About
Teacher, builder, occasional expedition member, amateur radio operator.
I've spent the last thirty years designing technology for teaching, learning, research, journalism, and entertainment. Along the way I've earned a PhD in instructional design and technology from The Ohio State University, served as faculty in the School of Information Science & Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri, co-founded and directed the Center for Technology Innovations in Education, shipped multimedia CD-ROMs at IBM, written an interpreter for the SEGA CD, taught high school math and physics twice, and taught mobile and game development courses in Sweden. I live in San Francisco and teach online.
My interests include iOS development, machine learning, data analytics, software architecture, programming languages, UI and human-factors work, spatial audio, amateur radio, robotics, and the ways technology can support education, journalism, and collaborative learning communities.
The through line
My work has usually lived where education, software, and media meet. At IBM EduQuest and IBM K-12, that meant multimedia tools and CD-ROM learning software. At Missouri, it meant networked learning communities, College of Education infrastructure, the Center for Technology Innovations in Education, and later the undergraduate Information Technology program in Engineering.
The same pattern continues in the Strata ecosystem and Mission HydroSci: building the systems around a learning experience so students can use it, teachers can understand what is happening, and researchers can study the work with useful data.
A few stories worth telling
Krakatau, 1989.
I led the Ohio State contingent of the Oxford/OSU expedition to the Krakatau Islands in Indonesia, studying the recovery of the flora and fauna a century after the 1883 eruption. I also collected plant specimens for NIH AIDS and cancer research.
MiG‑29 over Moscow, 1995.
Received training in and flew an L‑39 and a MiG‑29 jet in Russia. It is a very sincere endorsement of the engineering.
SEGA CD interpreter, 1993.
While at IBM EduQuest I spent three months at SEGA of America in Redwood City writing an interpreted programming language and video player software for the SEGA CD game platform.
CTIE and networked learning, 1995–2004.
Co-founded and directed the Center for Technology Innovations in Education at the University of Missouri, leading research and development projects, managing technology infrastructure, and building systems for online learning communities.
Teaching in Sweden, 2002 & 2003.
Taught project-based courses in digital game and learning environment development, and in multimedia mobile application development, at Växjö universitetet (now Linnaeus University).
Back to high school, twice.
Taught physics and electronics in Pennsylvania early in my career, then later taught calculus, pre-calculus, advanced functions, and physics in North Carolina before returning to university work.
Digital video on early IBM PCs, 1992.
For my dissertation at The Ohio State University, I developed and used digital video with audio running on the IBM PS/2 Model 25, an IBM Education PC introduced in 1987 that typically came with 512 KB of RAM. The work connected instructional design, multimedia systems, and the practical constraints of personal computers at the beginning of the 1990s.
This image is from the laser-printer output of my dissertation; the actual video was in color and had much better resolution.
Eagle Scout, 1982.
Boy Scouts of America, Troop 172, Terre Hill, Pennsylvania.
On the air
FCC Amateur Extra class — callsign W6NCA. I earned my Novice license when I was 12 as WB3KFF, and earned my General class license when I was 13.