Teaching

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.

Blogs@PGSIT Off and Running

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

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

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

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!

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

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!

iTunes Music Store … More Opportunities

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I think I’d seen this before, but the interface shown below has a very interesting feature to it for an iTMS entry. Notice the little “folder tabs” that allow you to move from “playlist to playlist” all under the same “album” heading? This is interesting to me because if we do get this iTMS customization thing going that I have been speculating about since the podcasting in iTunes announcement a few weeks ago, we’re in for a very interesting set of opportunities. Looks to me like this could be a powerful way to structure your podcasts on a lesson-by-lesson or week-by-week basis for your courses. I am just wondering if we’ll have these capabilities when the next version of iTunes rolls out. Take a look at the screen capture here:

iTunes Interface

If we can use tabs to build custom “pages” in the store, imagine how this could essentially become a syllabus for you and your students. The overall page is the course page and each tab is a lesson, week, or whatever organizational method you use. With the iTMS’s ability to handle PDF, video, and audio we can distribute some serious stuff from in here! Mix it up with audio books via audible.com (say goodbye to textbooks!), your own reflections, lectures, and feedback as podcasts, uploaded cases and assignments as PDFs, and video files of Keynote slides and lectures and you have one hell of an interesting LMS alternative!

With the access to the pre-built stuff in iTMS and your own creations the doors are opening to a rich class experience. I am very anxious to see how the iTMS really works … here’s to hoping this isn’t just wishful thinking!

ID3 Tags for Podcasts

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

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

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

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?