Ocotillo Spotlight on Instructional Technology
Note: The Ocotillo Spotlight is no longer published, but all previous issues will remain on this site.
spotlight for March 2003
The March 2003 Ocotillo Spotlight features four faculty at South Mountain Community College each of whom has integrated technology into subject areas including English, Reading, Engineering, and Internet Design.
Profiles of Four Faculty at South Mountain
written by Mary Long, Philosphy faculty and Ocotillo Chair, South Mountain Community College
mary.long@smcmail.maricopa.edu
 Alisa Cooper on Hybrid Learning Communities
Alisa Cooper has created a hybrid learning community that allows students to complete their African American Literature course along with a freshman compostion class. This format allows students to focus their composition class on writing and research about African Amierican Literature. The class utilizes many features of distance learning including Blackboard, email, PowerPoint presentations, instructional videos and interactive study guides. These features combine with face-to-face interaction in class, one-on-one time with Alisa and collaborative learning to create a hybrid learning community.
Students benefit from this hybrid design in many ways. Combining composition with a content area of high interest adds to the purposeful nature of the writing activity. They build learning skills by collaboration and the use of a many-faceted approach to educational technology. Students advance their technology skills by using web design, PowerPoint, and hypertext documents. Students also learn to use different communication tools by corresponding with the African American literature community via email, personal interview, and discussion boards.
Alisa has built in evaluation by collecting baseline measures (enrollment, retention and student success data) in traditional classes to compare with data collected from the hybrid format. Her work and that of her students will be displayed on an instructor/student created web page. In Spring 2004, during Black History Month, her project results will be showcased. The students will leave a legacy of digital portfolios.
 Al Mendez: This Dog Keeps Learning New Tricks
Al Mendez is a master reading teacher at South Mountain Community College. Once unfamiliar with technology's latest applications, he is now an example of faculty keeping up to date. Al jumped in and spent the time necessary to learn the latest applications.
"I'm from the old school and I never learned anything aside from typing in high school. Computers are new to me. Not to my nine year old son or to my students, but very new to me."
"I can identify with the teachers who graduated in 1972 from a major university. We had to take a class entitled 'audio visual.' It consisted of learning how to thread a film onto a projector and what to do if it skipped a frame or two."
"I've forced myself to take classes over the internet and from Rio Salado College, and it has completely changed my teaching perspective. I can download with the best of them now. I can find links that can relate to the subject matter or topic that we're studying. I can copy a floppy disc and duplicate it. And I can help my students do research on the internet."
"Using technology can make a lesson more poignant and real. For example, we were studying figures of speech. I went to GISearch.com and looked up the actual obituaries of six of my friends who died in Viet Nam. I had students read the death certificates as they were projected on the screen. The concept of a euphemism was brought home when they saw among the causes of death, accidental self destruction."
"Plus, I'm the talk and envy of my consummate colleagues who still reside under the premise that you can't teach old dog new tricks. But, that's not true; I can now dig and sometimes dig faster for bones than ever before."
Tim Frank: Technology Enhances Engineering at South Mountain
Tim Frank heads our Engineering Department. He has a Ph.D. from Caltech, and his sense of humor and creativity make his classes interesting, educational, and, yes, fun. Of course, technology facilitates the process. Students use PCs as tools to learn the design process, which includes testing hypotheses, plotting graphs, and analyzing data. Students routinely use Excel, Word, and PowerPoint to share their projects.
In his first semester course, Engineering Analysis Tools and Techniques, the students design and construct catapults out of ancient Greek and Roman Empire era materials. The finale is a competition of accuracy and distance with balls flying all over the classroom.
During the second semester course, Introduction to Engineering Design, students create Lego robots with built-in microprocessors. They write programs on PCs, which are then downloaded into the microprocessors with a wireless transmitter. The program instructs each robot how to coordinate movements among its various pieces to accomplish a variety tasks. The finale is a maze which the robots navigate to retrieve objects.
In his Statics class, students use 150 popsicle sticks with small holes drilled in their ends along with wire (no glue allowed) to build model bridges. Students start by designing a bridge with pencil and paper. They then use AutoCAD software to draw a schematic of the bridge and MatLab software to analyze and improve their design, before constructing and testing out their bridge. The activity culminates in a contest, where the students see which bridge is the longest supporting the most weight.
 Steve Hustedde Adds Some Flash to Internet Design Certificate
Steve Hustedde is responsible for introducing several graphic design and
web development courses to our South Mountain Community College as part of a new
Certificate of Completion in Internet Design and Development. In the
fall, South Mountain offered a three credit class in Adobe Photoshop.
Students have been creating and manipulating digital photographs and
bitmaps in this industry standard graphics program.
This spring he
offered our first three credit class on Macromedia Flash. Flash MX is
another industry standard program. Students are creating animated and
interactive web pages as well as learning to create stand-alone
applications such as interactive tutorials. Several faculty immediately
signed up for this semester's class. Plans are underway to offer a Flash
MX class this summer aimed at educators.
Steve is a source of a wealth of ideas for learning projects. This
semester Flash students are creating animated aquariums and interactive
kiosks. Their final project is one of their own choosing allowing them
to "express themselves artistically."
Here's another plug! For more information, contact Stephen Hustedde at
(602) 305-5605 or via email at Stephen.Hustedde@smcmail.maricopa.edu
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Instructor Tim Frank (right) explains an engineering concept to student Ismael Pedarez (left)