Hello my name is Jesse DelRosso and I am currently a senior at Penn State. I am currently taking the SRA 397A class because it sounded very interesting when I was looking for one my class to add and I also felt it would look good on a resume for post graduation purposes. I grew up in Pittsburgh and I am a huge Penguin and Steeler fan. I played hockey in high school and also here at Penn State. In my free time I enjoy hanging out with friends, watching movies, playing sports, and playing Xbox. When I gradate from Penn State I hope to get a job somewhere in the Intelligence field either for the government or for an exclusive company. I hope to be very successful some day and hopefully this class will be one of the building blocks to lead my way. My first impression of this class was a very good one. I really liked the way the room was set up and built for comfort. The laptops were actually good for once and not 10 years old. I thought the main use of the room to have class with people from the other side of the world was pretty awesome as well. As for the class in general, I think that the topics were are going to cover on the syllabus this year look very interesting. After just the first discussion in the classroom Monday night, I actually want to read for once because we get to engage in the conversation in the next class about the readings instead of just memorizing what we read, taking a test on it the next day, and forgetting all that information the very next day. I feel that this type of learning will be very beneficial to the students and will give us a deeper understanding of the material.
After this class has come to an end I believe that most if not all of us will have a better understanding of crisis informatics and some of us may even be inspired to help some of these people out that are in need with the skills that we have acquired through school and outside of school as well. Classes like these set up students for the real world and to focus on events that are happening now instead of reading about something that happened 100 years ago in a book that no one really cares about. I am excited to learn about new things that are happening in the world around us every day that has to do with some part of the SRA major. For example, yesterday we felt the effects of an earthquake that hit 5.8 in Virginia. New disasters happen everyday and I am looking forward to learning new strategies and methods of help in this class to assist people that are in need. Maybe one day I can be one of the people helping others with my new found skills.
P.S. I hope we talk about the earthquake in Virginia next class session.
-Jesse DelRosso
Jesse,
ReplyDeleteI will be reading and grading your blog posts starting after this one, and will be posing feedback in a comment as well as a rubric.
I'm sure the earthquake and hurricane will be talked about in the next class. But if they aren't, feel free to bring it up, or write a blog post on it. Thanks for introducing yourself and I look forward to reading more posts.
Just a reminder don't forget to comment on 2 other blogs each week.
Greg Traylor
Hey Jesse,
ReplyDeleteI had to comment on a blog from a fellow Pittsburgher. Have to keep the vibe in the classroom strong. I agree on your general topics relating to the course. I too enjoy the level of engagement that will be pressed upon the students to help further our understanding of the crisis informatics field and how we can use technology to help saves lives in the event of disasters. I feel our guest speakers will really help to peak the interests of those of us in the class. Such an outstanding collection to say the least.
Its odd to see how quickly we can dive into the subject seeing as how in the past week we're experiencing both a hurricane and an earthquake right here on the eastern seaboard. This will provide us an excellent opportunity to evaluate where we currently stand in regards to our technology available and how we are dealing with these disasters. The earthquake from last Tuesday was most unexpected; however, I took some time to do a personal blog on some of the technology currently in use to help identify the severity of a hurricane. If you have the opportunity, take a few minutes to read it and let me know what you think. Look forward to the semester, take care!
-Trevor Jones
430 Brother:
ReplyDeleteFirst blog comment must be on my roommate’s blog. I do have to say that you need to go back to English 015 “son son” and know that a question ends with a "?" not a ".". Just future FYI! I am glad that we are in this course together so we can read mind-numbing documents, which you could look up on Wikipedia in 20 min rather than read something for 2 hours and want to gouge out your own eyes. I am glad that we don’t live with any Philadelphia Flyer or Eagle fans. Nothing against those individuals, but sometimes there can be some hostility between Flyers and Penguins fans.
You and I both have the same first impression when it comes to this course, especially when it comes to the room we are using for class. I wish all of the IST rooms were as nice and high tech as Room 201. The laptops are very nice, however they don’t have a mouse.
The topics are going to be very interesting during the year, but I just hope that the topics do not have repetitive theme to them with the same technologies bring used. I hope to see many different technologies used in different emergency situations during natural disasters or even man-made disasters. My favorite part about this course is that it will be run as a graduate level seminar style course where it is pretty much free for discussion.
The earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 that hit Mineral, VA was very rare for the east coast. They say that one occurs once every decade. We were sitting in class for SRA 471 and our professor told us that it was probably just a jackhammer being used on the bricks and we all told him he was full of it. Then technology came into effect when our friend across campus asked us through text message if we felt that. That’s when we figured it was an earthquake. Then Facebook proved it was an Earthquake just seconds after it happened as hundreds of posts hit everyone's News Feed.