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As a former grad student completing her masters in instructional design at San Diego State University,
Katie Beedon was influenced by WebQuest master Bernie Dodge.
“Shortly into my postgrad work, an opportunity came up to put my instructional design skills to work with the Education First Fellowship program, a nonprofit funded by Pacific Bell and supervised by Bernie,”
Katie said.
This collaboration with SBC led to her relocation from California to Texas in 2003 to replicate that program in the southwest region.
“If it wasn’t for TxDLA, I wouldn’t have been able to get immersed so quickly into the TX education community so quickly,” she said.
An over-achiever, which is an under-estimate of her adventures,
Katie has traveled to more than 20 countries including Afghanistan, the Ivory Coast and Zaire among other third-world locales.
“My travels have taken to me to some far reaches of the world where I enjoy learning and sharing amongst other cultures and religions,” she said.
Single and competitive, Katie keeps a balanced lifestyle participating and garnering top finishes in marathons and bike racing.
“Also, I enjoy other various outdoor activities such as surfing, hiking, backpacking, and I am a recent sea kayak enthusiast,” she said. |
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....anyone
… anywhere … anytime
with Katie Beedon!
Lurking among the shadows, an introverted Zoe Otoole observes a computer-animated world of alter egos built by more than 4 million Second Life residents.
“I am amazed at how much it changes each time I log into the site,”
Katie Beedon said of the web-based virtual reality community. “Unfortunately, I have to be careful with how much time I ‘live’ in my SL; it can become very addicting.”
While her online personality of Zoe may be shy, in real life Katie
is committed to exploring the relationship of technology and education through virtual reality, tele-immersion and collaborative experiences. As the AT&T Director of Education based in Houston, she fulfills a role as consultant and technology-adventure guide.
“Beyond technical and instructional design expertise, I love to bring people together with similar interests,”
Katie said. “So I see myself as a liaison.”
As the TxDLA Gulf Coast Regional Coordinator, Katie has organized a presentation on Second Life and its uses in education along with Chris Duke from San Jacinto Community College for Friday, April 27.
 “It will be streamed live through my vendor relationship with VBrick Systems, for those who can not make it to the presentation in person,”
Katie said.
In Houston where Katie is based, she co-founded the Greater Houston Education Collaboration group,
www.ghecgroup.net.
“Our mission is all about bringing people together to collaborate,”
Katie said. “We are even seeking a collaboration between Houston’s higher education institutes and a university in Bogota, Columbia.”
Katie has many international real-life experiences including a stint with the Peace Corps and other multi-national travels. As a middle school science teacher,
Katie was impressed by West African children who were so dedicated to their studies.
“Often, you could see them standing under the street lamps to study at night because they didn’t have electricity in their homes,”
Katie said. “They were an absolute joy to teach.”
Working in a third world country, Katie would try to bring visuals and hands-on activities to enliven her physics and chemistry curriculum.
“Students only knew how to apply wrote memorization in their learning,”
Katie said. “As Peace Corps teachers, our goal was to get them to better apply concepts to problem solving situations.”
Although these experiences were nearly 20 years ago, Katie has taken this educational philosophy into the 21st century with work in the Internet2 K20 Initiative. Fascinated by the evolving Web 2.0 tools,
Katie finds ways to best integrate these tools, as well as streaming and videoconferencing into the classrooms.
“Within my organization, we seek to provide the most cost effective solutions to schools and provide multi-faceted support such as free consulting and training for administrator, teachers and parents,”
Katie said. “I don’t know of any other company that provides that kind of dedication to education.”
Katie also believes students should learn to use technology and the internet responsibly. In her recently developed workshop “Teaching and Learning 21st Century Literacy Skills through Digital Storytelling,”
Katie advises families and teachers to apply the same principles of “stranger danger” to online activities.
“ The digital divide has taken on a phenomenon between kids and schools, don’t take the technology out of their hands, but teach them how to be socially responsible,”
Katie said. “We don’t teach our kids to speak to strangers on the street; so why would we not teach them the same principles while using technology and socializing online.”
As a virtual education adventurer, Katie also explores human-computer interaction through tele-immersion. Similar to the television portrayal in the 1983 movie “Brainstorm,” tele-immersion taps into higher brain functions allowing users in different geographic locations to interact in a simulated environment through Internet2.
“Users will feel like they are actually looking, talking, and meeting with each other face-to-face in the same room,” according to a webopedia entry on the topic. “This is achieved using computers that recognize the presence and movements of individuals and objects, tracking those individuals and images, and reconstructing them onto one stereo-immersive surface.”
Katie describes tele-immersion as “Second Life on steroids.”
“Besides the SL technology, think of the Wii Play and all the interactive online games that bring end-users together to interact in a virtual 3D environment using computer technology,”
Katie said. “It’s absolutely amazing how far we have taken our imagination to reality, albeit, virtual reality.”
Whether traversing in a digitally-animated metaverse or working in the dimension of the education community,
Katie said her ultimate goal is to elevate student achievement.
“It’s all about fostering trusting relationships and bringing added value to education,” she said. “It provides us with a better knowledge base of our customers needs to then provide better solutions and services.”
Contributed by Cheryl LaRue, North
Lamar ISD
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