It Almost Makes Me Want To Go Back To School
CNet has a post on the current state of digital note taking, highlighting a system called
Tegrity Campus which allows students to take notes on regular paper using a digital pen. The student is able to then upload a digital version of their notes to the school website where it is synchronized to a digital version of the lecture they were taking the notes from. The synchronization is possible because the digital pen apparently is keeping time during the lecture.
Why didn't I think of that? If you combine this type of technology with other tried-and-true collaborative methods such as newsgroups and message boards the learning process could be more of a group function rather than a "cracking open my notes and textbook at one in the morning" exercise.