Contributors
IDDblog.org is maintained by the Instructional Design and Development department at DePaul University. The site’s primary goal is to provide information on enhancing instruction through the use of technology. The following staff members are contributors to the site:
Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown is a student in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse program at DePaul, and she is a graduate assistant for the IDD department. Sarah is from Ohio, where she attended The University of Findlay for bachelor’s degrees in Adolescent/Young Adult Language Arts Education and Creative Writing. She taught at Miami Valley Career Technology Center, a career technical high school, for two years, and it is from this experience that she developed an interest in educational technology and the ways that technology affects all forms of communication. If she’s not reading, writing, or running, she’s creating new concoctions in her kitchen (though baked goods, as they require precise measurement, are decidedly not her thing).
Jean Bryan
Jean is a northern Illinois native and has been a loyal DePaul employee for almost 20 years. In that time, she has worn a number of hats—from administrative assistant in the Math department to assistant to the vice president for planning and information technology. As the University built out its information infrastructure, Jean—as communications coordinator for the division of information technology—kept the University community informed by providing progress reports and highlighting creative examples of Internet use for administrative as well as instructional purposes. Through this introduction, Jean became intrigued with the educational uses of computers, which led to her current position as an instructional design consultant in Instructional Design and Development.
Jean is such an avid student of pedagogical theory and learning assessment that she recently received her doctorate in Educational Technology from Northern Illinois University. Her dissertation focuses on teaching beliefs and the adoption of web-enhanced teaching. With the dissertation completed and safely stored on a shelf, she can now enjoy more time with the things she loves: family, home-grown tomatoes, and the Outlander books by Diana Cabaldon.
Joann Golas
Joann has made it full circle with her return to the Chicagoland area. While born here, Joann has bounced between Minneapolis, Dublin and Chicago before finally settling here. She holds degrees in Speech, Theater and Education from the University of St. Thomas and from University College Dublin. With her background in theater and education, Joann has a particular fondness for integrating the visual and student content creation into assignments.
Contrary to popular belief, Joann does not prefer to act in her free time. Instead, she loves to cook and read, and yes, read cookbooks. The beneficiaries of Joann’s cooking often are her husband, Matt and occasionally, if he’s good, their dog, Lucky.
Sharon Guan
Sharon Guan was born in Harbin, the northernmost city in China, to a very talented family: her mother starred in one of the ten must-see movies in China; her father had successful careers as a play writer, a novelist, an actor, a scenery designer, a painter, a conductor/composer, and a ballet dancer; her brother was the winner of the Chinese equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.
Why is she sharing her family story with you? Because after hearing this story, a friend of hers once replied, “Then what’s wrong with you, Sharon? Were you adopted? Did your parents buy you at the fish market?” To this day, Sharon loves to share what her friend said with the world!
Sharon has a B.A. in International Journalism from Beijing Broadcasting Institute and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in educational technology from Indiana State University. She came to DePaul in 2002 to serve as the director of Instructional Technology Development and then, as the director of Instructional Design and Development. She has conducted research on interpersonal needs and communication preferences among distance learners (dissertation, 2000), problem-based learning, online collaboration, language instruction, interactive course design, and faculty development strategies.
Eric Iberri
Eric Iberri is a graduate student in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse department. His concentration is in Teaching Writing and Language. His general interests within the field include computer mediated collaborate writing environments, literacy, and the discursive construction of race, gender, and sexuality and how these factors affect the teaching of writing.
Before coming to DePaul, Eric worked as a substitute teacher (K-12) for one year in Baldwin Park and El Monte (both in CA). While at the University of La Verne (about 30 miles east of Los Angeles) where he earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism, Eric worked as a copy editor and page designer at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. He also tutored college writing at La Verne for about two years and served as a supplemental instructor for intermediate college algebra for one semester.
Jim Janossy
Jim Janossy is a Senior Instructional Design Consultant with DePaul’s IDD group and long-time faculty member of the College of Digital Media, where he taught as a full-time faculty member from 1987 to 1995 and continues as adjunct faculty. Jim’s work and research at DePaul spurred him to author over a dozen published books featured on amazon.com (see “Books – Janossy”). Jim’s current research and teaching is centered on using modern technologies and Blackboard and Desire2Learn to enhance distance learning and hybrid course pedagogy.
