Students take BIT330 and open up a world of knowledge

Editor's Notes

1. I’m Scott Moore, and this is a new BIT class on search and the Internet. Describe some of my background. What I’m going to do now is go through a “sales pitch” for this class whose purpose is to convince you to remain enrolled in this class and to give you reason to convince others to take the class. I want you to be excited about taking this class after today’s class is done. It’ll give you an overview of what you’re going to learn and what you’re going to do.
2. Now’s the time when you’re going to the first sessions of all of the classes you are thinking about taking this semester. It’s a somewhat stressful time.
3. It’s hard to find classes that are fun to be in, cover interesting material, and are helpful to you in some way. This is what you’d like to find, but you’re not always successful.
4. You find it hard to justify taking classes that are just fun or just interesting. You know that you’re competing against your Ross peers for jobs and also against graduates from Wharton, MIT, Cal-Berkeley, etc.
5. BIT330 is the class you’re looking for. It’s going to be fun, interesting, & useful --- and it’s available to all Ross students who are at least sophomores and all UM students who are at least juniors.
6. You will be able to use what you learn in this class in all parts of your lives. Okay, maybe not when you’re out clubbing at the Necto or Cavern Club, but at least in personal interest, jobs, and classes.
7. One of the primary skills you’re going to gain in this class is to learn how to track companies and industries. This should help you when you’re going to be interviewing with a company. You should be quite adept at figuring out what’s currently happening with a company.
8. One of the tools you will learn to use is email alerts in which you define queries whose results are sent to your mailbox at some pre-defined interval. You might think about creating a query for a specific company or industry and having the results sent to your inbox every day for a week preceding the interview you have with them.
9. You’ll also learn how to filter your email so that you can more easily find the information you need out of all the information that gets delivered to your mailbox. I have defined a gmail address that collects all of the email alerts that I have defined. It helps me manage the information flow better.
10. We are going to use a wiki as our primary course Web site. This means that every student will have the ability to update the Web site, make corrections, make improvements, and add pages to the site. I’ve done with with a small PhD class before and used it with great success. I’m sure that it’ll work out even better for you folks. We’re going to use blogs (and blog aggregators) as our default out-of-class participation mode.
11. We’re going to learn to use Google and Yahoo in-depth. We’re also going to learn how to use several other specialized search engines. All of this can’t help but help you in your classwork. I’m also trying to arrange to get them to visit our class in November so we’ll do a bit of studying these companies during the semester.
12. Along with Google Images and Yahoo Images, you’ll learn about the benefits of PicSearch, AllTheWeb, and others when searching for images.
13. Both Google and Bing have many tricks up their proverbial sleeves. Students will learn what these special queries are and how they might best be used. It’s certainly not always obvious.
14. Another type of search engine, called a clustering search engine, helps with learning about a topic, not just finding specific facts. You can enter a term and find out what classes of information the search engine knows about. You can then further refine your search or further dive into these categories of information.
15. Students will learn how to find and follow news and multimedia for whatever personal purpose they might have.
16. Many different tools exist that can help students search through blogs. These can be immensely helpful when trying to find nuggets of information related to a topic you’re interested in. It’s like having a team of experts on your side who are specifically interested in your topic looking out for you 24/7.
17. If you’re going to be following multiple news sources while you are searching for information on a specific topic, there are tools out there that can help you pull all of this information together into one virtual information source. This will make it much easier to get information on that topic --- you’ll only have one set of information to read.
18. Audio took off 3-4 years ago and video took off about 2 years ago. There are getting to be more and better search tools for audio and video. We’ll explore several of them.
19. I think students will be interested in this class for selfish, personal reasons and for reasons that they will be able to share with others.
20. One of the great things about this class is that you’re going to be learning to use lots of different tools for gathering information, and you’re going to be able to apply it to topics of personal interest. I want to work with each of you to help you define your topic and to make it interesting for you, so that you’re interested in working on this class.
21. At the end of the semester you will create a report on an industry you would like to learn more about. The report will not only be on the topic itself but on the information resources that you used to gather the information. This would allow someone else to build off of your expertise after this semester.
22. You’ll not only participate in class but you’ll have chances to participate out of class. You might write a blog, update the class on recent developments concerning Google, or keep notes for the class, or post notes about something you learned about the wiki. Lots of different choices. The point behind all of this participation is to teach me and the other students something. You will be evaluated at the end of the semester by how much you have contributed to the learning of other students.
23. You will also learn tools that will help you with your job search. And you might guess what these skills and tools are.
24. You’re not only going to learn about specific computer skills with specific sites, you’re also going to get an introduction to the information search and retrieval field that forms the basis of this practice.
25. However, you’ll learn not only about the theory but you’ll learn specific tools. For example, you’ll learn about several different blog-specific search tools that you can use to learn about companies and current news and controversies related to them.
26. Another tool you’ll learn about is keyword-based RSS feeds. This will help you manage information overload that will start to creep up on you.
27. One of the really cool things about this course is that you’re not going to want to keep this information to yourself after you learn it. You’re going to want to shout it out.
28. You’ll be able to show your reports and demonstrate your search skills to friends and co-workers. Okay, you probably won’t do it at a party, but opportunities will arise and you will know exactly what to do.
29. Once you’ve shown off a few times at work or in school, you’ll become a favorite person to have in groups because you’ll help them be more productive.
30. You definitely do not have to have the skills to re-wire a wiring closet for this course. You just have to be your basic Internet-savvy college student. Hey! What a coincidence! That’s what you are!
31. You’re going to use only Web-based tools in this class.
32. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
33. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
34. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
35. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
36. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
37. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
38. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
39. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
40. You should be able to complete your classwork almost anywhere there’s a computer connected to the Internet because we’ll just be using Web-based tools.
41. And these tools should work in any browser on any computer (for the most part, within limits) because I make sure the tools that we’re going to use work on the Firefox browser on my Mac. And this means that it’ll work on a Windows machine or on a Unix machine.
42. The Web sites and tools will also be freely available (for the most part). This should make it even easier to continue using what you learn in this class after this semester is over.
43. The tools that students will use will not only be free but they’ll be tools that are generally available to the public. And if they’re available to the public, then they’ve been desired to be used with only minimal technical skills.
44. Perfect examples of this are Google and Bing search. Both are immensely powerful but both have very easy to use interfaces. With more knowledge students will be more sophisticated users but it is possible to get good results almost immediately.
45. While Google is the most popular search engine, bloglines is the most popular RSS feed manager, and we’ll use it as well.
46. Among the other publicly available blog search sites that we’ll use are Technorati & Ice Rocket.
47. These tools aren’t just for the technically proficient Web user. They’re for anyone in the mass market.
48. You definitely don’t have to program.
49. Most of them are very well documented. And it’s actually usually not much documentation. Not too many piles to wade through.
50. It’s not like you’re going to have to enter complex search commands --- most of the time you just type your search words, click some boxes and buttons, and get your results.
51. So, the question comes down to this. Will you (and possibly your friends) choose to take BIT330 this semester?
52. The reasons that I have given might not be enough to convince you to take the class. Or you might not agree that these reasons are correct. It just might not seem important enough to you.
53. But I think that would be a mistake on your part. I think you should take BIT330 this semester.
54. What do you think? What sounds good to you? What sounded a warning to you?