District Administration - September 2009 - (Page 36)

Technology, InformaTIon and medIa ServIceS coordInaTor greg UTechT AdministratorProfile Technology Pioneer from Past to Present By Jennifer Chase Esposito Picture A behemoth mAchine in a 6-by-6-foot room at inver Grove heights Junior high School in minnesota with cables on all sides and a paper roll printing data that was input by ninthgraders hopeful that their numbers from a recent experiment would be analyzed better than they’d been able to do so far. They had no idea that as they watched they were experiencing for the first time what we today take for granted: an earlymodel computer doing its job. “it was like you’d see when you watch old movies and see the teletype chattering away,” says Greg utecht, coordinator of technology, information and media services at Lakeville (minn.) Area Public Schools, recalling the out-of-control depictions of what people thought technology would look like in the future. but that machine wasn’t just a teletype. it was connected by acoustic modem to a prehistoric hewlett-Packard 2000c, and watching it compute his students’ figures gave utecht his first glimpse at how computers could help him better teach his students complicated concepts. That was 37 years ago, and he’s been using computers to drive technology in minnesota classrooms ever since. The Early Years Since 1997 utecht has worked at the Lakeville district, which serves a suburban south metropolitan area of the twin cities. but in 1972, his rookie year as a math and physical science teacher, he attended a session on using computers in the classroom to teach science—a newfangled concept at the time—at the annual minnesota Science teacher Association con36 September 2009 Utecht checks on fiber connections between buildings in preparation for connecting a redundant Internet link for the district. ference. The following month he watched his students at inver Grove heights Junior high School struggle with concepts like how to graph the results of their experiments. What if a computer could help Greg Utecht Coordinator of Technology, Information and Media Services Stephen Area Lakeville (Minn.)PricePublic SuperintendentISD 6 years Schools (MN for #194) Middletown Age: 60City Schools (Ohio) Age: 53 Salary: $112,510 Salary: $121,000 Tenure: 12 years 6,500 Students: 11,140 Staff and faculty: 900 750 Web address: Per-child expenditure: $ 8,200 www.middletowncityschools.com Web site: www.isd194.k12.mn.us them, he wondered. Knowing little of how to integrate technology into his classroom but intrigued by the conference session he had attended, he made a quick visit to his school’s curriculum coordinator to see if anything had been published on the subject. he was introduced to the book Computers in Introductory Physical Science. “remember, these were pre-calculator days,” says utecht. “i thought, if [my students] had large amounts of data, by being able to input data into a mainframe, if i could get kids past the tough math, i could get them to talk about the [physical science] concepts.” Since this was long before schools knew what being “wired” meant, with a colleague’s help one Saturday afternoon utecht ran 500 feet of telephone wire to connect the school’s only modem and teletype, which were in his classroom, directly to that hewlett-Packard machine described above. using a program that utecht and a colleague wrote that created a thin-lined graph based on the data from their science experiments, his students could finally interpret their results. “Kids would do their labs, then plug their results into the computer, and it spit out data. They began to understand the concept of graphing. Watching the computer helped them understand,” says utecht. “And this was such a powerful thing. it was because the technology was helping me teach science better that i learned the value of computers in the classroom.” Four Decades of Technology in the 1980s and 1990s, utecht was a statewide commodity. in rosemountDistrict Administration http://www.middletowncityschools.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - September 2009

District Administration - September 2009
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Health Update
Curriculum Update
Stimulus Monitor
Conversations
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Administrator Roles Shift with the Times
Turning Around Schools in Need
Global Learning
Managing Generational Diversity
New Products
Professional Opinion
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
New Books
Tech Disruptions
Online Edge

District Administration - September 2009