Alex Joppie
Alex is a graduate assistant at IDD, specializing in fixing broken links and hyphenating compound adjectives. Alex was raised in the suburbs of Detroit and, for a change of scenery, decided to pursue his undergrad at Concord University in the-middle-of-nowhere, West Virginia. Between hiking excursions, Alex completed a BA in English with a writing emphasis. He moved from southern West Virginia to southwestern Virginia (thoroughly confusing his northern friends and family), where he worked in AmeriCorps VISTA on environmental-education projects and watershed protection.
Happily north of the Mason-Dixon Line again, Alex is enrolled in DePaul’s masters program in Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse. He has aspirations for a career in grant, Web, and report writing for environmental nonprofits or deliberative-democracy organizations.
Jeanne Kim
Jeanne is a former K-8 teacher and technology integration specialist. She received her MS in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University and is a cognitive interview away from completing her Masters in Instructional Technology from Teachers College, Columbia University. Jeanne spends an excessive amount of time attempting to catch up with her New Yorker subscription, shopping for the perfect pair of kitten heels, questioning why the Doha round was derailed, and trying to cure her Nature Deficit Disorder. She loves puns, laminating signs like “Use Your Indoor Voice” for absolutely no reason, referring to herself in the third person, and attributing much of the decline and fall of civilization to Twitter.
Melissa Koenig
Melissa Koenig is a Senior Instructional Designer at DePaul University. She has published articles related to learning outcomes in online environments and has presented both in the United States and internationally.
Melissa earned her Master of Library Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and also holds an AB in Psychology from Kenyon College. She has worked in Chicago as a professional librarian for 13 years and as an instructional designer for eight. When not wearing one of her many professional hats, Melissa can be found on the ice speed skating with her 13-year-old son who has dreams of making the 2014 Olympic team.
Theodore Ledford
Theodore is a Chicago native, twenty years of age, and a big fan of its Cartesian street grid, the Brickyard Mall, and Polish buffets. He mistakenly step foot on the North American carousel: slingshot to Montréal, spat back out of Canada’s bowels, stewed in a digital shake-down resurrection at DePaul, then launched México, D.F. bound. He enjoys ne’er-do-well cities in swamps, micro-nations, nollywood, homo-sorcery, kingpins, emeralds, anarcho-syndicalism and the mystic cults of Brasilia. He has mismatched plans for a B.A. in Urban Studies, so he might build Lego villages coated in cellophane and elephant temples for haircuts—theme-park futurism.
Josh Lund
Josh Lund is an Instructional Technology Consultant at DePaul and a former teacher turned mad scientist. After completing a B.M. in Music Theory/Composition at St. Olaf College and an M.M. in Composition at Northern Illinois University, he spent six years teaching instrumental music at Elgin Academy, William Penn University, and Central College and working as an active performer and clinician before returning to Illinois to complete a second master’s degree in instructional technology at Northern Illinois. A life straddling two different disciplines, technology and the fine arts, has led him to researching teaching technology in the collaborative arts, multimedia and recording technologies, interoperability of hardware and software components with alternative operating systems, and interactive-whiteboard technologies. He is really enjoying the fact that his job lets him play with technology tools all day and then teach others to use them.
Josh still writes and performs on occasion, teaches the occasional wayward bass or guitar student, and is an avid disc golfer. He enjoys cooking, travel, and the outdoors, particularly when his wife Clare is also involved.
Rick Salisbury
Rick is an award-winning film and video editor with an M.S. in Telecommunications from Indiana University. Prior to joining DePaul, Rick produced training and promotional videos for the Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Public Library, and the Indiana State Emergency Management Agency. Originally from Atlanta, GA, Rick is slowly adjusting to the Chicago winter but is thankful he lives in a condo so he doesn’t have to shovel snow.
