Teaching with technology

So, today I was thinking about how I use technology in my classroom and/or assignments. It's pretty typical in an intro MIS course to use MS Access to introduce students to databases. Excel is also a pretty common application - you can use it to teach ways to create simple decision support systems -  build a predictive model of stock prices, use pivot tables to do what if analysis, for example. But what about other things that might be useful in the working world?

In my class, there are several group assignments. This means, students need to learn how to collaborate. Despite my expectations, they don't actually already know how to use tools such as wikis or GoogleDocs to create content in a collaborative way. They stick with passing Word documents back and forth and seem to rely on the ability to meet in person. This is crazy - the world doesn't work like this anymore. I regularly collaborate with people all across North America. For a short time one summer (as a PhD student), I was working on a project with 4 people spread across 3 continents; one person in China, one in Turkey, one in Alberta (western Canada) and I was in western NY at a conference. Sure, it was a time-zone mess, but we had work to be done and timeliness mattered (I really felt for my colleague in China as he had just finished teaching all day and had to wait around until 9pm his time to connect with us).

What to do? Well, I guess I see it as my job to help students learn how to collaborate in new ways. I mean, I teach them about the need for collaboration and what types of applications might be used to collaborate, but I've never required them to actually use any of these tools before. And, like all time-pressed individuals, they just won't try something new if they don't have to. I guess it's about managing risk & reward - too risky to try a new way of working.

New this term, then, I have implemented a wiki (http://is251.openlearner.com) where each group will be developing their strategic IT report project. Here, they'll be writing about a company, identifying it's strategy, performing a value chain analysis, discovering the current IS in use and, ultimately, making some suggestions for future IS initiatives that make sense given the corporate strategy. The students will be presenting their findings in class (part of teaching them to be comfortable making presentations), but they'll be working together in public on content creation. Wish me luck.

Archive: Wireless spectrum auction

(Originally posted November 30th, 2007 at hitmis.postopolis.com)

I wasn’t going to write about this - everyone else is. However, Ray sicc’d a reporter on me (thanks, Ray), and her questions made me think about a few things.

In short, by reserving a portion of available spectrum for companies other than the big three (Rogers, Telus, and Bell), the wireless provider pool should grow. And business theory suggests that more providers equals a better deal for consumers. Certainly, it means that a large incumbent company can’t just buy up all the spectrum and do nothing with it (from a Porter 5-Forces perspective owning all the spectrum would be a great way to block new entrants).

So, that’s the theory. And it remains to be seen if it plays out. But what is interesting to me is the players who are rumoured to be interested in entry - in particular Quebecor (owners of Videotron) and Shaw. Why those two? Well, they’re ISPs and cable companies. Shaw, at least, also provides home phone service over it’s network (VoIP, but they don’t call it that).

Why are these two interesting? Call it convergence. Now, as a consumer, I have one company providing entertainment, data, and voice services. One bill. Well, that’s not that big a deal. But, what if my cellular phone could seamlessly travel between my home WiFi network and the cellular network? What if I can seamlessly travel between any WiFi network (home, work, school, public…) and the cellular network? With my phone choosing the cheapest option at the time. Of course, this assumes WiFi networks are cheaper than cellular; hmm, or at least that some WiFi networks are cheaper.

Now, what if this integrated data, entertainment, voice service company also started looking at what services they can push out to their completely mobile customers? We don’t see a lot of folks watching TV on their cellphones in Canada. Is that because, like me, they prefer their huge HDTVs at home over 2-inch cell screens? Or, could it be that it’s just too expensive to get that much data streamed to your phone? Or a bit of both. Would more competition lead to more services? Would Apple finally launch their iPhone in Canada?

What do you think will happen in the near future? Will we have more competition? And if so, will it be there for the long-run?

Archive: Trend Spotting

(Originally posted November 2nd, 2007 at hitmis.postopolis.com)

I ran into a former student of mine today who was interested in how I kept up on IT trends and the like. Well, I don’t know, I’m just a geek, the information finds me. But, since I’m going looking for good sources of information for him - places to find out what’s happening in technology and how to perhaps harness these new developments for competitive advantage (of course, I’d argue it’s a temporary advantage at best), I figured it would make a good blog posting. So here I am, posting for the first time in over 6 months.

As for using IT/IS for competitive advantage - well, you’re going to have to figure that out. What new technology makes sense for you or your business is very specific to your situation. But feel free to ask questions. Maybe we can all learn something new together.

If anyone out there even reads this, please add in your favourite sources of information, too.

