PGSIT 2005

WTF, PGSIT?

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

I’ve been talking about PGSIT so much recently, but I guess I never really said what it is … well, here’s a little blurb I wrote for the IST website about it … The School of Information Sciences and Technology and the IST Solutions Institute is once again hosting the PA Governor’s School for Information Technology (PGSIT). Each year we invite the best and brightest minds from the Commonwealth of PA to take part in a rigorous five-week resident learning experience. Consisting of faculty from the School of IST and 40 rising high school juniors, the PGSIT Scholars are once again learning the ins and outs of the Information Sciences.

The Scholars are here working in teams to solve real world IST challenges, create new opportunities through their community service projects, and learn from some of the top minds in the information sciences. It is truly a life changing opportunity for both the Scholars and the program faculty. This year, you can watch what is going on with PGSIT by visiting the Blogs@PGSIT. Here I am teaching in the IST Building’s Cybertorium …

Teaching PGSIT

My class is a modified IST 110 class that I am calling “Web 2.0: The Read/Write Evolution” … check it out here. Now you know.

Scholar Podcasts Piling Up

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I’m not sure how good the latest crop of podcasts are, but a bunch came in last night. I’ll want to take a listen to them. It is cool to get them all via iTunes and have them just sitting there when I get up. If you are interested, this search link will return all podcasts and this link will let you subscribe to the same … from blogs@pgsit.

First Student Podcast … Actually Really Well Done

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I know I’ve been talking about the Blogs@PGSIT space for some time now … well the program is a week old and the space is a hit. What is even cooler is that the first videos and podcasts are making it to the site. The first podcast is really well done. The scholars talk about the role (pros v cons) of computer mediated communication … what sort of blows my mind is that I didn’t assign that at all! Furthermore, I didn’t tell them how to do this stuff — either from a technical side or a style side. They just showed up in our new podcast studio and laid down a great podcast. It might be worth subscribing to the site’s feed (via iTunes 4.9 of course) and listen to them as they come through.

Blogs@PGSIT Off and Running

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I had mentioned we were getting set to launch this year’s PGSIT program … we got off and running yesterday with the first class — a three hour one to boot. It was fun and the scholars are smart, insightful, and funny. We used Blogs@PGSIT yesterday for several things and the space is really coming to life. Hold on, it is going to be a wild five weeks.

Where I’m Spending My Time

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I haven’t been posting here all that much lately … things have been nuts. Between heavy travel and major changes at work, I’ve been a little too crazy to focus for some good posts. I have been spending all my blog time over at the Blogs@PGSIT. You should keep an eye on it the next five weeks … I am betting it is a good thing. I am even using the tools to design and manage my course materials. Oh, subscribe to the RSS feed, there is going to be a lot of podcasting going on — Apple, I could use that iTunes 4.9 (hint, hint, nudge, nudge)

Next week, I start teaching at PGSIT and I run down to NECC in Philly. Hey, I get to go back to my old stomping grounds … I am doing several things, but one night I am taking part in the Podcasting Event … should be a good time. I’ll be hanging out with some old and new friends. So all in all, I’ll be busy but having a good time. Seriously, keep an eye on the Blogs@PGSIT — I think it’ll be interesting.

Blogs@PGSIT Comes to Life!

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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!

ID3 Tags for Podcasts

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I am running down the PGSIT 2005 assignment track now that I am starting to have an idea of what we are going to do. I wrote a little bit about it yesterday — I even got a few emails from people with some ideas that I’ll share later. Today I just wanted to drop this great podcast resource in so I’d have it for the scholars. This one is from Podcast 411 and its a little tutorial on how to use meta data and ID3 tags the right way. Very useful.

Podcasting for Education … Sparking An Idea

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I was pointed to this by a couple of people and I thought it would be worth a quick post … The NY Times ran a piece about how a professor at Marymount Manhattan College has been remixing media to make museum tours more interesting to students, With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour – New York Times. Here’s a quick quote:

The creators of this guide, David Gilbert, a professor of communication at Marymount Manhattan College, and a group of his students, describe it on their Web site as a way to “hack the gallery experience” or “remix MoMa,” which they do with a distinctly collegiate blend of irony, pop music and heavy breathing. It is one of the newest adaptations in the world of podcasting – downloading radio shows, music and kitchen-sink audio to an MP3 player.

It got me thinking about the upcoming PA Governor’s School for Information Technology and how we could have the kids do the same thing … I was talking with my wife, Kristin — who by the way was quoted in the New York Times herself the other day — about how we could use this concept to have the kids create sound seeing tours of the PSU/PGSIT experience. What we’ve been doing each of the last six years we’ve been running the program is to task the kids with a large, overarching IT-related challenge. In the past we’ve had them figure out how to take a large bank online, how to create a next generation (legal) music distribution company, how to secure our airports, and more.

This is the last year for the PGSIT and we’d like to do something that pulls together all the stuff we’ve been looking at in the open source, podcasting, and the read/write web space. I think we’ll have the kids compete to create a design for the PGSIT Alumni Site that pulls together blogging, discussions, podcasts, and potentially a friendster like set of opportunities. You know, a space that they’d actually use … At any rate, that’s what I’m thinking … anyone have ideas out there?