Choosing which arm to give to the shark (i.e., seeking focus in teaching)

I’ve had some experiences in my teaching this week that have left me seeking a greater focus in what I choose to teach my students. I heard through a colleague in my department that one of my students in my management information systems course feels like they’re in a snowstorm with so much new [...]

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The Future of the Security Industry

I just watched an interesting video of Bruce Schneier discussing the future of the IT Security industry. His arguments parallel Nick Carr’s discussion of trends toward utility computing. Schneier argues that as outsourcing trends continue, we’ll see the IT security become the focus of firms providing the outsourced services (like Facebook & Gmail) and security [...]

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Preparing for Fall Semester

After a very momentous new faculty training yesterday, I set out today to seriously begin my preparations for my fall semester courses. (Classes start on Thursday). I spent much of the day familiarizing myself with the textbook and other resources for my network services management (with Windows 2003) course. I’ve been very [...]

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Learning through Tinkering

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get my students to build more and become invested in their work and learn through experimentation. I think this video by John Seely Brown captures some of the things I’m trying to accomplish in the classroom. To me, however, the challenge appears to be that [...]

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Promoting Creativity in the classroom

I was inspired by this video I recently viewed on YouTube.  I plan on sharing this with my students next semester and hope to find ways to inspire them to view their activities in the classroom and as future information systems professional as creative work   .

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On Improvisation

I’ve been thinking about improvisation a lot lately. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the increasing number of headlines about the economy encouraging us to make due with what we have.  Perhaps it’s my theatrical training trying to find an outlet in the quantitative and largely deterministic paradigm of my research.  Then again, it could [...]

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Joining BYU Hawaii

 

The CIS Department of Brigham Young University – Hawaii has invited me to join its faculty, and I am delighted to do so. I will join the BYU Hawaii faculty in July 2009.  I look forward to contributing to the incredible work occuring at BYU Hawaii and to teaching and learning with the remarkable faculty [...]

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Teaching Programming … to Visual Learners

I think it’s out of pedagogical interest rather than a nascent love for programming that I’m sharing another tool for teaching programming. This one, DrawBot (Mac OS X) starts with visual experiments (a reversal from the introductory programming courses I took which focused on text-based activities first before moving into graphical interface activities).  According to [...]

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Storytelling and Scholarship

In this video, Ira Glass from NPR talks about developing the craft of creating great work. His advice is applicable to scholars as well as creative artists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE

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Teaching Programming … to Children

I came across some research out of MIT recently featuring an innovative approach to teaching programming to children (ages 8 and up).  One of the products they’ve produced is a application called Scratch. Using this tool, the user fits lego-block like programming modules together to manipulate graphics, sounds, and video on the screen.  The emphasis [...]

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