Fall 1997
Vol 6 Issue 1
IN THIS ISSUE...
Who's Doing What with Technology
Who's
Doing What at the Colleges
The Next Generation of Ocotillo
SEE ALSO...
The Forum
Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction
Who's Doing What With Technology
Alan Levine, MCLI
May 18, 1992 was my first day on the job here at MCLI, and on May 20 everybody was off to the Ocotillo Retreat at Mormon Lake. My first thoughts were, "Wow, camping! What a great place to work!" As the retreat unfolded, I found it a great opportunity to learn about technology and teaching at Maricopa. After five years, I am still learning.
One of the things I heard at the Ocotillo retreat (and often after that) was a wish for a database containing a list of all the innovative things faculty were doing with technology in the District. It was a call for the "Prevention of Wheel Reinvention." In fact, the work was started that year by the Support for Technologies Ocotillo committee. They compiled an extensive list, published in the 1991-92 Ocotillo Report, that described many technology innovations.
During the Fall of 1992, MCLI worked with the Support for Technologies Ocotillo committee to put the information from their report into a HyperCard directory. It worked fine, despite the limitation of its availability only on Macintosh computers. Another problem was that updates had to be downloaded from our fileserver.
But there was a larger problem. There was no easy way to collect the information to put into this database.
Time has passed, and better solutions are now available via the Internet. In fact, MCLI has already built a searchable collection of instructional web-sites created by teachers around the world. Even better, the system works in a manner in which anyone can add a new entry via a simple web form. You can try it yourself by connecting to:
If you add an example, just follow the "submit" link to fill out the short form.
With the explosive growth in technology, I still hear a need for shared information of what I call "the infamous database of who's doing what with technology." And according to the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE), this is a common desire at other colleges and universities.
One approach we at MCLI are taking to discover "who's doing what with technology" is to devote one issue of the Labyrinth to this theme. Our unscientific sampling is the sum of a response to an system-wide e-mail request and a "surf trip" across the college web-sites. Think of it as just a sampling, college-by-college, of the many ways technology is currently used at Maricopa.
In the five years since my first retreat, quite a lot has changed with Ocotillo. In this issue, general faculty chair Manny Griego highlights the new directions for Ocotillo that place a focus on college technology planning and support. After Manny's introduction, the Ocotillo faculty chairs from each campus describe their college team's efforts in their part of the new Ocotillo.
Also in this issue, we interview Billie Hughes and Sandra Wells to learn about Phoenix College's experiences with a new web courseware management system. And, we take you behind the scenes of the District-wide data network by talking to Bruce Huston, District ITS.
One of the things not changing is change itself. Technologies will come and go, flashy or not, and at a faster and faster pace. What doesn't change is our commitment to the use of technology in a manner that does not overshadow the learning process.