For close to two years now, I have been the Program Chair for the Information Systems Management, IFSM, major for the undergraduate school, cleverly called The Undergraduate School (TUS), at the University of Maryland University… What is Information Systems Management?
Every year or so I am lucky to be invited by Dr. Robert McCreight who teaches a graduate class on National Security and Technology to be a guest lecturer on Cybersecurity.
Since the classes I teach at the University of Maryland and Syracuse University are on-line distance learning, it is always a treat for me to have actual live students in the same classroom as I am to interact with. This year the exchange of information was really great, Dr. McCreight has a wonderful class. For all of these activities, I deal with what I call the “avoidance of appearing like an idiot in front of people syndrome”, which forces me to at least to scan and keep up with the literature before the class is held.
While I am one of those people who learn best by doing, being able to talk to and/or discuss with bright students is still very helpful and fun to do.
I have posted my presentation below and during the next few weeks hope to write a few columns based on the later slides, of course I have still not written my last two posts I promised on cloud computing, as as usual what I plan to do with this blog and what actually happens continues to diverge.
My Guest Lecture at George Washington University on Cybersecurity
Apropos of nothing in particular and to take a brief break from grading research papers from my University of Maryland class I teach, I was again reminded of one of the problems I have with… Signature Lines on Email
Two events happened today that are at least in my mind related. First when I woke up I checked my emails for the two classes I am teaching through distance learning, at the University of… Remember to Vote
I have been giving a lot of thought lately about the impact of technology being integrated into everything.
In a separate post, I will talk more about that, but until I get that written, one of my students in my Syracuse University class on CIO on “CIO’s and the Global Enterprise”, wrote an interesting discussion about Ambient Organizations.
As I understand the various phrases that use the word ambient in this context, what is being said is that we come across information all the time; conversations, books we read, news sources, and so on. Over time even when we do not realize it, we tend to process and integrate this information often in unexpected ways. This is becoming even more relevant as the number of information sources and the pervasiveness of them increases.
For a simple example, for those of us who participate in such things as twitter or facebook, it is not infrequent that we when we run into someone for the first time physically that we are connected to on one of these social networks, it is as if we already know them. Even when we didn’t notice it, we pick up on what a person is interested in and what their opinions on a variety of topics are.
Helen Patricia McKenna is one of my students in this semester’s CIO class, the class itself in fact is completely on-line; taught asynchronously – that is, no direct lectures. It is part of the on-line graduate curricula at Syracuse University’s iSchool, http://ischool.syr.edu/. She often posts very interesting comments, this one I thought was of particular interest – I will warn those who go on, that in addition to being interesting it is a bit long.
BTW, in the interests of full-disclosure, I also teach at the University of Maryland University College. I find that the “do not want to appear like an idiot” syndrome forces me to keep relatively up-to-date in the topic areas I teach – which typically range from Cyber-Security Policy to CIO Management to IT Acquisition.Ambient Knowledge
Last month I was the keynote speaker at the University of Maryland University College 2010 Annual Cybersecurity and Homeland Defense Symposium and Job Fair, http://www.umuc.edu/securitystudies/cybersymposium_agenda.shtml.
A few people asked me to post my presentation, but I have found that my current job as the COO at Powertek Corporation has caused me to miss many of my self-imposed deadlines for doing many things, including updating my blog.My Slides from the University of Maryland University College 2010 Annual Cybersecurity and Homeland Defense Symposium