Al Rogers
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About Al Rogers
This is the beginning of a document about the Pioneer. In general, we are interested in two types of information:
- General information about the pioneer.
- Specific, personal stories drawn from your experiences in interacting with the pioneer or in interacting with others who have personal knowledge about the pioneer. Help the reader gain insight into the pioneer as a human being, a pioneer, and a leader dedicated to improving informal and formal education.
Quoting from a Global SchoolNet Founders Website:
- Al is one of the earliest pioneers in the use of computers in teaching. When he got started... in the days of the IMSAI and Altair (1975-1976)... the only way to obtain a computer was to assemble one from scratch... including soldering IC sockets, capacitors, resistors, and I/O plugs to a blank S-100 mother board. His first classroom computer video monitor was a bare CRT housed in a cardboard box with a window cut in one side.
- His "mass storage" unit was a portable cassette tape recorder. He and his 6th grade students used this state-of-the-art machine to explore programming NIM, Hangman and other logic games in MITS 8K BASIC (written by a recent Harvard dropout named Bill Gates). Other microcomputer hobbyists (there were no professionals then) envied his old Model 33 Teletype printer (10 CPS/noisy/upper case only).
- By 1978, after acquiring five of the earliest Commodore PET's Al and a colleague were teaching 4th, 5th and 6th grade students within a school-based computer "mini-magnet." By 1981 he had established a district-wide computer magnet program in a lab of 21 networked Apple IIe's (with a 10MB hard disk!).
Al Rogers has received many awards over the years. Continuing to quote from the same source:
- At NECC '99, the National Education Computing Conference recognized Al as a NECC Pioneer... one of 20 distinguished educational leaders from all levels who have been pioneers and leaders in bringing educational technology to schools around the country.
- 2000: Technology & Learning Magazine's November article on the "Top 10 Technology Breakthroughs for Schools" cited Global SchoolNet as a leader in their breakthrough category #3: Collaboration Tools.
- 2001: District Administrator Magazine's November article cited Al and Yvonne among their list of "Top 25 Technology Advocates".
- 1996: LeRoy Finkel Lifetime Achievement award for Leadership in Technology and Education
- 1994: ISTE Distinguished Service Award for Contributions to Telecommunications in Education
- 1992: Named one of ten "Educators of the Decade" by Electronic Learning magazine
Questions and Answers
This is an "Up close and personal" section. It includes both questions directed to the Pioneer if he or she is still available to answer questions, and personal stories contributes by friends and acquaintances. If it is appropriate, please include the following question submitted by Dave Moursund. Remember, this is a question to the Pioneer, not to the person writing about the Pioneer.
Q. Drawing upon your years of experience in the field of education, what do you think are some of the very best ways to improve our current informal and formal educational systems?
A. (Response not yet provided.)
Al Rogers' Past & Current Insights
Here, we want to capture one or both of the following:
- A section written by the pioneer if he/she is still with us and is able and willing to write. We are interested in personal insights, retrospective analysis and comments, suggestions to the world of education, and so on.
- Material similar to (1) above, but written by the pioneer in the past.
References
This includes references to courses of information about the person as well as references to some of the published works of the person.
GSF (n.d.). Global SchoolNet Foundation: Founders. Retrieved 1/6/08: http://www.gsn.org/about/founders.html#Al.Quoting from this Website:
- Al is one of the earliest pioneers in the use of computers in teaching. When he got started... in the days of the IMSAI and Altair (1975-1976)... the only way to obtain a computer was to assemble one from scratch... including soldering IC sockets, capacitors, resistors, and I/O plugs to a blank S-100 mother board. His first classroom computer video monitor was a bare CRT housed in a cardboard box with a window cut in one side.
