My Journey:Technology and Me
As one who is a generation removed from most of my IMET cohort, I believe I view technology with a bit more wonder and awe. I'd like to share my experiences with technology with you....
Every life is a journey. We can't remember when it began and we can't know when it will end. For me, the journey began in San Diego. My father had been a radio navigator aboard bombers in World War II. He brought his love of technology home with him. I've almost always associated technology with excitement and fun. When I was little, I sat with anticipation in the living room as my neighbors waited for my father to come on TV for a commercial for the car dealership for which he was a salesman. When we traveled back to Missouri, my father made friends around the world as he used the vacuum tube amateur radio transmitter that was poised across the hump to call, "CQ, CQ, CQ This is W6DJQ calling CQ on 20 meter phone. CQ CQ CQ, W6DJQ Whiskey Six Dog Jig Queen, calling CQ and standing by." The receiver would crackle and someone from another corner of the country or the world would answer and my father would make another friend.
Computers
I loved the thought of computers. My father had taken me to a punch card sorting machine that was used for processing As I finished my bachelor's degree in anthropology, I attempted a summer class at UC Berkeley in the computer language Fortran. My math skills caused me to fumble in setting up the solution for the punch card deck formula that was supposed to solve a quadratic equation.
As the computers became more accessible, I had more friendly encounters with them. I took my daughter to the Lawrence Hall of Science above UC Berkeley and played a game using a Teletype interface, searching for the Wumpus. That simple game, "Hunt for the Wumpus", captured my imagination and I saw the potential for technology to engage learners in analytical thinking. I found myself strategizing and thinking about the best way to beat the computer at the game. About the same time, I saw my first personal computer in a store window. The SOL came in a couple of variations. It had a maple case, so that it could fit into the living room decor. It came with a BASIC operating system on a cassette tape--- its only storage device. Compare these specifications and prices with the modern personal computer (and remember we are talking 1975 dollars!):
When I saw the computer, I was a seminary student and tried to think of ways I could rationalize its purchase. I could pioneer the creation of electronic concordances that would facilitate Bible study and be a super pastor with intricate indexes of sermon topics created with the aid of a computer. At the time, I was in debt and driving a gas guzzling 1971 Plymouth Fury, selling Fuller Brush door-to-door in affluent Marin County. Buying a SOL computer on time was not to be.
The 80's was the decade of the personal computer and I was first a student teacher and then a teacher during that exciting time. At home, we bought a Timex Sinclair computer, with a cassette player as storage. At that time, most of the programs were in books and magazines. You typed the machine code by hand into the computers. We did buy a few games on cassette tape, but there was a lot of satisfaction to typing in your own computers. Later, we bought a Commodore 64 computer, and soon graduated from cassette storage to an external 5 1/4" floppy drive and bought commercial software that enabled us to word process. My daughters both learned to type at over 50 WPM with the programs and mastered math concepts before they were taught in school.
Teaching and Computers
As I finished my student teaching, Apple Computer had a brilliant idea. Each school in California received one Apple IIe computer, along with a license for MECC (Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium) software. This included hits like Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand. As a fifth grade student teacher, I volunteered to start a computer club that met after school to learn the wonders of the new machine. When I moved to teaching high school English, I found that the second floor computer lab was seldom used by other teachers and included MECC software for writing and editing. I regularly took my students to the lab to write with Apple IIe's.
In the 90's I spent four years as a home and hospital teacher. I often found my students had under-utilized home computers. I sometimes found freeware for them to use and used the computer to teach writing and math when I could.
The Internet
At home, we had a foreign exchange student from Chile in our home in 1992-1993. Tania's mother worked on a project at the Universidad de Concepcion and had access to "La Red". As a teacher, I had access to CSUNet. Tania's mother insisted that Tania and her could write each other using the CSUNet system, connecting to "La Red". It took a bit of experimenting and fumbling, but the connection was made. ("La Red" is Spanish for "The Net") I found other jewels on the Internet, like Gopher, information servers run by universities and the government. It felt very powerful to access massive databases at research universities on the other side of the world, even at 300 and 2400 baud.
We found Usenet groups, which allowed you to communicate with similar minded people over the 'Net. A posting in one of those groups led to my daughter to meeting Nelson Segura, a graduate student at Universidad de Concepcion in Chile, who would become her husband and the father of our three grandchildren.
When we weren't on the Internet, we contacted local BBS systems to play games and share knowledge. Soon something called the World Wide Web appeared, for which you needed a browser. In the beginning, we used Lynx, a text browser. Soon a graphic browser called Mosaic. Shortly after we started using Mosaic, we learned that the Mosaic developers had started a new company, Netscape. While Netscape was a commercial browser, if you were willing to live at the bleeding edge and download the latest beta version, you could use it for free. So through mid-90's, I would regularly check for updates to Netscape and download it to our IBM PC (We'd made the switch in the late 80's, buying a 16 MHz computer with 16MB of Ram and a 20MB hard drive. It cost $1500.)
Graduate School
In 1996 I went back to school to get an M. A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). At the same time, I got a part-time job at Natomas Charter School, working homeschooling families. At CSUS, I worked in the Learning Center Skills Center. I helped international and high-risk students compose, using Microsoft Word and Macintosh computers. The graduate students in the TESOL program discussed topics using an e-mail list and I discovered listservs, subscribing to lists that related to my interests.
