunch, Larry will answer the question So Who Are These NMC People Anyway? sharing with us the latest NMC projects, and how Maricopa, as NMC members, can participate.

Both speakers will also lead smaller breakout sessions during the day.

Our theme of "Lost in Technology: Charting Your Way" is based on a GPS metaphor. As you navigate among our planned array of presentations, demos and hands on sessions, we provide each participant a tool to mark a "waypoint" and record their interests, questions, ideas about the technology. At the end of the retreat we will collect your notes, and over the summer we will process them in a database, ultimately providing each participant some feedback, suggestions, and resources related to their expressed interests.

So even if you feel totally lost, rest assured you have company, and a network of colleagues who can help you find your way.

For residential faculty, the retreat was pre-approved for 5.5 clock hours of Faculty Professional Growth non-academic advancement.

John Arle
Ocotillo Faculty General Chair
Phoenix College Biology Dept.