Thanks to a bunch of work from Millet, the Blogs@PGSIT came alive today! We drove each other crazy with all sorts of ideas that will make that space a winner for the 2005 program. That program, which starts next Sunday (yikes!), will have 40 scholars — all high school juniors heading towards senior-status — showing up here at Penn State for five weeks of geeked out fun. Each will have a blog account, each will produce a bunch of podcasts (in our spanking new podcast studio), create all sorts of digital movies, and just generally raise hell on campus. We are even going to invite alumni from the last six years of PGSIT to participate. This is a grand experiment, but a good one. Follow along by checking out the new Blogs@PGSIT space.
The site is close to empty — for now, but will (hopefully) explode in a week. Any ideas for these gifted students? Leave a comment!
sure, invite a few local businesses to come by and allow the students to create a few blog ideas to generate more business via the medium. not sure if you know U of Mich professor Bud Gibson, but he is having a graduate level class create a blog presence for a local Ann Arbor company.
having been in Happy Valley, I realize it’s a very self contained community and likely, a blog wouldn’t drive much increased business traffic. however, i think it would still be a good exercise for the students.
you could also challenge them to come up with some innovative methods to utilize a form of ubiquitous computing called Semacode – http://semacode.org/. using this form of bar code that can be read by a Semacode enabled cell phone, the students could explore the technology. i think it has some interesting potential and would like to see what a bunch of tech savvy students could do with it. maybe, instead of a photo i.d., you can give them an semacode i.d. for starters and then, let them learn about PSU campus via a semacode treasure hunt. make sure to tell them to load up their cell phones with the reader software prior to arrival.
have fun and keep us posted….jbr