Trends

• Pattern Finder especially the “Patterns and Trends” category

MIS/Business

• CIO Magazine
• The Economist - Technology Quarterly
• Forrester in general and Charlene Li’s blog in particular. Note that you can gain access to Forrester research through the UofA library.

Gadgets

• Gizmodo

Security

• SANS resources online. I’m a geek, so I tend to actually look at the Handler’s Diary. You should also check out their newsletters if you like getting info pushed to you.

Techy stuff

• CircleID “a community hub for the Internet’s Infrastructure & Policies”
• Everything Sysadmin

Enterprise stuff

Since so many EIS use dashboards to present information to executives…how about the good and the bad of dashboards?

• DashboardSpy (the good)
• Junk Charts (the bad)

Of course, some of my best sources are actually friends. Not many of them have tech blogs, though.

• The Synthetic Librarian

With sincere thanks to Michael for helping me fill in this first pass!

I consider this posting a work in progress. I’ll update it (or post follow-ups) as I add to my list.

Archive: Enterprise 2.0

(Originally posted on June 29, 2006 at http://hitmis.postopolis.com/)

It seems the corporate world is starting to take notice of the web-based tools and services that have made social software and ‘web 2.0′ so popular. An article in the Globe and Mail today discusses how businesses are able to use web services to enable collaboration and even building databases.

Michael Rhodin, general manager of IBM’s Lotus division, said the Web 2.0 method of “capturing collaborative wisdom…is a different take on knowledge management, which was fundamentally flawed.”

One of the latest entrants in this field is Vancouver-based Dabble DB, which came out of private “beta” mode this week and launched the public version of its service: An interactive database management tool that will spread joy to corporate project managers everywhere.

So I wandered off to check out Dabble DB and it looks pretty amazing from the demo. This is definitely a tool that would help small organizations or departments build databases to support specific functions. I wonder how scalable it will be. I guess I’m going to have to set aside some time to actually try the product for 30 days.

Archive: Musings on the Knowledge economy

(Originally posted June 28, 2006 at http://hitmis.postopolis.com/)

I attended a conference on SuperNet opportunities last week and posted some personal blog entries about it. In particular, I ranted about support for a knowledge economy, which lead me to realize that I don’t really understand the term. What is a ‘knowledge economy?’ What are the skills that people need to work in this type of economy? What is needed to nurture the knowledge economy (beyond good ICT infrastructure)?

Wikipedia says “A knowledge economy or a knowledged-based economy is a phrase that refers to the use of knowledge to produce economic benefits.” But that doesn’t really help. I know that the phrase is intended to convey a reliance on what people know rather than on the ‘industrial economy’ which was based on producing tangible goods. However, this doesn’t get me any closer to understanding what it takes to participate in the knowledge economy, to nurture businesses built on knowledge.

OK, there’s an article at the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development called “What is the Knowledge Economy” that starts to get at some important differences between the knowledge economy and our more familiar industrial economy. In particular, the idea is that knowledge creation leads to GDP growth; as a result, R&D should be encouraged because this leads to knowledge creation and innovation.

The Commonwealth Centre for eGovernance contains a document discussing tools for the knowledge economy that is well worth the read.

From my short time researching the topic and trying to better understand the elements necessary to drive the knowledge economy, this is what I’ve come to believe:

• information and communications techology (ICT) infrastructure is necessary to participate in the knowledge economy but not sufficient.
• ICT is an enabler; it releases the creative potential and knowledge of people and organizations
• ICT can facilitate knowledge creation rather than act as a driver of change
• ICT opens up global markets
• People are the valuable commodity
• Quality education (access) is required in order to nurture knowledge workers
• we must stimulate innovation and creativity in organizations and people
• there must be cultural change to ensure that people and their intelligence is valued
• It’s no good to impose external ‘best practises.’ We need to let people (organizations, teams, countries,…) find the best way for them to work to create and share knowledge. If we impose strucure, then we undermine confidence and the message that we value intelligence. If we say we value knowledge, then we need to let people use their own intellect to create structures and knowledge.
• knowledge gained by experience is as important as formal education (which is why we have to let people think for themselves in the bullet above)
• lifelong learning is vital for both people and organizations.

OK, but why does any of this matter in a blog for MIS students? Well, if we’re interested in working with information systems, in being ‘knowledge workers,’ then we need to understand what skills are important. And we need to know how to apply those skills, how to exploit the resources we have available to us (our brains) to provide value to an organization. That’s why having an idea of what is meant by ‘knowledge economy’ is important to us all.

I guess the key lesson, then, is that we need to always be learning.