'Cyber Citizenship: Vistas and Visions' is the theme of Effat College's sixth annual Learning and Technology Symposium

This year's event will be hosted under the patronage of His Royal Highness Prince Khalid Al Faisal; Governor of Makkah Region and Member of Effat College Board of Trustees.

The Symposium will take place on April 26-27 2008 at Jeddah Hilton Hotel and seeks to increase the awareness among the local and regional community about the global digital nation to which they now belong and to acquaint them with their 'newly acquired citizenship'.

Registrations are being accepted for the symposium and group discounts are also available for a group of five people or more.

Students are also eligible for a discount on registration fees upon presentation of a valid student ID.

Each year's symposium theme is chosen to highlight an important issue that affects technology, education, and society at large.

The Symposium is attended by more than 400 people who come from different sectors primarily related to education and technology.

They include teachers, administrators, technical staff, government officials and policy makers, and also life-long learners who are simply interested in educational technology.

The symposium offers the opportunity to acquire the latest information about technology and learning with the provision of enriching lectures, panel discussions, creative workshops and on site exhibition through out the 2 days of the symposium at Hilton.

Renowned speakers from the field of technology and education with experience, expertise and research will provide the audience with intensive training via lectures, hands-on workshops on topics that are of concern for technology users, educators and businesses to be more efficient in the areas of training, employment and education.

Presentations include topics like 'How Technology Is Used to Assist Employees within A Global Organization in Communicating Effectively' by George Scott from Ernst & Young; a global professional services firm with over 130,000 employees across 140 countries.

The firm has invested significant resources into technology which has allowed the workforce to operate effectively across different continents and time zones without interruptions.

The firm has many collaboration and communication tools but most significant ones will be highlighted in this presentation.

The Deanship of Distance Learning at King Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia will present the audience with 'King Abdul Aziz University's Experience in Developing E-Courses'.

The aim of this presentation will be to give the audience a glimpse of the University's experience in the fundamental factor of e-learning which is the development of online courses using good instructional design methods.

This will be done by demonstrating samples from courses developed in varied areas within King Abdul Aziz University.

This will be presented by Hadeel Ismail and Lama AlKhuzayem

Workshops will be conducted by Adel AlMassarani from Microsoft on topics such as 'Moving to the Next Generation of the Web with Microsoft Expression' which will provide an overview of Microsoft platform for Building Rich Web Applications, Microsoft's approach to the professional designer, Introducing Microsoft Expression Family, Overview of Microsoft Expression Web, Overview of Microsoft Expression Blend, Overview of Microsoft Expression Design, Overview of Microsoft Expression Media.

Other interesting workshops include 'Publishing on YouTube' that will be conducted by Ali Baba and Yusuf Chowdhury from Ummah Films, USA

The event is sponsored by: Okaz Group for press and publication, ART (TV), EduTech, Sultan Bin AbdulAziz Al Saud Foundation, I-Zone (Apple Macintosh), BMW, Nesma Holding co. ltd, Al Bahrawi Group, Microsoft, IEEE and AbuDawood & Partners.