Michele Norris kicked off the 20^th anniversary EDUCAUSE conference with the dramatic Eavesdropping on America’s Conversation on Race, about the Race Card Project. This is not a reference to a tactic by Johnny Cochrane, but rather a program, begun in 2010, whereby people submit six words about their experiences, questions, hopes, dreams, laments or observations about race and identity. The six words tend to be backed with meaning and emotion.

You can feel the enduring anguish behind submissions like these:

• “No really, where are you from?” 
• “No word for what I am” 
• “Lady I don’t want your purse” 

Initially, the words came in on post cards, but as technology and the Web have evolved, many are submitted directly via the Internet. They now arrive, not just from America, but from Australia, Afghanistan, London, Chile, Belgium, South Korea and Abu Dhabi. In fact, cards have come in from all 50 states and 97 countries. 250,000 have been archived; 100,000s are awaiting archiving.

Here are a sample of cards shared by Michele.

Observations from EDUCAUSE 2018

Here are observations from EDUCAUSE participants, vendors, sessions, and media picked up at this year’s conference.

• Online testing continues to grow, especially as a means to reduces campus expenses.
• 802.11ax is not yet a consideration for campus W-Fi, although some technologists are purchasing home Wi-Fi routers with that capability. There were no sessions on 802.11ax.
• Only 16% of campuses have a formal program to assess the impact of IT on instruction and learning outcomes (The Campus Computing Project, 2018)
• Top priority for 2019 is IT security.
• Beacon technology has been slower to take off than expected.
• Schools are continuing to prepare for the mobile-only campus.
• US colleges are suffering from the dramatic drop in foreign student enrollments.

^{[Audience of 8,000 awaits the Educause 2018 opening keynote.]}