We are in the final planning stages for the Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology that is scheduled for April 8th here on our University Park campus. This year we are doing some new things — not new to the rest of the world, just to Penn State. For one thing, we are skipping the traditional web site and running the Symposium from a WordPress powered blog space. Amazing how quickly and easily all that comes together! I have also found that giving people on campus a new view of a blog has been an ah-ha moment of sorts.

We are also releasing podcasts once a week leading up to the event (iTunes link). These are produced by the staff at Studio 204. Studio 204 is another piece to Edication Technology Serivces that focuses attention on providing PSU students with a digital video and audio production space. It has a studio and a seperate video/audio production room. The podcasts are built around the themes for the Symposium and are conducted in the student union on campus. Kind of cool to hear the students’ voices. This is another one of those ah-ha moments for people … I get asked about podcasting all the time on campus and this is just a great way to really show people what we are talking about.

We have recruited about 20 bloggers for the event, so that each session has a set of notes/thoughts instantly available. We’ll also be blogging the “birds of a feather” lunchtime discussions. All of it will wrap up with an invitiation to attend a new monthly brown bag event related to Teaching Innovations on our campus. All in all I am really looking forward to the event — I am really excited by the idea of including the technologies we are constantly talking about and exposing it to our guests.