Natomas Charter School
At Natomas, I helped build the technology base by scrounging from government surplus and good buys at Fry's Electronics. I supervised computer labs and helped homeschooling families learn about computers, using computers that I'd obtained from surplus. My wife provided the physical labor to upgrade some of the machines and helped us develop our intranet. When I finished my program in 1999, I was offered a full-time job working with high school students. With Internet connected computers, I researched resources and set up the school's first web site, using Adobe PageMill (I'd done our family's web site with Netscape's Composer when my middle daughter said we should do something with the webspace our ISP provided us with.) I created a collection of resources that parents could use with their children, as well as pages that explained school policies and presented the latest news.
In 2000, I learned that the school was eligible for a Digital High School grant, but no one was doing anything about it. I offered to work on the grant. During the summer, I attended workshops to learn about how to write the grant. In the fall, I worked with my CTAP coordinator, Laura Bailey, to write the grant. I presented the grant to the California Department of Education in December and in February the school received $117,300. The grant included computers for graphics arts lab, as well as two WiFi carts of iBooks that could be rolled throughout the school. We also got digital cameras, a scanner, and video cameras to use in our independent study program, as well as an iMac with iMovie. In addition to the CTAP grant, a former colleague had moved on to work at IBM with Bay Area schools and encouraged me to write a grant for our program. We received ten IBM PC's that students could use in the our learning lab.
Natomas Charter, IMET, and PT3
When I entered the IMET program in 2003, it was as an independent study teacher with a PC on my desktop and an Internet connection throughout the day. I was writing units that utilized all facets of the Internet. For a couple of years, I'd participated in the PT3 program and had learned much more about integrating technology. I'd also attended a couple of Project Based Learning Conferences in San Francisco and was very excited about developing projects for students that crossed and blended curriculum. My first work in IMET reflected that vision.
Changing Directions
That changed in June 2003. The direction of the independent study program at Natomas Charter School had changed and the staff changed with it. I found myself looking for work. I felt it was the right time for me to use my TESOL degree and see how I might fit teaching English to adults into my life. I no longer have the security of a full-time K-12 job, but I have the satisfaction of making a difference in students with a strong to desire to learn English.
In my current part-time positions with Folsom-Cordova and Sacramento City Unified School District Adult Education programs, I use technology when I have the opportunity. My beginning students at Folsom-Cordova use Rosetta Stone and other language learning programs. In my Sacramento City Unified School District classes, my students have used ELLIS and Oxford Interactive Picture Dictionary, sophisticated multimedia ESL programs. I also help my students who are ready learn to use the Internet, and have developed a web site using Moodle for their use.
I tried to develop a site for adult ESL teachers However, I have soon found my site blocked by school software because I had the bright idea of getting the web address, AdultESL. I switched to ESLCapital and the lack of teacher interest led me to focus on students.
When I went to China in August 2005, I had the experience of being blocked on a much higher level. I had hopes of using my sites, particularly Moodle, with teachers and students there. However, I found my sites blocked by the "Great Firewall of China." I set up a Yahoo Group, Enping English and began to communicate through the site. I soon found that pictures and sound files filled up the space on Yahoo. I asked on a Yahoo China group how I could get a site that was accessible. I learned that sites were blocked by IP address and any site I put on my hosting service was likely to be blocked. I was given the name of another hosting service and found that ESL Capital was accessible and I set up a site especially for Enping, China, EnpingEnglish.org . I have used it to provide links, post photos and video, and do a little bit of blogging with some response from people in China. I have used Yahoo Messenger and Skype, a telephone style Internet chat service, to talk or text message with teachers in China almost daily. The immediacy of that contact, which sometimes includes exchanging photos with my Chinese teacher and student friends, has really transformed my view of the world and my thoughts about technology.
IMET's Impact
IMET gave me the opportunity to refine my technology skills, but it was especially helpful in putting me in situations where I had to rely on others to complete projects. I'm a very independent person and usually find it easiest to do things myself rather than depend on others. The structure of IMET repeatedly puts you in teams of people that work together to accomplish tasks. When successful, the final products are much more than one could accomplish alone and you get the opportunity to utilize each other's strengths. When the process falls apart, you learn about human nature and can reflect on what could be done next time to lead to success.
IMET also offered the opportunity to examine the theoretical bases of education and technology use. Reflecting on the theory and practice in the interactive environments of the forum BBS and Tapped In gave me insight into facets and perspectives that I would not have had just reading and reflecting alone.
The most significant impact came through the long struggle I had to find an action research project that fit my adult education ESL class locus of control. When I had began the program, I sat at a desk facing a computer all day long. I developed a number of curriculum units on the Webquest model that still receive quite a few "hits" from all over the world. It was going to be a "piece of cake" to develop a unit that would fit into the action research model. Eric Wilberg, an IMET 5 cohort member and former Natomas Charter School teacher, had developed such a unit for physical education. In adult education, I had no desk and most of the time I didn't have computers. English was new to them and most of them were new to computers. The mouse-based point and click programs worked well, but finding a project that fit their abilities and research that was worth doing was a challenge. It was a growing time for me too, as I learned to speak slowly and repeat myself, moving through lessons slowly and coming back to them later. The personal growth I experienced through this transition period in my life eventually enabled me to conduct the action research that is part of my portfolio. I wasn't ready for it two years ago when most of my colleagues finished. I learned a lot through my review of literature (I did three of them, as I grouped for topics) and multiple project attempts