I am scheduled to teach IST 110 during a special eight-week semester under the Sloan Semester project. I am one of two faculty at PSU who have come forward to teach courses so far. I am very happy we are participating … you can’t imagine the administrative overhead it seemed to cause. At any rate, being a part of it makes me proud. Also making me proud is that my alma mater, West Virginia University, is also participating. It looks like they are offering something like 15 courses. Good work WVU! I received what I believed to be a world-class education at WVU and it makes me so happy to see that there will be opportunities for others to experience that.

BTW, since I am teaching a special section of IST 110 (if anyone registers), I’ll want to try some different things. One thing I know I will focus attention on is how recovery efforts were bolstered by so many web 2.0 technologies — flickr, wikis, google maps, etc. While FEMA and other Federal responses were crawling around trying to figure out what to do, so many people jumped in and used information technology to help. I am sure focusing web 2.0 on that context will yield some amazing student perspectives. As always, I will share those and will encourage you all to join the conversation. I’ll keep you posted.