Here is a summary compiled by my colleague at UIC, Ed Garay.

Some key trends:
1) People expect to be able to work, learn, and study  whenever and wherever they want to
2) The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized
3) The world of work is increasingly collaborative, driving changes in the way student projects are structured
4) The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the Internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators
5) Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning and collaborative models
6) There is a new emphasis in the classroom on more challenge-based and active learning

Some significant challenges:
1) Economic pressures and new models of education are bringing unprecedented competition to the traditional models of higher education
2) Appropriate metrics of evaluation lag the emergence of new scholarly forms of authoring, publishing, and researching
3) Digital media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every discipline and profession
4) Institutional barriers present formidable challenges to moving forward in a constructive way with emerging technologies
5) New modes of scholarship are presenting significant challenges for libraries and university collections, how scholarship is documented, and the business models to support these activities

Technologies to watch:
* Short-term (12 months):
a) Mobile Computing
b) Tablet Computing

* Mid-term (two to three years):
c) Game-based Learning
d) Learning Analytics

* Long-term (four to five years):
e) Gesture-based Computing
f) Internet of Things (small objects connectedness)

Here’s a sneak peak at some of the many gadgets that will be the star of the show, if even for it’s allotted 15 minutes.

Iogear’s Multi-Link Bluetooth Mini Keyboard ($63) – perfect for multiple devices that you may be using – tablets, smartphones, etc. that accept Bluetooth connections.  With this device, you can connect to up to six devices.  This way you do not have to carry around multiple Bluetooth keyboards for all of the devices in your bag.

Kensington’s BungeeAir – here’s a way to make sure you are even more tethered to your phone.  This keyfob alerts you when you are too far away from your device.  There is also available a protective case that supplies up to four extra hours of battery life.  If you go a certain distance from your phone, the keyfob locks the screen.  (Which, incidentally, can be done anyway through settings in the phone.)

BodyMedia FIT BodyBand – “one of those personal fitness gizmos that goes far beyond the basic wellness tracking features found in many similar offerings. Using the FIT BodyBand, anyone who wants to lose weight can have access to his own personal digital trainer and nutritionist.” Apparently with this device, you can track as many fitness settings as you think can think of (sleep patterns, physical activity, calories, etc.).

For a look at more gadgets, here are some useful peepholes:

CES 2012 Preview: 16 Hot Gadgets

Mashable

c|net’s preview of CES

Marketplace (American Public Media)

PC World

Keep in the loop about what’s happening at the conference via Twitter @intlCES (and via various hashtags: #ces2012, #ces); Facebook; the official YouTube Channel; and even via Flickr.

Personally, I wish I could attend, because there is a “Mobile Apps Showdown” scheduled for January 12, and and entire “digitalHealth Summit” track that runs on January 11 and 12.   Like most of you, I will keep tabs on it from afar.  In the health track, there are some interesting sounding sessions:

• Diabetes and Obesity: How can Technology Change the Outcomes?
• The Patient as Consumer: Pushing Digital Health to New Heights
• Data Liberation: Making Health Data Intelligible for the Consumer
• Is Technology Changing the Doctor-Patient Relationship?

Sounds interesting!

This first set of tech trends comes from Jason Hiner at Tech Republic. He reported on the Gartner Group’s annual symposium where they revealed their list of the 10 most strategic tech trends of 2012. Drum roll, please:

1. Media tablets and beyond – the era of Microsoft and PC domination coming to a close
2. Mobile-centric applications and interfaces – building user interfaces for multiple screen sizes
3. Contextual and social user experience – using information about an end user to improve the quality of the interaction with the device
4. Internet of Things – objects acting as user of other systems
5. App stores and marketplaces – a new term emerges: apptepreneurs
6. Next-gen analytics – mobile devices being able to self-analyze for full optimization
7. Big data – new and exotic technologies are required to manage the extreme volume of data created today
8. In-memory computing – faster response time in analytical operations
9. Extreme low-energy servers – new entrants to the server business proposing a radical way for future servers to work
10. Cloud computing – cloud computing was very recently number one and now is number ten. This is significant that it is viewed as not living up to its hype.

Pete Cashmore, the editor of Mashable, shares his list of the Top 10 Technology Trends for 2012.
As he points out, “Predicting what will happen in 2012, therefore, is a shot in the dark: A year is virtually a lifetime in the digital era.”

