Instructordg

Professional Degrees / Courses / Background / Projects

Professional Degrees/Credentials

PhD Education, UC Santa Barbara
MA History, UC Irvine
BA History, UC Irvine
Single Subject Credential in History, Art and German
Administrative Services Credential
Language Development Specialist Certificate

Courses

Computers and Instruction
General Methods and Educational Technology
Social Studies Methods
Modern Instructional Strategies
Managing and Assessing the Learning Process

Background

As with most Americans, I come from recent immigrants. My maternal grandmother was Swedish, material grandfather was Norwegian; my paternal grandfather was German, paternal grandmother was French. With roots in such traditionally antagonistic cultures, I can justify being conflicted in a number of ways.Continuing this tradition, I married Carol, whose background is English and Irish. Wondrously, both our children are successful and well-adjusted. A native Californian, I have grown up experiencing the best of many worlds: urban and rural, art and science, traditional and flakey. I spent three of my first four years in Mexico City while my mother pursued a journalistic career and have lived in California since her death in 1948.

Finding my way to teaching in Santa Maria in 1969, I taught in a number of high school classes and programs (special education, art, history, human ecology, backpacking). Earning a doctorate in confluent education in 1978, I have endeavored to develop humane methods of public school instruction with varying levels of success. After growing politically appalled by what was occurring at many levels of American society early in my career, I found a salubrious expression of positive activism in the labor movement, especially as part of the AFT/CFT, and in the environmental movement as a leader in the Sierra Club. It became apparent to me that many of the ills of education were related to the way teachers and administrators were educated. In seeking to influence credentialing procedures, I became active in the California Council for the Education of Teachers and the California School Leadership Academy. I also became interested in educational technology in 1980 and was selected as a fellow in two National Endowment for the Humanities projects applying technology to the teaching of history. I was selected Santa Barbara County teacher of the year (semi finalist for California teacher of the year) in 1988.Taking advantage of travel/study opportunities for teachers, I was awarded several fellowships: Fulbright to Pakistan, Korean Studies Foundation to South Korea, Keizai Koho to Japan and another Fulbright to Brazil and have enjoyed travel on my own to China, Europe and Mexico. I shifted my career after 20 years teaching high school to higher education in 1989.

My professional focus is and has been on improving instruction for K-12 students by working to improve the effectiveness of teachers via quality educational experiences.

Projects

Member of the California Council for the Education of Teachers board of directors, chairing the Task Force on Membership

Member of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing Board of Institutional Reviews, accrediting California teacher education programs

Member of the Academic Opportunities Fund program team to design an online course for teachers on technology leadership skills

Member of the Boyer Technology Initiative team from CSUB, developing a PowerPoint presentation repository Web site

Principal investigator for the foreign language project Second Language Instruction, County of Kern

Member of the Confluent Education SIG of the American Educational Research Committee

Member of the Portfolios SIG of the American Educational Research Committee

Member of the Lives of Teachers SIG of the California Council for the Education of Teachers

Favorite Web Sites

Coollinks contains most of my favorite Web sites and keeps me busy categorizing and changing things around. "Is such a page necessary with the current state of search engines and directories?" I ask rhetorically. "Yes," I respond, "if not for the benefit of students in my classes, then certainly for my own spotty memory."

I also like whimsical sites. Dr. Science gives my RealAudio a workout. Art Bell pushes the limits of the strange and has really good cat photos. The Dilbert Zone and Python Online can add zest to a day. And the Dancing Baby is a wonderful reminder that developmentally inappropriate imagery can be entertaining in a bizarre manner.

For more mundane purposes, I find PointCast valuable. It gives me a quick overview of current events, weather, tech gossip and lets me follow specified stocks with nifty charts showing their recent performance. My daughter Lisa showed it to me. She can afford to act on the investment opportunities; I can't.

Live cams fascinate me by letting me see what's happening in real time somewhere I'm not. Since I live in Shell Beach and work in Bakersfield, I enjoy visiting Slug Video, showing various scenes at Santa Cruz but especially Steamer's Lane. My son Tom found this site. He's a proficient Santa Cruz surfer who uses the surf information (there's also a great tide table on the site). I enjoy the surf information, but also the level of fog vs. sunshine and the crowds at the boardwalk, especially when I'm away from the coast. The site also has a unique feature: it asks for money! I am thinking about the implications . . .

As far as favorite sites go, I find it hard to apply the conventional ed tech maxim that a clear mission is necessary before venturing forth on the Internet. Perhaps as we structure learning activities along pedagogically sound lines it is important to avoid dallying in the edgewaters of cyberspace. On the other hand, in my experience serendipity has played a significant role in discovering sites that appeal to and expand my personal interests.

Leisure Activities

I enjoy being a supportive husband, father and grandfather, growing and preparing yummy food, finding and consuming fine wines, observing popular culture,playing out of doors, hiking, sauntering, kayak surfing, photographing and just being part of the joyous cosmos for my short time here.

Page author: David Georgi

Last updated: 8/97

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