(No, the title is not a typo. Let me explain...)

After yesterday's talk by Tony Perkins of AlwaysOn, my head was a-buzzing with thoughts about the implications of what he was saying. From that talk, I brought with me two things:

First, validation from an industry insider that indeed, the tech pendulum is again swinging back and that interests in technology innovation is soon going to accelerate again. (It feels to me that this pendulum is on a 7 to 10 year cycle.

And second, with the accelerated pace of change here in the Valley, how can the Philippines ever cope up? Back home, schools are just starting to lecture to students about the rise of Intel and Microsoft, while here in the Valley, conversations are about the success of Google and, just recently, Skype. Yesterday's role models and success stories can only result in yesterday's type of thinking. If this continues and the rest of the developing world's technology education don't catch up, the digital divide might never be crossed.

While riding the bus on the way home, I thought about the importance of keeping abreast of technology news and developments, and how they can be talked about in schools the same way they talk about current events in the social sciences. That's when I thought of a side-project that I can implement during my December travel to Davao City.

RSSRSSRSS
(RSS-Powered Research on Social Software through Reading and Sharing Sessions)

Yes, it's quite a mouthful, but I thought the name could be fun enough to be memorable. Anyway, the idea is to make use of RSS feeds of various social software blog sites as a source of discussions by first year to fourth year computer science students.

With the pace of things happening in the tech world worldwide, it will take a lot of resources to process current tech news if done by faculty. The only way to get the students to keep pace is for them to process it themselves and take turns talking about an item in class. The class discussions will be driven by students, since the teacher will also be learning as the sessions go. This teacher will be grading students based on the depth of their insight and quality of their reports.

Why social software? I chose this technology area because, one, it currently has low barriers to entry. Developing technology in this area is helped by open source software and cheap PC's. Any other technology will be encumbered by expensive equipment and intellectual property licenses. And second, even Silicon Valley itself is still beginning to discover where this technology can go. It gives a window of opportunity for us in the other side of the world to catch up.

Having regular weekly tech news sessions from freshman to senior year will get them ready to find the right subject matter for their graduating thesis. They will be inspired by the latest success stories, have learned lessons of what worked and what failed, and be able to do something that is in pace with what is happening in the Valley. This will also set the stage for creating a Social Computing Research Center of Excellence in a campus back home, but that's another matter.