Over the summer, I experienced a sudden shift in academic focus. Since returning to campus for Mentor training and First-Year Orientation, I have been so excited about starting up with my classes — about getting in touch with my inner geek and steadfastly pursuing what I somehow knew all along was meant for me. This semester will have an very technical focus, with 3 classes in the CS department and one Studio Art class concentrated in media art and design.

I was also offered the TA position for our Computer Science department’s new introductory-level class, CS114, The Socio-Techno Web.

As more and more people use the technologies and services made available from Computer Science, online environments like Facebook, Second Life, MySpace, Wikipedia, blogs, and open source development communities, have been flourishing. It is becoming clear that problems existing in our real world transfer and get amplified in the virtual world created by the highly interconnected and ubiquitous computing. This course with start by studying the structure of the traditional Web and its recent successor, the Social Web, and will focus on issues of virtual identity, personal and group privacy, trust evaluation and propagation, online security, critical thinking, online propaganda, googlearchy, fraud and manipulation, restricted resources, class differences, self-perception, and decision-making.

Given my experience with social media, social networking, and mobile application programming, as well as my interest in history, progress, and the world today, I am very excited about what this course will offer.

My responsibility is largely to assist with the programming component of the course, much of which will take place on the Google Android phone. Wellesley is one of 12 universities participating in a pilot of App Inventor for the Android. In a few days, I’ll receive my own Android so I can start playing with it. I am very excited to be a part of this.