[TIPS] An excellent web 2.0 summary

This is cruel. I'm going to tell you about a great keynote/luncheon speaker and I've got nothing to link to. But, keep this guy's name in mind.

His name: Cole Camplese, the Director of Education Technology Services for Penn State University. His topic was, "Enabling the New Classroom Conversation" and it was a bird's eye view of the changing face of the web, student involvement, and the trends he and his team have identified. I've done some workshops (some better than others) in web 2.0 changes, but this was FAR AND AWAY the best presentation I've seen on the subject. Bar none.

He talked about so many things, and had so many excellent statistics, but here's one that stands out in my mind. (This is like someone commenting on the Gettysburg address saying, "He mentioned four score and seven years ago." :-) )

After the Virginia Tech tragedy the students of Penn state using Facebook!, quickly organized an effort to have the students wear the appropriately colored tshirts in order to form the letter VT in the stands of an upcoming exhibition football game (Blue/White game, maybe? I forget which game.) Within hours, thousands of students were on board with this initiative. The administration at the University got wind of it and was there at the game to distribute over 8000 t-shirts. He showed a picture of the the students in the stands forming the letters VT. To think that it was started by the students in Facebook, picked up and supported by the administration is powerful. He used this as an example of how connected the students are to such technologies as Facebook.

That is just one story in his hour long presentation that gave an EXCELLENT - VERY CLEAR and entertaining - overview of the changing face of the web. Web 2.0 tools and what they truly are, etc. EXCELLENT!

Those of you who are reading this and who would like to have a speaker come in for such a presentation would do well to give him a call. And no, I'm not his manager.:-)

Someone (Eric) pointed me to Cole's blog. Here is HIS post about the day. http://camplesegroup.com/blog/?p=696