Please share thoughts about the Symposium as a comment! We want to hear your voice!

This year’s event was an overwhelming success on many fronts, but I wanted to share a few quick numbers that excited us:

• 325 people participated in a communal discussion about teaching and learning with technology
• Over 500 pictures taken and posted to Flickr
• Amazing participation in the build your own tag at the Tag Team table
• 860 “tweets” made during the Symposium and posted to Twitter and catalogued via the use of our hashtag
• 2 videos of the keynote and faculty lunch panel
• 7 video interviews with presenters and guests
• 25 audio recordings of concurrent sessions
• 15 “on-the-street” interviews with attendees
• 21 posters and a lively crowd at the poster session
• 60 people taking part in the hands-on demonstration room
• Ongoing posts and comments about the sessions on the Symposium Web site
• Countless conversations happening in the hallways

The Symposium Web site will serve as a hub for many of our ongoing activities. I encourage you to revisit the posts at the site and if you’d like to contribute, just log on the site with your Penn State credentials and share your thoughts. We made and are in the process of posting recordings of this year’s sessions so we could share them with people who were not able to attend every presentation. If you want to watch Lawrence Lessig’s keynote presentation again please know that video is also available.

As a final note, we are already planning next year’s Symposium. As you are working to use technology to enhance your teaching and research, please consider presenting at next year’s Symposium. We will make an open call for proposals and registration during the fall 2009 semester through the Symposium Web site. Also, if you have ideas to contribute just create a simple post at the Symposium site.

Today we spend time with our keynote speaker, Professor Lawrence Lessig, letting him meet the Symposium sponsors throughout the day. I imagine the session with the Dickinson School of Law will be quite interesting. I am also looking forward to our dinner tonight as the table will have quite the range of perspectives around it. All in all, a full weekend of Symposium activity. S, we hope to see you bright and early tomorrow at the Penn Stater!

Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society, will be the keynote speaker, and will be introduced by President Graham Spanier. Lessig is the author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired. For more information on Lessig and his work, see http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/keynote/.

The Symposium will feature concurrent sessions presented by Penn State faculty and staff describing how they have used technology to enrich teaching, learning, and research. Topics will include social computing tools, new ways for teams to collaborate, virtual worlds, and digital expression. Hands-on learning sessions will allow attendees to try out blogging, podcasting, and student response systems. In addition, they can meet members of the teams who support various Penn State technology initiatives.

A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. For more details and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The Symposium is sponsored by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services.

To access the proposal form, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/posterproposal/. The deadline to submit a proposal is February 7. For any questions, e-mail tltsymposium@psu.edu. The Symposium is sponsored by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services.

Lessig is the author of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired. For more information on Lessig and his work, see http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/keynote/.

Faculty who are using technology to enrich teaching, learning, or research are encouraged to submit a proposal to share their story with other faculty at the Symposium using the online form at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/proposal/. Potential topics could include the application of social computing tools, collaborative writing, new learning spaces, digital expression, the role of technology in assessment and accreditation, and student perspectives on their use of technology. Sessions can be in a variety of formats, including group presentations, panel discussions, poster presentations, demonstrations, small-group discussions, and other activities. Each session should include some discussion of practical aspects such as the tools used, sources of support, best practices, and how the application of technology can be transferred to other disciplines. The deadline to submit proposals is Nov. 16.

For more details and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The Symposium is sponsored by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services.

Faculty who are using technology to enrich teaching, learning, or research are encouraged to submit a proposal to share their story with other faculty and instructional support staff using the online form at http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/proposal/. Potential topics could include the application of social computing tools, collaborative writing, new learning spaces, digital expression, the role of technology in assessment and accreditation, and student perspectives on their use of technology. Sessions can be in a variety of formats, including group presentations, panel discussions, poster presentations, demonstrations, small-group discussions, and other activities. Each session should include some discussion of practical aspects such as the tools used, sources of support, best practices, and how the application of technology can be transferred to other disciplines. The deadline to submit proposals is Nov. 16.

For more details and to register, visit http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/. The Symposium is sponsored by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology Services.

I just wanted to throw a quick post up here to point out that we’ve worked really hard to make sure the Symposium walked the talk this year. My colleague, Allan Gyorke was in charge of this year’s event and his use of Web 2.0 tools in the planning and execution of the event is well documented over at the Symposium site. I think it is very cool that we were able to build on what we learned last year and have exposed the power of these tools to support the planning of a massive event.

From Flickr, Moo Cards, BaseCamp, Drupal, to Twitter and Google Docs the whole thing has been supported by some very powerful tools. Just the way we approved the marketing materials and tracked the events leading up to the big day using Flickr was amazing … I’m sure those stories will get told as posts or podcasts at the Symposium site as well. Speaking of that, all attendees will be able to blog and share thoughts during the event just like last year. Should be interesting and will hopefully provide a place for the conversation to continue.

Sample of the Signage for the 2007 TLT Symposium