Interesting things going on CityU of Seattle
Today we interview Dan Morrill, Program Director in the Computer Science department at City University of Seattle. He’s a committed technology activist and blogger and has some interesting things to say about Cloud Computing and why it makes sense in the educational realm. Dan shares his personal views on Technology, Education, Web 2.0 over at TechWag
1. You aren’t out there trying to get your start-up idea funded like so many others in Seattle. Tell us about Dan and what you do.
I am the Program Director for the Computer Science, Information Systems, and Information Security programs at City University of Seattle. We see many of the technology issues that companies have, from startups trying to find the right programming experience to people being ready to go to work from day one. My job is to make sure that all of the computer science education that we provide is what companies need for their work force. We work with over 35 major and minor companies in the Seattle area to help write and deliver great educational programs and help people get real skills that they can go right to work with. We even work with startups to understand what they are looking for, along with some of the bigger companies in the Seattle area. Education has a unique perspective when it comes to companies, people love to talk to us because we do not try to sell them anything, we see many different skills that companies want, we then try to design programs around those skills, measure the success of imparting those skills, and work with groups that provide key insights into what is happening next, so we can train to future skills. The hardest part is working with future based skills, and often we find ourselves working with Alpha version systems, that by the time students have graduated from school, are in full use late stage beta or just hitting production. It is one of the most fun things I do, work with advanced technological ideas and then design training programs for them.
One of my biggest favorite phrases is that the “students we teach today will be solving problems tomorrow that we do not even know are problems yet.” CityU of Seattle has taken that idea to heart, and works very hard to make sure that we are preparing students for the future. We are fortunate in that we can respond very quickly to new technology, it takes us a year to put together a complete training program, while other colleges might take as long as five years to do the same thing. Like many companies, we find that we have to be very agile in what we teach, to make sure we are providing skills that employers need.
2. What made you decide to move to the educational side versus staying in the “private” sector?
I spent 22 years in the private sector and had a blast, but something was missing, and that was paying it forward. This was a personal issue for me, where could I do the most good? I worked in Information Security and would help small select groups of people within companies, but after my experience with blogging, and seeing how fast the information security business and landscapes change, I thought that being in education would be the next big logical step. We need more people researching computer systems, making great hard to break software, thinking about how to break and fix computer systems, and generally making the computing environments we work with from the Critical Infrastructure grid (power, water, sewer) to the software on our mobile phones. The chance to raise the bar on what we teach, how we teach it, and get people thinking about the problems we have in computing was too much of an opportunity to pass up. If you had the chance to effect good change on a global population, that is a hard thing to turn down, I don’t know many who would turn that down.
3. Tell us a bit about how you’re using new technologies (cloud computing etc) at CityU?
One of the problems with learning is that everyone learns just a little bit differently from the way that everyone else learns. By working with Cloud Computing on the backend infrastructure, video teleconferencing, video lectures, podcasts, along with traditional text/document/PowerPoint, we can provide a richer experience for students. We can easily appeal and work with the various ways that people learn by providing a rich mix of traditional materials and support for new learning methods and tools. I have had students stream lectures on their cell phone, or watch lectures on video on their lunch breaks prepping for the class. The more we move away from traditional PowerPoint huge lecture hall style teaching and more towards what students expect with digital technologies today, the more successful the students are in retaining knowledge. The more successful students are, the higher likelihood of them being hired, and the higher likelihood that they will get great jobs, and eventually pay back the communities that supported them.
The great thing about the technology we are using, and the technology that we are reviewing is that we can use cloud computing to spin up a test bed in an afternoon, test it, and then tear it down if it does not work, or move it to production if it does work for a significant cost savings. I am a huge fan of Amazon Web Services, and cannot wait until Azure comes on line, and they start providing LAMP (Linux, apache, MySQL, php) support. I would also like to get time on Rackspace/Mosso and any Google offering that is out there when it comes on line. The more environments we have access to, the richer the teaching experience that we can offer students.
The good part about cloud computing is that cloud computing allows us serious flexibility in bringing in new technology to the classroom, and enhancing the learning environment. We can go play with the latest and greatest stuff, test it, teach it, providing an opportunity for people to get hands on with some of the most exciting bleeding edge technology out there today. We could not do this if we were not using cloud computing as our data center is small, with limited space. If I wanted to spin up 10 servers, it could take months to provision space in the data center, buy the systems or revamp the test bed with current gear, scale and test locally. With cloud computing I can do the same thing in an afternoon.
We are in many ways trying to create a 1 to 1 relationship between the student and the content using our backend teaching systems to appeal to the way that the individual student learns. Cloud computing, open source software like Wordpress, Loudblog, Open Source VTC, and Moodle as a learning management system, free seminars, and other technology all adds to the classroom experience, and supports the many different ways that people learn. When you can have a one to one relationship between the content and the student, everyone wins. Technology provides a way to remove barriers to learning, the technology we use is all about breaking down barriers and providing a rich experience for the classroom online or in person.
4. You do a bit of blogging too. Favorite topics to write about?
People, technology, society, and education are my favorite things to write about. If you look at the ability of communication to break down access and remove barriers to access to world-class information. Today we live behind pay walls for information, but individual or corporate blogging, sites like Toolbox, FriendFeed, Social Median and even RSS readers can all be inputs to the information that you need now. People are complex, we are often messy in how we relate to each other, Web 2.0 and other technological systems help us all understand where things are coming from. We learn not to take things to personally, we develop better social skills, and we allow ourselves to find people inside and outside our comfort zones. Do I agree with everything I read, no, but when I read something brilliant by Louis Gray, Steve Hodson, Mike Fruchter, Andy Sack, Marcello Calbucci, and other brilliant thinkers and leaders for this generation, we all expand ourselves. Usually I end up commenting and putting my own spin on what they say, but through them, I have met some of the most fantastic people that I would never have met otherwise. Those are the fun things to write about, and mostly what I focus on when I do write. There are also the cool things that are happening in the Seattle 2.0 community, startups fascinate me because we are working with a strong charismatic leader at times, other times we are dealing with people who are focused on a dream. What makes them tick, what makes them successful, how do they handle failure? These are the heroes we should be looking at and talking about, Seattle has one of the most vibrant startup communities I have been involved with; we need to talk about them more.
5. If you could snap your fingers and solve any technology problem right now, what would it be?
The one problem I would love to solve in terms of technology would be to have a true one to one learning system, where people could go and learn what they need to learn or want to learn without knowing the difference; it would all be interesting and applicable to what the student wants to do with their lives. The first person that can put something like this together, I will see how well it does in our environment.
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[...] This is my first ever interview, I have interviewed many companies over the years at Techwag, but this was the first time I have ever been interviewed. The shoe was on the other foot for this one, and that is what made this interesting. Many thanks to Curious Office for taking the time to find out what education is doing to help students get the skills and knowledge they need to remain competitive in the future. Today we interview Dan Morrill, Program Director in the Computer Science department at City University of Seattle. He’s a committed technology activist and blogger and has some interesting things to say about Cloud Computing and why it makes sense in the educational realm. Dan shares his personal views on Technology, Education, Web 2.0 over at TechWag. Source: Curious Office [...]
[...] and I pulled up the CityU of Seattle web site, and showed my name on an interview I did with curious office, and that made the sales person happy. I was going to go deeper, but the idea that there was an [...]
I agree. You seem to have read a lot about this..
John.