Dee Schmidgall
Dee Schmidgall is an Instructional Multimedia Designer for the School for New Learning at DePaul University. He’s interested in interactive Flash animations, experimental typography, and the artistic, social and educational possibilities and implications of multi-user virtual environments, particularly Second Life. He is a 2006 graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in Visual Communication.
Daniel Stanford
Only ask Daniel where he’s from when you have several minutes to spare. Born in the Northeast and raised in the Deep South, Daniel has lived in 11 different cities in 7 different states and two foreign countries. He’s excited to finally put down roots in his adopted hometown of Chicago where he has easy access to his four great loves: inspiring architecture, great public transit, Jamba Juice, and Arby’s.
Daniel holds an MFA in Interactive Design and Game Development from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia. Since 1998, his interest in interactive media and education has led him to take on a variety of professional roles—from website designer and graphic artist to teacher and online course developer. Prior to working at DePaul, Daniel spent three years helping to establish an award-winning e-learning program at his alma mater in Savannah. Much of his recent work has centered on the design and development of educational games and study tools that can be easily customized by educators to teach a wide variety of subject matter.
When he’s not working on a new instructional game or blogging about educational technology, Daniel likes to browse the Web for examples of great interactive and graphic design. Some of his favorites can be viewed at http://del.icio.us/dstanford/design_examples.
Emily Stone
Emily is an Instructional Technology Consultant at DePaul and a recent transplant to Chicago. She earned her B.A. in Elementary Education from Michigan State University and moved to the Philadelphia area to begin her teaching career. After one year as a middle school math teacher, Emily jumped at the opportunity to combine her two passions, teaching and technology, and worked at the cyber charter school Connections Academy. Through a robust Learning Management System Emily monitored and facilitated 2nd–5th grade curriculum for Pennsylvania students who could be living hundreds of miles away from her office.
Online teacher by day, online student by night, Emily completed an online program through Michigan State to earn an M.A. in Education with a concentration in Technology and Learning. Upon completing the program she was offered an online instructor position with Michigan State’s EduTech Certificate Program. This part-time position allows Emily to stay current on Educational Technology at the K–12 level and perfectly complements her DePaul position where she supports instructional technology integration at the University level.
In her free time Emily enjoys yoga and dance classes, exploring Chicago with her husband, and trying the latest Rachael Ray recipes.
Pantelis Vassilakis
Pantelis N. Vassilakis grew up in Athens, Greece. He received a B.A. in Music Composition & Technology from the School of Music, Kingston University, Surrey in 1993, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Ethnomusicology, specializing in Music Cognition, Acoustics, & Aesthetics, from the Ethnomusicology Department, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1997 and 2001 respectively, and a Postdoctoral Certificate in Auditory Science from the Physiological Science Department, UCLA in 2003. Dr. Vassilakis has composed for the English National Ballet and the London Chinese Orchestra and, since 1997, has been presenting at US national and international conferences, publishing several abstracts, articles, and book chapters and serving as reviewer for publications that include the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, the Journal of Comparative Physiology, and Oxford University Press. Recognitions include awards from the London Arts Board (1993), the National Training Council, UK (1994), and the Acoustical Society of America (1999 & 2001).
Dr. Vassilakis is currently teaching at DePaul University’s School of Music, Chicago, IL, where he is the Music Technology Specialist and one of the Instructional Design Consultants. Since 2007 he has also been teaching at Columbia College’s Audio Arts and Acoustics department. His research interests include cross-cultural dissonance perception, digital signal analysis, otoacoustic emissions, sound localization, musical aesthetics, film music theory, and collaborative assessment driven instructional design. More at www.acousticslab.org.
Lori Zalivansky
Lori Zalivansky is a native to Northern Illinois, having moved here from Buffalo, New York, at eleven months old. She is the first family member that was born in America, as her whole family is from Belarus, Russia. Although she understands Russian she can only say a few words. Lori got her B.S. from Western Illinois University. She started her college career as an accounting major, but due to a lack of interest, she changed her focus to computer science. This also was not the flame to her candle, so she changed her major to what she got her degree in, instructional design and technology.
She is one of the youngest members of the IDD group, only graduating from college a year ago. She joined this family three months ago and has much to learn but a lot to offer.
