TLT Engage Symposium, April 14, 2007

Yesterday I attended the TLT Engage Symposium at the Penn Stater. Allan Gyorke, Cole Campelese and their staff did an excellent job putting this together. I'm sure there'll be more informative and insightful comments on the symposium than the following but some things I got out of the day:

1. A much more holistic view of the Web 2.0 or Social Computing ecosystem. Up to this point, I'd seen demos of individual technologies or applications but didn't see them as Generation Web 2.0 does.

2. Realized what the point of Twitter is. Thanks Cole.

3. Was interviewed by Jim Leous for the Symposium vodcast. He does look like David Letterman.

4. The Pew Internet & American Life Projectis a great source of data on technology and Internet trends. Useful as we get ready for the next generation of freshmen. (We're not ready!). Question about whether multi-tasking makes us more or less productive; teenagers seem to "toggle" between tasks with less effort than the rest of us or is their ADD more refined?

5. A good way to grab the audience's attention is to show a video. Lee Rainie from Pew showed this one -- a really effective look at the evolution of the web from 1.0 to 2.0 by a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State.

6. Some really excellent work with instructional technology going on in the classrooms at Penn State. Are we ahead of the curve? I know some institutions have invested a lot in infrastructure and networks; educational technologies have lagged. Certainly doesn't seem to be the case here.

And I'm wondering how all this Web 2.0 content is going to be collected, managed and preserved, etc. And what about backups? (Wayne Stump made me ask that question.) What are the implications going to be in terms of infrastructure support?