I-School Journey

This week my discussion is on I-schools.  For those people reading this who are not in the Technology field, the "I" refers to Information.  The first few weeks that I have been here there has been a lot of discussion in a few of my classes on this concept of the I-school. In fact for this course, we were directed to  asis&t (The Information Society for the Information Age) website, though I should add that my link directed you to an article by Glynn Harmon who is from the I-school at the University of Texas.  Yes, there was an I-school only one hour from my house in San Antonio, but I'll get to that a little later. Harmon's article was on the first I-Conference. So, I now pose a couple of questions..."Did the concept of I-Schools begin at this conference?" Or "Has the concept of the I-School been slowly forming in Universities and in truth the I-school has always been at the surface of academia, waiting to be recognized?
 
Information did not just begin to appear with the Internet, nor with the PC. What about mainframe computers? (For those of you who may not know this, they are still being used in industry. Trust me, I have friends that maintain them!) Haven't we been handling Information, in one form or another for many years? Yes, and the I-School concept isn't just about Information, it's also about society, organizations, people, and technology. There are many other University Schools (School of Nursing, School of Earth Sciences, to name a few) that are not just about their core concepts. In fact, technology applications can be found in every department in a University in one capacity or another.  However, I-schools enable students to study a specific discipline from one aspect, the I-School also brings together people, organizations, society, information with technology from all from many different angles. The faculty that  you find at I-schools come from different disciplines to provide a knowledge base that helps enable this interdisciplinary culture of learning for the students.

So, why didn't I attend an I-school closer to home? Close to my favorite mission, the San Jose Mission in San Antonio, Tx.?  Each I-school that has formed across the country has its own identity and focus. Just as all Computer Science programs are not the same from one University to another, the same is true with I-schools.  And you wouldn't want to have it any other way! Schools need to be able to have the flexibility in their programs to adjust their curriculum's to the needs of their community of students. If a school wants to focus more on the information aspect and concentrate on Library Science they should have that option. Though, if anyone has been to the library lately they use a lot of technology and are still involved in working with people, definitely what I-schools are all about.

But I really haven't answered my question...Why am I at Penn State's I-school?  I was not really looking for an I-school. While looking for PhD programs what first cause my attention what was the research being conducted by the faculty. As I have previously posted, I worked at a hospital and while there technology was "thrust" on many of my co-workers for the first time.  I had at least been allowed to play with a computer during my college days for about 2 weeks so I was considered the "expert".  There were frustrations with screens and printers and I even brought the system down for about 2 hours! (They weren't too happy.)  When I went back to college for my BS degree, one of my professor's assumed I had used a computer in high school. Unfortunately, the only thing I got to use was a keypunch. In fact, I once had the wild idea that I would be a keypunch operator but that's another story.  Yet again technology seemed to be at war with the people!  After I received my Master's degree I had the opportunity to teach at a community college where some students were not comfortable with PC's. At this point I saw it more as people at war with the technology. One thing that stood out was that people use the software that we develop, they also type on the laptops that have touchpads in the wrong spot for thumbs and the mouse in the student labs is always too large or insensitive for most small hands! Essentially I wanted a program that went beyond the software, beyond the technology and looked at the whole picture.  So, I found myself here at this I-school, in a program that fits my needs.