The Times They Are A-Changin'

He calls the Xerox a mimeograph machine. He writes in 'Scantron' on the sheet passed around during the faculty meeting about new technology in the classroom. He might even refer to the Internet in the plural.

But he is a teacher. Maybe a great one. And we need him on our side.

...read the whole article at TeachPaperless...

Tags: Age, Digital, educational, technology

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Permalink Reply by Bill Nelson on March 4, 2009 at 2:03pm

It suprised me, when I was a lecturer in a computer science department at a state university, that the other educators did not build web sites for their individual classes.

My lectures were built as Web pages which were projected onto the wall in a "smart room". Links were included to illustrate key points in the lectures. I gave the lectures in-class live with the projected Web page as my "outline". Each week two one hour lectures were delivered for each class, with the lectures then archived on each class Web site for students to refer to.

For each class I built out examples for each pertinent item covered in the class. For example, in the Web Programming class there were hundreds of pages of code samples/examples for specific CSS and other tags. I also created a technology link page which linked various resource web sites for Photoshop, JavaScript, Web Standards, Developer resources, AJAX, SOAP, XML etc.

I felt it was my mission to provide the best and most current resources for my students. We covered Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, BBEdit, HTML, XHTML, XML, AfterEffects, Director/lingo, Flash/actionscript, Quicktime, Premiere, iMovie, video, sound, multimedia theory, team development, even developing a Web site for a real world client (venture capital company) which introduced the students to the rough and tumble and frustrations/joys of the real development world.

Even so it is difficult to stay current. I only learned about NING today and signed to see what it was all about. Recently joined Facebook and MySpace to understand the technology. Of course all this has turned me from an "Artist" (King Features Syndicate and 300+ various print publications/clients) to a total web/technology evangelist/geek. But I love it and the way it makes me stretch my thinking ability.

Most recently I have sought to master flex_sdk3 (MXML) and actionscript3 (Flash9 player) and rebuilt my various web sites at http://ibnelson.com

I'm just sorry there are only 24 hours in each day: I'm trying to make it 26. Oh yeah, did I mention I just turned 60 and didn't get technical until 1995? I only wanted to make my drawings move (in Director) and got sucked into a great beautiful technology black hole. Viva la Web!