1. Touch Computing – we’ll be using our mice less often and increasingly using desktop computers in similar ways to how we use tablets and smartphones.
2. Social Gestures – ‘frictionless sharing’ – where with the click of a button you can share what you are doing from services like Spotify, to social networks (once you authorize it of course)
3. NFC and Mobile Payments – with the success of the Square Payment dongle for iPhone, and NFC (Near Field Communication) in 2011, awareness of this technology will likely make it more popular in 2012…it’s not without a lot of security concerns…
4. Beyond the iPad – the iPad costs $499′ the Kindle Fire is $199. There has been speculation that while the iPad is king today, it may lose the crown in 2012.
5. TV everywhere – with the rise of the tablet, it’s easier to have ‘TV in your hand’ but the cable companies have ways to keep you tethered to subscriptions.
6. Voice Control – thanks to the popularity of Siri and the iPhone 4S, voice recognition and voice search will show up on more devices.
7. Spatial Gestures – personally, I was fascinated with the technology in the movie Minority Report and hope I see it in my lifetime. Microsoft Kinect is an example of using spatial gestures in current technology.
8. Second-Screen Experiences – Cashmore says, “It refers to apps (mainly on the iPad) that listen to the audio output of your TV and display content related to the show or movie you’re watching.” An example from the music industry is Gracenote.
9. Flexible Screens – Can you imagine a phone that rolls up in your pocket, or one that you can slip into your wallet like a dollar bill? Bendable interfaces will be seen more in 2012, though it’s likely to not be fully implemented for a number of years.
10. HTML5 – this fifth version of HTML, could take the place of Flash on many mobile devices.

What are your predictions for 2012?

By the way, this blog post was written on an iPad using touch technology!

Earlier this year, Booth Library received a Technology Improvement Award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region, under Contract No. N01-LM-6-3503 with the University of Illinois at Chicago. Booth Library provides services for programs in health physics, psychology, biology, health education, communication disorders, and nutrition. Booth also serves an online RN to BSN nursing program, and the library’s website is the only point of access to health information for these distance education nursing students. Along with programs directly related to heath and biomedical sciences, we serve the needs of our education students seeking information on school health and children with disabilities. We also provide general consumer health materials and reference services.

The primary goal of the project was to replace the library’s web server, which was five years old when the award application was submitted. The server purchased with award fund was built with sufficient processing power, storage space and memory s to run several ‘virtual’ servers at the same time. With virtualization, different operating systems can run as different virtual machines on the same physical server. The single machine purchased with the award currently hosts two web servers and a secured file transfer server for patron record maintenance. While the web server for the library’s main website runs Windows Server 2008, a second web server runs in the Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) environment. The first project for the new LAMP server was Map It, an open source call number mapping system designed by the Wayne State University Library System. Map It allows users to generate a customized map showing the location of an item by entering a call number. Within our building, health information is located in at least eight locations, spread over four floors in a building of 165,000 square feet. While help locating materials is available at several services desks, those who may be embarrassed to ask for help can find materials independently with Map It.
Map It is linked to the Online Catalog and the “Map of the Library” page in the library’s website. Map It is also available on the library’s mobile website. The mobile version of Map It has become the third most commonly used page on the mobile site. The mobile site is also hosted on the LAMP server provided by the Technology Improvement Award.

ILLINOIS
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, John Crerar Library (contact: Deb Werner)
Springfield, IL: Illinois State Library (Registration: http://www.librarylearning.info/events/?eventID=12631 )

INDIANA
Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University School of Medicine, Ruth Lilly Medical Library (contact: Elizabeth Whipple)

IOWA
Des Moines, IA: Des Moines University Library (contact: Joyce Lindstrom)
Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences (Contact: Janna Lawrence)

KENTUCKY
Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, Medical Center Library (contact: Susan Foster-Harper or Rick Brewer) Site: WT Young Library Auditorium
Louisville, KY: University of Louisville, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library History Room 301, (contact: Nancy Utterback)

MICHIGAN
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Taubman Health Sciences Library (contact: Jean Song)
Grand Rapids, MI: Saint Mary’s Health Care (contact: Brett Powers)

MINNESOTA
Minneapolis, MN: Allina Hospitals and Clinics (contact: Andrew Crow) Site: Allina Commons, New Ulm Classroom (#006), 2925 Chicago Ave. S.

NORTH DAKOTA
Fargo, ND: University of North Dakota Harley E. French Library of the Health Sciences (contact: Mary Markland) Site: UND Medical Education Center, Southeast Campus
Grand Forks, ND: University of North Dakota, Library of the Health Sciences (contact: Theresa Norton)

OHIO
Dayton, OH: Wright State University (contact: Bette Sydelko)
Rootstown, OH: Northeast Ohio Medical University (contact: Elaine Forsch)

SOUTH DAKOTA
Sioux Falls, SD: University of South Dakota, Sanford School of Medicine, Wegner Health Science Information Center (contact: Molly Youngkin)
Vermillion, SD: University of South Dakota, Sanford School of Medicine (contact: Barbara Harvey) Site: Freedom Forum Conference Room, Al Neuharth Media Center

WISCONSIN
Fond du Lac, WI: Mercy Medical Center – Affinity Health System (contact: Michele Matucheski) Site: Moraine Park Technical College
Milwaukee, WI: Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries (contact: Felicia Vastalo)