Day 222 - 1/24/11

Hello everyone. Tonight, I took a screenshot of my ISDS 3100 lecture. Why you ask? This class is unique. It is 100% web based. I will never come into direct contact with my teacher. Never. Crazy? This is part of my journey to minor in information technology. This is the future of teaching. And at first glance, it seems very daunting and antisocial. For the past 13 or so years of my life, I have become to accustomed to learning in a tradition classroom setting. I think this will definitely be a long-lasting experience in my mind. Although I will never see my teacher, he definitely wants to make sure we are involved in his class. Through Moodle, he will post his lecture with powerpoint slides and video links (such as this) to explain his point. To explain, ISDS is Information Systems and Decisions Science. It is the study of technology and it's utilization to make decisions in the real world. As far as this course, he strictly emphasizes that it is NOT a technology course but actually it is a business course about technology. He goes by the Golden Rule: Technology is not a business, rather there are business projects about technology. The role of IT is to be a strategic partner to business in order to make the most effective and beneficial decisions possible. For example, random bit of information:

According to Walmart retail tracking technology, the 2 most common items bought together is beer and diapers. Go figure, right? I thought peanut butter and jelly or milk and eggs would be a more logical combination. As useful or randomly strange that information is, it doesn't hindered the fact that technology has and will continue to change our world. Many of the jobs that most IT professionals are being employed to do did not exist 5 years ago. 

All of this has me really excited to learn about this new science. I know it is vastly unique from anything I have ever learned before.